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May the good always be companion to the beautiful,
Tomorrow I’ll go looking for a wife;
But since divorce between them is nothing new,
And since few beautiful bodies, hosts of a beautiful soul,
Unite both points together,
Don’t think it wrong that I seek none.
I have seen many a marriage, none of them tempts me:
Yet nearly four fifths of humankind
Boldly expose themselves to the greatest of hazards;
Four fifths of humankind also repent of it.
I shall cite one who, having repented,
Could find no other course
Than to send back his spouse,
Quarrelsome, greedy, and jealous.
Nothing contented her, nothing was as it should be,
One rose too late, one went to bed too early,
Then white, then black, then something else again;
The servants raged, the husband was at his wit’s end:
Monsieur thinks of nothing, Monsieur spends everything,
Monsieur runs about, Monsieur rests.
She said so much that Monsieur at last,
Weary of hearing such a shrew,
Sends her back to the country
To her parents’ house. There she is then companion
To certain Phyllises who tend the turkeys
Along with the swineherds.After some time, when she was thought softened,
The husband takes her back. Well then! what have you done?
How did you spend your life?
The innocence of the fields, is it to your liking?
– Quite so, she says; but my sorrow
Was to see people lazier than here;
They have no care at all for their flocks.
I knew well how to tell them, and drew upon myself the hatred
Of all those people so neglectful.
– Ah, Madam, her spouse at once replied,
If your temper is so snarling
That the world, which stays
Only a moment with you, and returns only at evening,
Is already weary of seeing you,
What will servants do who all day long
Will see you unleashed against them?
And what can a husband do
Whom you want to be with you day and night?
Go back to the village: farewell. If in my life
I call you back and should I take the fancy,
May I, among the dead, have for my sins
Two wives like you constantly at my side.
Jean de La Fontaine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-the-ill-matched-marriage-jean-de-la-fontaine/