In 1821 he found three women gossiping on the landing outside his door; so naturally he complained to his landlady, who assured him that such a thing would not happen again. Alas! a few days later there they were again, still cackling. Schopenhauer warned them to be off, and not to disturb his lordly self. Two of them, being meek and as he thought women really should be, departed, but the third was of sterner stuff and refused. She was a maiden sempstress of fifty who lived in the room higher up. Schopenhauer incontinently took her by the waist and threw her downstairs[24] with a coarse description of her character to boot; and after her flung her sewing and the tools of her trade. Heard a body ever the like? She took him to court, as no proper woman should do, and the philosopher defended his own case. An ungallant judge decided in his favour, and naturally the aggrieved lady appealed. This short-legged, long-haired female actually appealed against the decision given in favour of the Right, in favour of the great pessimist philosopher, of the Neo-Buddhist who just then wanted to get away to Italy for a holiday! And will it be believed that an unjust, nay, an inhuman, judge would not postpone the hearing of the appeal, so that once more Schopenhauer should be able to air his eloquence. In Schopenhauer’s absence in the sunny south the case was decided against him, and he was sentenced to pay the long-haired, etc., creature damages. Three years later the spinster renewed her assaults upon him, having discovered that he had injured her so severely that she was unable to earn her living; and this time the court ordered Schopenhauer to pay her a pension of £9 a year for the rest of her life. This was really getting beyond a joke, and Schopenhauer appealed; but unsuccessfully. Therefore he was faced with the prospect of paying the damsel this pension until the Greek calends; for it is well known that women are very hard to kill, and when they are in receipt of a pension they will live for ever out of sheer spite. But unfortunately for her she died of cholera some time afterwards; and Schopenhauer, receiving notice that he was relieved of pensioning her, showed his joy by scrawling upon the paper the appropriate—and obscene—words: “Obit anus—abit onus.” Thus it was proved that from woman came all man’s woes; but few men have the chance to revenge themselves on the sex by an epigram. As a rule, woman gets her epigram in first, owing to her agile tongue.