If, as Pedro de Ledesma maintains in his Cases of Conscience, every kiss a man gives his wife after marriage is “a mortal sin”; or if Jerome’s saying holds, “Whoever is too ardent a lover of his own wife is an adulterer”; or Thomas’s, in the Second Part of the Second Part, question 154, article 4, that “touching and kissing are a mortal sin”; or Durandus’s, in Rationale, book 1, chapter 10, that “spouses ought to abstain from embracing throughout the period when solemn weddings are forbidden”—what will become of all such immodest kisses and obscene acts, the forerunners of brutish lust, if not lust itself? What will become of those who frequently misuse their own wives? But what have I to do with this?

My aim is to show you the progress of this burning lust. To sum up everything I have said so far with a familiar example from the elegant Musaeus, observe with me the amorous advances of Leander and Hero. They began by looking at one another with lustful eyes—

Looking sideways, then with nods— With answering nods leading the girl’s mind astray. And she in return showed with answering nods That she did not reject young Leander’s love, and so on. Then— He approached in the darkness, silently pressing The girl’s rosy fingers, and from his depths Sighed mightily—then— Kissing the young woman’s sweet-scented neck, Struck by love’s spur, he spoke these words: “Hear my prayers and pity my love,” and so on. Speaking thus, he persuaded the reluctant girl’s mind.

With gestures and nods he first began To test the young woman’s feelings; With gestures and nods and smiles in return He found himself an answer. And in the dark he took her hand, Squeezed it hard, and sighed deeply, Kissed her too, and courted her as best he could, With “Pity me, sweetheart, or else I die.” And with the words and gestures that passed between them, He won his mistress’s favour at last.

The same advances are elegantly described by Apollonius in his Argonautica, between Jason and Medea; by Eustathius in the ten books of the loves of Ismenius and Ismene; by Achilles Tatius between his Clitophon and Leucippe; in Chaucer’s fine poem Troilus and Criseyde; and in Petronius’s notable tale of a soldier and a gentlewoman of Ephesus, famous throughout Asia for her chastity, who was mourning her husband. The soldier courted her with lovers’ customary rhetoric: “Will you resist even a love that pleases you?” and so on. At last “she allowed her obstinacy to be broken”: he gained her consent not only to satisfy his lust but to hang her dead husband’s body on the cross in place of the thief’s body he had been guarding, which had just been stolen while he courted her in her chamber. These are stories, you will say; but they have deeply significant morals, and well express the ordinary conduct of infatuated lovers.

There are many such enticements: nods, jokes, winks, smiles, wrestling, tokens, favours, signs, letters, valentines, and so on. Perhaps for this reason Godfridus, in book 2 of On Love, would not have women taught to write. Many such provocations are used when they meet face to face: they are willing and unwilling.

Playful Galatea pelts me with an apple, Then runs to the willows, hoping to be seen before she hides.

My mistress woos me with an apple, Then hurries into cover To hide herself; but first, God knows, She longs with all her heart to be seen.

So Hero tripped away from Leander as though displeased:

Yet as she went she often looked behind, And found many flimsy excuses To linger on the way.

But if he happens to catch up with her, she is all resistance, reserve and coyness:

She refuses and fights, but above all desires to be conquered.

She seems unconquered, but is won at last; In wars like these, women use only half their strength.

Sometimes they are open and most accommodating and forward, ready, yielding and willing to embrace, to get a green gown with that shepherdess in Theocritus, Idyll 27, to let their skirts, and so on; to play and dally at such times, and with such men, as they see an advantage. Then they become coy and reserved again, so particular, so unapproachable, so demure that you would have an easier time taming a colt, catching or riding a wild horse, than gaining her favour or winning her love: not a look, not a smile, not a kiss for a kingdom.

Aretino’s Lucretia was a consummate practitioner of this art, as she tells her own story: “Though nature and art had made me very beautiful, these tricks made me seem far more attractive than I was. For what men eagerly seek and cannot attain draws their affection onward with the most furious desire.”

“I had a suitor who loved me dearly,” she says, “and the more he gave me and the more eagerly he courted me, the more I seemed to neglect and scorn him. I would not grant him what I commonly allowed others: to see me, talk to me, or even have a kiss.”

“To dupe him further and get the better of him—for he alone was my target—I had my own servant play the part of a Spanish count’s servant, bringing me a present while my suitor was with me. He performed his part exceedingly well: ‘My lord and master, the Count of Monte Turco, has sent your ladyship a small present, a share of his hunting: some venison, a pheasant, a few partridges, and so on’—all of which she had bought with her own money—‘and sends his love and service, asking you to accept it kindly. He intends to visit you very soon.’”

At the same time she showed him rings, gloves, scarves and coronets supposedly sent by others. There was no truth in it: it was all a scheme to deceive him. “By these means,” she concludes, “I drove the poor gentleman so mad that he was ready to exhaust his means and risk his own lifeblood for my sake.”

Philinna in Lucian had practised all this long before, as her conversation will show you. When her sweetheart Diphilus came to see her, as he did every day, she frowned at him and would not grant him her company, but kissed his rival Lamprias before his very face. Why? To make him more jealous, as she tells her mother, who reproached her for it; to sharpen his love, make him return with a keener appetite, and teach him that her favour was not so easily obtained.