Perhaps I would have been happy and glad if I could have enjoyed you to my heart's content, and perhaps I'd have been unhappy instead. So heaven refused to make my hours joyful and serene, to avoid reducing me soon after to the worst, most bitter pain. Silence is bad, but action is worse. Then indeed in my silence I saw him grow more and more insolent, and I'd almost say that it was I who made him that way. But if he has bones that withstand every test and any number of heavy club strokes, so his opponent finally tires of hitting him without having got what he deserves, at last he might so tire me out that I'd have armed myself for my despair.
Silence is bad, but action is worse.
Give me, my lord, your advice. And it's with great delight that I talk with those who know, so as to have further chances to learn, for if my fate allowed, I would gladly spend my entire life and pass all my time in the academies of talented men. You know how often I've begged and warned you to protect her virginity. Where once you made her appear simply clothed and with her hair arranged in a style suitable for a chaste girl, with veils covering her breasts and other signs of modesty, suddenly you encouraged her to be vain, to bleach her hair and paint her face. I'll add that even if fate should be completely favorable and kind to her, this is a life that always turns out to be a misery.