“It is not for me to point out--for I would not be thought to instruct Minerva--how soberly and continently all these men lived who, according to Augustine and others, were called philosophers as much for their way of life as or their knowledge. If laymen and Gentiles, bound by no profession of religion, lived thus, surely you, a clerk and canon, should not prefer low pleasures to sacred duties, nor let yourself be sucked down by this Charybdis and smothered in filth inextricably. If you do not value the privilege of a clerk, at least defend the dignity of a philosopher. If reverence for God be despised, still let love of decency temper immodesty. Remember, Socrates was tied to a wife, and through a nasty accident wiped out this blot upon philosophy, that others afterwards might be more cautious; which Jerome relates in his book against Jovinianus, how once when enduring a storm of Xanthippe’s clamours from the floor above, he was ducked with slops, and simply said, ‘I knew such thunder would bring rain.’ “Finally she said that it would be dangerous for me to take her back to Paris; it was more becoming to me, and sweeter to her, to be called my mistress, so that affection alone might keep me hers and not the binding power of any matrimonial chain; and if we should be separated for a time, our joys at meeting would be the dearer for their rarity. When at last with all her persuasions and dissuasions she could not turn me from my folly, and could not bear to offend me, with a burst of tears she ended in these words: ‘One thing is left: in the ruin of us both the grief which follows shall not be less than the love which went before.’ Nor did she here lack the spirit of prophecy.”