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One night is worth Jupiter’s sceptre.
Such a night’s lodging is worth Jupiter’s sceptre:
What a night that will be, gods and goddesses! How soft the bed!
“Oh, what a blissful night it would be! How soft, how sweet a bed!” She will risk her whole fortune for such a night, for a single nectar-sweet, balmy kiss.
Happy is he who sees you; Happier he who will hear you; He who possesses you is a god.
The wife of the Sultan of Sana in Arabia, after seeing that handsome traveller Varthema, lamented to herself in this way: “O God, you have made this man whiter than the sun, but me, my husband and all my children black. Would to God he were my husband, or that I had such a son!” She began to weep and at last grew so impatient with love that, like Potiphar’s wife with Joseph, she wanted him to go in with her. She sent away her waiting-maids Gazella, Tegeia and Galzerana, loaded him with fine promises and gifts, and wooed him with all the eloquence she could muster:
Grant this last favour to your wretched lover.
But when he would not consent, she was ready to go with him and leave everything to become his page, servant or lackey, “resolved to follow his dear body as a shadow does,” if only she could possess him. She also threatened to kill herself, and so forth. Men will do as much and more for women: spend their goods, lands, lives and fortunes. Kings will leave their crowns, as King John would for Matilda, the nun at Dunmow.
But kings may be granted a privilege in this: I’ll be a monk, if I can live with you.
The very gods will endure any shame—“and one of the less solemn gods says,” and so forth—and become a spectacle to all the rest, as Mars and Venus did. So Lucian’s Mercury wished; and perhaps you do too. They will gladly risk their lives:
For her I would not fear to die.
Indeed, more: “For her I would not fear to die twice.” I will die twice—twenty times—for her. If she dies, there is no remedy: they must die with her; they cannot help it. A lover in Calcagnini wrote this on his darling’s tomb:
Quincia has died, but Quincia did not die alone; Quincia has died, and with Quincia I too have died. Laughter dies, grace dies, playfulness dies; My soul is now not in my breast, but in the tomb.
Quincia, my dear, is dead, but not alone, For I am dead, and with her I have gone; Sweet smiles, mirth, graces—all lie with her, And my soul too, for it is not in my breast.
How many lovesick lovers in such circumstances might say the same? Yet these are trifles by comparison: they will risk their very souls for their mistress’s sake.
And one among the young men marvelled and said: “I would not wish to be a god in heaven If I had Hero at home as my wife.”
One said, “I would have no desire To go to heaven at all, If in my own house I had Such a lovely wife as Hero.”
Venus forsook heaven for Adonis’s sake: “Adonis is preferred to heaven.”
Old January in Chaucer thought that once he had his lovely May he would never go to heaven, so merrily would he live here on earth. “If I had such a mistress,” another protests,
I would not envy the gods their heaven; The gods would envy me my lot.
I would not envy their prosperity; The gods would envy my happiness.
Another longs just as earnestly to behold his sweetheart: he will risk and abandon all this, and more than this, merely to see her.
If fortune would compensate for all the ills I suffer With some single piece of good fortune, I pray The gods to grant this: let me see face to face The goddess who holds this heart of mine captive.
If all my troubles were compensated, And God would give me what I asked, I would seek only my mistress’s presence, Who keeps my heart a prisoner.
But who can count the infatuation, madness, servitude and blindness, the foolish imaginings and vanities of lovers—their torments, wishes and futile attempts?
Yet, for all this, among the many irksome, absurd and troublesome symptoms, disadvantages, fantastic fits and passions that commonly afflict such people, love also produces some good and attractive qualities. As it makes wise men fools, so it often makes fools wise. As Cardano notes from Plutarch, it makes low-minded fellows noble, cowards courageous, the covetous generous and lavish, boors courteous, the cruel gentle, wicked and irreligious people devout, slovenly people neat, hard-hearted people merciful, and dumb dogs eloquent; your lazy drones become quick and nimble. “Cupid tames savage minds.” That fierce, cruel and uncouth Cyclops Polyphemus sighed and shed many a salt tear for Galatea’s sake.
No passion produces greater changes, or more violent changes in joy or distress. Plutarch, in Table Talk, book 5, question 1, says that “the soul of a man in love is full of perfumes and sweet scents, and every kind of pleasing tone and tune.” So much so that, as he adds, it is hard to say whether love does mortals more harm than good. It gives them spirit, making those otherwise weak and timid noble and courageous:
Ariadne’s love made Theseus so daring, and Medea’s beauty made Jason so victorious: “love drives fear from the breast.” Plato holds that love for Venus made Mars so valiant. “A young man will be deeply ashamed to commit any disgraceful act that comes to his mistress’s ears or eyes.”
Like the man who, as he was dying, asked his enemy to lay him face upwards, “lest his beloved see him wounded in the back”—lest his sweetheart should call him a coward.