------“relicto
Conjuge Penelope venit, abit Helene.”

Aeneas Sylvius puts in a caveat against princes’ courts, because there be tot formosi juvenes qui promittunt, so many brave suitors to tempt, &c. [6123]"If you leave her in such a place, you shall likely find her in company you like not, either they come to her, or she is gone to them.” [6124]Kornmannus makes a doubting jest in his lascivious country, Virginis illibata censeatur ne castitas ad quam frequentur accedant scholares?  And Baldus the lawyer scoffs on, quum scholaris, inquit, loquitur cum puella, non praesumitur ei dicere, Pater noster, when a scholar talks with a maid, or another man’s wife in private, it is presumed he saith not a pater noster.  Or if I shall see a monk or a friar climb up a ladder at midnight into a virgin’s or widow’s chamber window, I shall hardly think he then goes to administer the sacraments, or to take her confession.  These are the ordinary causes of jealousy, which are intended or remitted as the circumstances vary.

MEMB.  II. Symptoms of Jealousy, Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, strange Actions, Gestures, Outrages, Locking up, Oaths, Trials, Laws, &c.

Of all passions, as I have already proved, love is most violent, and of those bitter potions which this love-melancholy affords, this bastard jealousy is the greatest, as appears by those prodigious symptoms which it hath, and that it produceth.  For besides fear and sorrow, which is common to all melancholy, anxiety of mind, suspicion, aggravation, restless thoughts, paleness, meagreness, neglect of business, and the like, these men are farther yet misaffected, and in a higher strain.  ’Tis a more vehement passion, a more furious perturbation, a bitter pain, a fire, a pernicious curiosity, a gall corrupting the honey of our life, madness, vertigo, plague, hell, they are more than ordinarily disquieted, they lose bonum pacis, as [6125]Chrysostom observes; and though they be rich, keep sumptuous tables, be nobly allied, yet miserrimi omnium sunt, they are most miserable, they are more than ordinarily discontent, more sad, nihil tristius, more than ordinarily suspicious.  Jealousy, saith [6126]Vives, “begets unquietness in the mind, night and day:  he hunts after every word he hears, every whisper, and amplifies it to himself” (as all melancholy men do in other matters) “with a most unjust calumny of others, he misinterprets everything is said or done, most apt to mistake or misconstrue,” he pries into every corner, follows close, observes to a hair.  ’Tis proper to jealousy so to do,

       “Pale hag, infernal fury, pleasure’s smart,
        Envy’s observer, prying in every part.”