words--

"Countrymen,
My heart doth joy, that, yet in all my life,
I found no man but he was true to me."


It was not wonderful that it should be so.

Shakspeare, however, was not content to let Portia rest her plea for
confidence on the essential nature of the marriage bond:

"I grant I am a woman; but withal,
A woman that lord Brutus took to wife.
I grant I am a woman; but withal,
A woman well reputed--Cato's daughter.
Think you I am _no stronger than my sex_,
Being so fathered and so husbanded?"


And afterward in the very scene where Brutus is suffering under that
"insupportable and touching loss," the death of his wife, Cassius
pleads--

"Have you not love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humor which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?

_Brutus_.--Yes, Cassius, and henceforth,
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,