What a tongue she has! Impertinent, full of vanity, bold, chattering, unbridled, she silences everybody, and holds forth for an hour before coming to her tale. We hear her grating, high-pitched, loud, clear voice, wherewith she deafened her husbands. She continually harps upon the same ideas, repeats her reasons, piles them up and confounds them, like a stubborn mule who runs along shaking and ringing his bells, so that the stunned listeners remain open-mouthed, wondering that a single tongue can spin out so many words. The subject was worth the trouble. She proves that she did well to marry five husbands, and she proves it clearly, like a woman who knew it, because she had tried it: "God bad us for to wex and multiplie; That gentil text can I wel understond; Eke wel I wot, he sayd, that min husbond Shuld leve fader and moder, and take to me; But of no noumbre mention made he, Of bigamie or of octogamie; Why shuld men than speke of it vilanie? Lo here the wise king dan Solomon, I trow he hadde wives mo than on, (As wolde God it leful were to me To be refreshed half so oft as he,) Which a gift of God had he for alle his wives?... Blessed be God that I have wedded five. Welcome the sixthe whan that ever he shall.... He (Christ) spake to hem that wold live parfitly, And lordings (by your leve), that am nat I; I wol bestow the flour of all myn age In th' actes and the fruit of mariage.... An husbond wol I have, I wol not lette, Which shal be both my dettour and my thrall, And have his tribulation withall Upon his flesh, while that I am his wif."[222] Here Chaucer has the freedom of Molière, and we possess it no longer. His good wife justifies marriage in terms just as technical as Sganarelle. It behooves us to turn the pages quickly, and follow in the lump only this Odyssey of marriages. The experienced wife, who has journeyed through life with five husbands, knows the art of taming them, and relates how she persecuted them with jealousy, suspicion, grumbling, quarrels, blows given and received; how the husband, checkmated by the continuity of the tempest, stooped at last, accepted the halter, and turned the domestic mill like a conjugal and resigned ass: "For as an hors, I coude bite and whine; I coude plain, and I was in the gilt.... I plained first, so was our werre ystint. They were ful glad to excusen hem ful blive Of thing, the which they never agilt hir live.... I swore that all my walking out by night Was for to espien wenches that he dight.... For though the pope had sitten hem beside, I wold not spare hem at hir owen bord.... But certainly I made folk swiche chere, That in his owen grese I made him frie For anger, and for veray jalousie. By God, in erth I was his purgatorie, For which I hope his soule be in glorie."[223] She saw the fifth first at the burial of the fourth: