The monks, of course, are scandalized at less harmful things than these. They assert that the fair sex, besides being sinful coquettes, are spendthrifts, ruining their husbands by their own extravagance. Women as a sex are inordinately fond of false hair, rouging, and other forms of giving a lie to the faces which God has vouchsafed. As for controlling them, Brother Guyot, of Provins, wrote in despair thus: "The wisest are astray when they wish to judge or correct a woman. She has never found her master, and who can flatter himself that he knows her? When her eyes weep her heart laughs. There are men who teach astronomy, necromancy, geometry, law, medicine, and music; but I have never known a person who was not a fool to take _woman_ for a subject of study." All the above seems true. Yet when due allowances are made, the number of noblewomen who lead happy, honorable lives is great; and if many barons are unkind to their wives, many others reckon them as their greatest treasures. If reasonable care has been taken not to force the mating of obviously uncongenial couples, a decent respect is likely to result, even after a marriage arranged wholly by outsiders. If, in many of the epics, sundry fair ladies seem unprudish, very many others are superlatively faithful, devoted to their husbands, foes to all evil thoughts and seducers, and know how to draw the line very sharply between those familiar attentions which courtesy demands and those where real sinfulness begins. Even a baron who will curse his wife roundly and switch her shoulders treats her also as his _juré_, the holder of his pledge, to whom he can trust his honor and leave the command of his castle when he rides to war. [Sidenote: Accomplishments of Castle Women] "A great deal depends upon the woman herself," Adela assures Alienor. Husbands and wives are shut up together in a castle often for weary months, and a clever wife can easily make herself indispensable to her husband, and then rule the whole barony. In short, in treatment of women, as in all things else, the Feudal Age is a jumble of contradictions. You can find the worst and the best. "A good woman suffices to illuminate a kingdom," a poet declares; while even a crusty monk writes that "we ought to love, serve, and honor woman, for out of her we all come." And what, in one sense, is the intense worship of the Virgin but a sign that woman is extraordinarily venerated and very powerful? "God, thou son of St. Mary"--is that not a standing invocation among the knights?