Chapter XXXII.—Stubborn Facts.

“Now, old man, if you have any thing to say in answer to these things, say on.”  Then said the old man:⁸⁵¹⁸⁵¹    [To chaps. 32–37 a partial parallel is found in Homily XIV. 6–9.  The arrangement is quite different, and the details vary.—R.]  “You have most fully argued, my son; but I, as I said at first, am prevented by my own consciousness from according assent to all this incomparable statement of yours.  For I know both my own Genesis and that of my wife, and I know that those things have happened which our Genesis prescribed to each of us; and I cannot now be withdrawn by words from those things which I have ascertained by facts and deeds.  In short, since I perceive that you are excellently skilled in this sort of learning, hear the horoscope of my wife, and you shall find the configuration whose issue has occurred.  For she had Mars with Venus above the centre, and the Moon setting in the houses of Mars and the confines of Saturn.  Now this configuration leads women to be adulteresses, and to love their own slaves, and to end their days in foreign travel and in waters.  And this has so come to pass.  For she fell in love with her slave, and fearing at once danger and reproach, she fled with him, and going abroad, where she satisfied her love, she perished in the sea.”