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three sisters, and his nurse, but at the intercession of his 

 father, who had promised to take care of him, he escaped 

 punishment. 



A father was excused by the law for the slaying of his 

 daughter. This was a like case. For why was the father 

 held excused? Because his love could be relied upon. 

 And what love had not Gianbatista shown towards his 

 wife, when he had married her dowerless, and it was 

 proved even from the lips of hostile witnesses, that he 

 abandoned for her sake wealthy maidens, any one of 

 whom he might have married? How long and patiently 

 he lived with her in misery, and was prepared to live not 

 only in misery, but even shame, pointed at by his neigh- 

 bours ! And as it was, had he gone on enduring, he 

 must have been deprived of the honours of the college, 

 shut out from all decent intercourse, deprived of all that 

 usually is taken from the infamous. After such degrada- 

 tions, might he not himself have been killed, if not by his 

 wife, by one of her paramours? If he had gone to the 

 judges for a remedy, how much laughter would have been 

 excited, how much hate among relations, public talk, and 

 private irritation ! If he had sent her away, he incurred 

 peril more manifest and imminent. While they were 

 sitting there, a man in the town was dying of the wounds 

 inflicted, because he had put his wife away. But he 

 might have killed her by stabbing. That was the point 



