Oh, what fingers, what hands she has!

Her pretty foot, pretty garlands, her sweet bearing, sweet voice, tone—oh, that pretty tone!—her divine and lovely looks, everything about her: lovely, sweet, lovable and pretty, pretty, pretty. Her very name, whatever it may be, is the prettiest, most pleasing name. Now I believe there is some secret power and virtue in names! He admires every action, sight of her, dress and gesture. Whether she plays, sings or dances, whatever finery she wears, how excellent it was, how well it suited her! Nothing like it was ever seen or heard.

She has a thousand adornments, and wears a thousand becomingly.

Let her wear what she will, do what she will, say what she will:

For whatever she says or does, everything becomes her.

He applauds and admires everything she wears, says or does:

Whatever she does, wherever she turns her steps, Grace has secretly arrayed her and follows behind; If she unbinds her hair, loose locks become her; If she arranges it, her dressed hair commands reverence.

Whatever she does, wherever she goes, A sweet and pleasing grace attends her, indeed; Whether she loosens, binds or combs up her hair, She deserves honour in whatever she does.

“She puts on a garment: she is beautiful; she takes it off: she is beauty itself.” Dressed or undressed, it is all the same: she is always excellent, beautiful, fair and lovely to behold. Women do as much for men—indeed, more, being much more foolish and weak, by many leagues.

“Come to me, my dear Lycias,” says Musarium in Aristaenetus. “Come quickly, sweetheart. All other men are satyrs, mere boors and blockheads beside you, nobodies beside you. Your looks, words, gestures and actions are incomparably beyond everyone else’s.” Venus was never so infatuated with her Adonis, Phaedra so delighted with Hippolytus, Ariadne with Theseus or Thisbe with her Pyramus, as this woman is in love with her Mopsus.

You be the marigold, and I will be the sun; You be the friar, and I will be the nun.

I could repeat hundreds of such examples. Now tell me: what greater infatuation or blindness can there be than this, in both sexes? Yet their servitude is more striking still, a greater sign of their folly than all the rest.

They are commonly slaves, captives and willing servants: “the lover is his beloved’s property,” as Castiglione calls him—his mistress’s servant, her drudge, prisoner, bondsman, and what else? “He adapts himself entirely to her inclinations, to please her; and, as Emilia said, makes himself her lackey. All his concerns, actions and thoughts are subject to her will and command”: her most devoted, obedient, affectionate servant and vassal. “For love,” as Cyrus rightly observed in Xenophon, “is absolute tyranny, worse than any disease. Those afflicted by it desire freedom but cannot obtain it; they are bound more tightly than if they were in iron chains.”

What greater captivity or slavery can there be, as Cicero demands, than being in love? “Is a man free when a woman rules him, lays down laws for him, commands and forbids whatever she pleases? When he dares refuse nothing she demands? She asks: he gives. She calls: he comes. She threatens: he fears.” “I consider this man a most worthless slave”—in other words, an absolute drudge.

And, as he continues: “Is this no small slavery for a lover: every hour combing his hair, stiffening his beard, perfuming his hair, washing his face with scented waters, applying cosmetics and curls, and never going out unless smartly crowned, adorned and dressed?”

Yet these are trifles by comparison: going to the barber, baths, theatres and so forth. He must attend her wherever she goes, run through the streets past her doors and windows to see her, seize every opportunity, invent pointless errands, wear disguises and assumed identities—as many forms as Jupiter himself ever took. He must come to her house every day, as he certainly will if truly in love, offer his services and follow her from room to room, as Lucretia’s suitors did. He cannot restrain himself: he must do it. He must and will be wherever she is, sit beside her and talk to her continually.

“If I merely happened to drop my glove,” as that Lucretia of Aretino’s boasts, “one of my suitors—indeed, two or three at once—was ready to stoop, pick it up, kiss it and return it to me with a deep bow. If I wished to walk, another was ready to support my arm. A third would provide fruit: pears, plums, cherries, or anything I wanted to eat or drink.”

He does all this and much more in her presence. When he comes home, like Troilus thinking of his Cressida, his sole occupation is to rehearse his actions, words and gestures: the reception he received, how kindly she treated him in a certain place, how she smiled and favoured him, and how infinitely it pleased him. Then he bursts out: “O sweet Areusa! O my dearest Antiphila! O most divine looks! O lovely graces!” At once he makes an epigram or a sonnet to five or seven tunes in her praise. Or else he broods over how she rejected his service, refused him a kiss, humiliated him and so forth; and this torments him just as powerfully. These are his occupations between comb and mirror: madrigals, elegies and the like. Such are his thoughts until he sees her again.

But all this is easy and mild, the smallest part of his toil and bondage. No hunter will take such pains for his game, no bird-catcher for his sport, no soldier to sack a city, as he will for his mistress’s favour.

I myself will come as your companion; neither rugged Rocks nor the boar with its fearsome slanting tusk will deter me.

So says Phaedra to Hippolytus. No danger will frighten him. For if the poets’ fiction is true, Love is the son of Mars and Venus: as he inherits delights, pleasures and graces from his mother, so he inherits hardiness, courage and boldness from his father. And Bernard’s saying is true: “Nothing is gentler than love, nothing more violent”—nothing so tempestuous, nothing so tender as love.