CHAPTER VI

CONVERSATION

We come at last to conversation.

This was the goal, the sanctuary of happiness, nay, bliss itself. All

that we have hitherto spoken of led up to this all-engrossing object, for

love was the supreme end, and speech is the vehicle of love. A circle

of men about a lady, and she talking or making them talk,—this was the

supreme and final formula of life.

Conversation, then, was the great art of the platonists, infinitely

greater than painting or sculpture, greater than music, poetry or

oratory, because it alone established real communication between soul

and soul, it alone was privileged to body forth a whole realm of

unexpressed emotions which would freeze at the end of a pen or pencil,

and which music itself would render but ill. Words that well up with the

eloquence of spontaneity possess an indescribable vital force impossible

to analyse; innumerable details contribute to it—the inflection of the

voice, the gesture, the expression of the eyes, the movement of the lips,

the play of all the features. A mineral water taken at its source has, as

every one knows, singular virtues which are impoverished if it is carried

to a distance, and which the most skilful chemist cannot restore. So also

the fount of human intelligence must be drunk at its source. If need be,

it is well worth a journey.

Without women there would be no conversation. For a man who thinks he

can converse without wearing the feminine yoke there is nothing but to

go off by himself like Cardan, that intolerable chatterbox, who, though

the author of two hundred and fifty-five volumes, had the audacity to

publish a book _In Praise of Silence_. “Never,” he exclaims, “am I more

truly with those I love than when I am alone.” Our opinion would rather

coincide with that of the amiable emigré whom his friends urged to marry

the object of his passion, and who answered, “But then, where should I

spend my evenings?” To draw a man out and show him what he is capable

of, it is necessary for a woman to throw out the bait; an ambition to

please, an instinct of sympathy, a thousand fleeting intangible nothings,

veritable microbes of sentiment, will do the rest. But we do not hesitate

to add that, without men, women would hardly know how to talk. Men have

often inveighed against the loquacity,[253] the backbiting,[254] the

imprudence, the frivolity, the paltry and scandalmongering spirit of

the rudimentary and inartistic conversations that women engage in when

left to themselves; this kind of conversation can no more be called

conversation than certain intrigues can be called love, or than daubing a

house front can be called painting a picture.

Certain of women’s little defects remain defects or become virtues

according as the women know or do not know how to make use of them.

Gossips, the women who can think and talk certainly are, and they plume

themselves on the fact. That can only be called a defect in those who

have nothing to say. Margaret of France confesses that when she opened

her mouth, it was long before she shut it again.[255] Sometimes, however,

women are troubled with a certain intellectual timidity arising either

from their education, as their friends say, or from their temperament, as

their enemies maintain. They easily make up their minds, but can seldom

give you their reasons; their intellect clings like ivy to some principle

reputed substantial, in other words, one that is affirmed by their

neighbours, or is traditional, or is ingrained from childhood; and the

slightest breath of raillery only attaches them to it the more closely.

This disposition would be fatal to a writer. To write one needs the

power to think for oneself and to give virile expression to one’s

thoughts, at the risk of getting a name for paradox or eccentricity;

but for conversation nothing is less necessary; on the contrary, the

trite is eminently serviceable. Conversation serves to test current

ideas; it gives them so to speak a stamp, a hall-mark, a label, and

women understand its utility all the better because they largely avail

themselves of it and acquire their convictions through it. On the other

hand they possess as the gift of Nature that which is the very life of

conversation,—facility of assimilation without the necessity of going

to the root of the matter; the ability to express quickly, clearly and

copiously the impression of the moment; a feeling for fine shades;

skill in fitly garbing their thoughts, and in maintaining them with the

necessary unction, grace, and warmth. No more is needed.

The age in which we live, priding itself on its practical spirit, has

neglected this art of conversation. We have almost entirely lost the

feeling for it because of its unpretentiousness, and we declare it

unimportant on the ground that we are no longer platonists and can no

longer find in mere phrases the supreme felicity of life. Yet it is an

art of eminent utility in regard to the charm of existence,—a genuine and

highly intellectual art, an art that in the 18th century was one of our

national glories. By their witty conversation the ladies of the house of

Mortemart did more to make their race illustrious than all the artists

and all the soldiers. Saint-Simon has given us an excellent description

of the talent of three of them, who boasted neither of mysticism nor

perhaps of philosophy—Mesdames de Montespan, de Fontevrault, and de

Thianges: “Their court was the centre of wit, and wit of so special and

fine a savour, yet withal so natural and pleasant, that it came to be

noted for its unique character.... All three possessed it in abundance,

and appeared to impart it to others. This charming sympathy of theirs

still delights us in the survivors of those whom they bred up and

attached to themselves; you could tell them among a thousand in the most

miscellaneous company.” That was the goal aimed at by the 16th-century

women, since it made men immortal, and gave them a full life on earth

meanwhile—since, in a word, it was happiness.

