The Essays, vol 11 | Page 8

stealth; and that it should be as great a shame to take them in bed together as committing with others. The difficulty of assignations, the danger of surprise, the shame of the morning,
"Et languor, et silentium, Et latere petitus imo Spiritus:"
["And languor, and silence, and sighs, coming from the innermost heart."--Hor., Epod., xi. 9.]
these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the prints of her teeth.--[Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.]
"Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis . . . Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere ad ipsum, Quodcunque est, rabies unde illae germina surgunt."
["What they have sought they dress closely, and cause pain; on the lips fix the teeth, and every kiss indents: urged by latent stimulus the part to wound"--Lucretius, i. 4.]
And so it is in everything: difficulty gives all things their estimation; the people of the march of Ancona more readily make their vows to St. James, and those of Galicia to Our Lady of Loreto; they make wonderful to-do at Liege about the baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany about those of Aspa: there are few Romans seen in the fencing school of Rome, which is full of French. That great Cato also, as much as us, nauseated his wife whilst she was his, and longed for her when in the possession of another. I was fain to turn out into the paddock an old horse, as he was not to be governed when he smelt a mare: the facility presently sated him as towards his own, but towards strange mares, and the first that passed by the pale of his pasture, he would again fall to his importunate neighings and his furious heats as before. Our appetite contemns and passes by what it has in possession, to run after that it has not:
"Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat."
[" He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her who flees from him."--Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.]
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't:
"Nisi to servare puellam Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:"
["Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin to be no longer mine."--Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.]
to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt. Want and abundance fall into the same inconvenience:
"Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet."
["Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want troubles me.--"Terence, Phoym., i. 3, 9.]
Desire and fruition equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses are troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired, heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; 'tis a blunt, dull, stupid, tired, and slothful passion:
"Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem."
["She who. would long retain her power must use her lover ill." --Ovid, Amor., ii. 19, 33]
"Contemnite, amantes: Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri."
["Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you yesterday.--"Propertius, ii. 14, 19.]
Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face, but to enhance it to her lovers? Why have they veiled, even below the heels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every one desires to see? Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one over another, the parts where our desires and their own have their principal seat? And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which our ladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to draw us on by removing them farther from us?
"Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri."
["She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going." --Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.]
"Interdum tunica duxit operta moram."
["The hidden robe has sometimes checked love." --Propertius, ii. 15, 6.]
To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this grave coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant of things that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but to increase in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot at pleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is not only pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that soft sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce a cold and matronlike gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: 'tis a glory, say they, to triumph over modesty, chastity, and temperance; and whoever dissuades ladies from those qualities,