Besides, wives
use such means of concealing the love implanted in their inmost heart,
with a view to prevent conjugial cold bursting forth with the man, and
extinguishing the fire of his adulterous heat, and thus converting him
from green wood into a dry stick." When the seven wives had expressed
these and many more similar sentiments, their husbands came with
clusters of grapes in their hands, some of which were of a delicate, and
some of a disagreeable flavor; upon which the wives said, "Why have you
also brought bad or wild grapes?" The husbands replied, "Because we
perceived in our souls, with which yours are united, that you were
conversing with that man respecting love truly conjugial, that its
delights are the delights of wisdom, and also respecting adulterous
love, that its delights are the pleasures of insanity. The latter are
the disagreeable or wild grapes; the former are those of delicate
flavor." They confirmed what their wives had said, and added that, "in
externals, the pleasures of insanity appear like the delights of wisdom,
but not so in internals; just like the good and bad grapes which we have
brought; for both the chaste and the unchaste have similar wisdom in
externals, but altogether dissimilar in internals.
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