We could scarcely realise the empire certain women exercised if we

neglected to take into account their wonderful conversational powers,

and judged them merely by their writings, or by their letters even.

Justly or unjustly, the writings of Margaret of France met with no

success. Marot, in complimenting his dear princess on them, had recourse

to an evasion of no little ingenuity: “When I see your poems only, I

marvel that people do not admire them more; but when I hear you speak,

I veer completely round, amazed that anyone is so foolish as to marvel

thereat.” Like many others, Margaret held sway through conversation.

Some cross-grained people imagine that to women talking is the easiest

thing in the world, that friends spring up around them spontaneously,

that the art reduces itself to finishing their toilette by lunch time

and then letting their tongues wag till evening. It is extremely simple,

they say. Simple! They think it sufficient then to fling their doors open

on certain days, and to deal out here and there among their guests a few

formal and chilling inanities! “Men are so scarce that when you have

them you should rate them very high,” said Anne of France, very justly.

Simple, not to rest satisfied with the mere glitter of small talk, but to

take full possession of one’s visitors, to form a warm nest of friends!

It is a heavy task. If in these days women no longer exercise any serious

influence, is it not to some extent their own fault? A superficial and

cramped education has often rendered them incapable of effort. They

are afraid of a conversation on broad, serious lines; they will not be

bothered with it. But to form a set, a woman must belong to herself no

longer, she must belong to her friends; conversation is her bread of

life, to adopt an expressive phrase, and she does in fact become so

habituated to her part that she cannot do without it; she _must_ talk, if

only with her husband. Mary of England used to talk to Louis XII.—

Soubz le drap couvert d’orfebvrerie,

Qui reluisoit en fine pierrerie,

Passions temps en dictz solatieux

Et en propos plaisans et gratieux.[256]

Bereavements and misfortunes only render conversation more necessary.

Emilia Pia,[257] proscribed, stripped of her all, and persecuted, could

not appear in the streets of Rome without an adoring throng of prelates

and admirers, just as there was never more laughter and gossip than in

the crowded cells of the Reign of Terror.

A well-bred man considered himself literally entitled to command the

conversational abilities of women. In this connection a very curious

misadventure befell some judges of the Parliament of Paris who in the

course of their duty went to hold assize at Poitiers. In the heart of the

16th century, when everybody went the pace, and the air was charged with

moral electricity, there was still found one town where the women would

have believed, as they did three hundred years earlier, that they were

lost if they opened their doors. Jean Bouchet,[258] loyal Poitevin as he

was, has described the boisterous amusement with which France heard that

some bashful ladies answered these poor judges through a peep-hole with a

_Non possumus_. The ladies of Paris themselves sent a petition to their

“colleagues” at Poitiers, begging them not to let their husbands die of

dulness. The ladies of Poitiers replied with blushing cheeks: “’Tis not

our way at Poitiers.” They hugged the tradition of dulness.

At Lyons, which on the contrary was a modern town, squire Sala,

chancing to be at his window one fine spring morning, perceived in the

street three ladies to whom he was related, going on pilgrimage to St.

Irenaeus. To dash after them and make them promise to call in on their

way back was the affair of a moment; and then he was a happy man, sure

of a pleasant day. We are no longer, you perceive, at Poitiers. The

ladies return; they dine gaily with their cousin, and pass into the

library; and then, during a desultory conversation, one of the fair

guests mechanically opens a Bible at the book of Kings. Nothing more

is needed. What a charming subject! The lady avows that she loves to

lie back in a cosy chair and read the history of the kings of France;

everyone joins in the conversation and cites some notable fact about

royalty; and thus the procession defiles past—Alexander, Agis, Brennus,

Caesar, the Merovingians, the classic heroes (Charlemagne, Godfrey of

Bouillon), divers kings of France, Louis surnamed the Fat, Philip the

August, the noble St. Louis, all the princes of the 15th century; finally

Sala promises to relate a story of Francis I. Unhappily it is long past

the hour for separating, for tearing themselves from this intoxicating

pastime; and, to tell the truth, when they got home these ladies found

that their husbands had put the lights out.

If this was bondage the ladies took it in very good part, and the men

left nothing undone to soften it for them. We have all known men expert

in the manipulation of feminine conversations, and deriving from them a

large measure of influence; for instance (to speak only of the dead),

Monsignor Dupanloup,[259] or in a different kind M. Mérimée, that waif

from the 16th century, who combined with extraordinary scepticism an

incurable impressibility, and, while free in mind and heart, was always

leaning on a woman! The men of the 16th century became charmers. A

political exile from Milan, fresh from a milieu of women—the physician

Marliano—acquired an unprecedented influence in the Low Countries by the

mere attractiveness of his conversation; people vied with each other

in praising its suavity, its “heavenly ambrosia,” its “honey,” its

“sweetness.”

Men moulded by the hands of Italian ladies could be distinguished among a

thousand; they could talk about anything and everything. Many writers of

eminent ability would have gained much by being less serious.

No one could help succumbing to this charm; and in truth it is easy to

believe that the platonists sought happiness from conversation, futile as

it was reputed to be, since they were constantly saying: “I was happy, we

are all happy.” Cardan himself recalls with enthusiasm the time when he

was supposed to be studying medicine at Venice: “I was happy.”[260] Ever

the same word! People cultivated their happiness.

“Ferrara,” says Lamartine, “resembled a colony from the court of

Augustus, Leo X., or the Medici; cultured princes—princesses who

were heroines of love, poetry, or romance,—cardinals aspiring to the

papacy—scholars—artists—poets half knights, half bards—met there every

evening, in the splendid halls of Ercole d’Este, in town or country.”

At Urbino, the conversations were broken by riding-parties, hawking

expeditions, balls, sports, music; life resembled a kaleidoscope, but

wit slipped into every pattern as the necessary element of beauty. The

duke was in bad health and used to retire early. After his departure the

evening flew by delightfully: the young duchess “seems a chain holding

us all pleasantly together,” said Castiglione. There was no standing on

ceremony; she was always the centre of a circle composed of men or women

alternately as chance directed. In addition to the regular group, the

company pretty often included some accomplished stranger, some scholar

or artist who happened to be passing through. They spoke freely to the

ladies on a footing of friendliness. As the evening drew on, some went

off for dancing or music, the others continued to start discussions

or tell stories enlivened with transparent allegories. In summer this

brilliant reunion was held in the garden.

Our pictures of society in olden times may often give the impression that

only wolves, lions, wild beasts, or else strutting cocks and clucking

hens served as models. But to paint this polished society of Urbino, so

enthusiastically bent on happiness, we should need colours no palette

contains,—transparencies of the Grecian sky, the indigo of certain seas,

the liquid azure of certain eyes. For more than a century the court of

Urbino was regarded as the supreme exemplar; in the 17th century the

Hôtel de Rambouillet was still striving to make itself a copy of it;

unluckily such things as these are not easily copied.

It would be difficult enough to deduce from the conversations at Urbino

a series of rules for the art. No programme was pasted on the walls.

But still we may note certain principles: a remarkable good-fellowship,

ranging from perfect courtesy to affectionate familiarity; a real

sentiment of equality, genuine equality, springing from an exact

appreciation of the various degrees of worth, and consequently in that

sense aristocratic; finally and especially, freedom, the most absolute

openness of mind, the absence of ambitions and pretensions, at any rate

so far as appeared; a joyous skilfulness in playing on the surface of

things, or in striking out into the vastest regions of thought without

effort or constraint.

Throughout Italy a somewhat Ciceronian and Attic beauty of form played

a highly important part in conversation. Men were distinguished by

their dignity of style and by a high-bred refinement free from the

slightest taint of the stable. We can only judge of their manner of

talk indirectly, through their letters; but an idea of it may be gained

from the letters of Bembo, Castiglione, and others, in which a lady

could see how to win men’s hearts while retaining all womanliness of

style, and how much affection—whether it be called love, friendship,

or simply a good understanding—gains by displaying itself delicately.

Women played the part of judges: they were permitted, if need were, to

stand on their dignity, to be silent or to speak freely at pleasure;

but no man could succeed without a highly suave manner; merit had to be

shown by some external mark: “Merit is not enough unless prolific in the

outward graces on which the praiseworthiness of actions depends.” But

appearances were sometimes sufficient. Even in their portraits, men like

Castiglione retain a something infinitely engaging and attractive—a bloom

on the lips, a softness in the eyes.[261] When at Venice we come upon

portraits of men all energy and self-assertion, the inference is that the

women must have lost their empire; and we do in fact see opposite them

portraits of passive women, all softness and sensuousness.

And these tender lips that opened only to speak to women, these caressing

eyes, do not deceive us. The prattle of these men was impregnated with

a dove-like gentleness, an adoration, in appearance wholly spiritual,

for the beautiful. Castiglione, an eminently graceful, caressing, and

persuasive talker, spoke with fluency, with something of flabbiness and

redundance, perhaps—a sort of perfumed talk, with nothing of “French

filthiness,” as he said. Vittoria Colonna wrote a charming letter to

Paul Jove, in which she spoke with great enthusiasm of “her” divine

Bembo. Paul Jove lost no time in passing this letter on to Bembo. “I send

you,” he writes, “a letter from your lady-love, the most illustrious

marchioness. It is very pretty, and speaks of you, and I send it you at

once without any of that resentment which rivals are so apt to feel, for

I am fully assured that Her Excellency’s love for your lordship is in all

points like to my own love for her, that is, celestial, holy, altogether

platonic. Her Excellency is come from Ischia to Naples with the other

noble dames; I mean the serene Amalfia and the superb Vasta, with the

Francavila, a mirror of virtue and verily a matchless beauty.”

Apart from the graces of manner, the charm of these relations between

the ladies and the prelates sprang from their perfect skill in effacing

their own personality, in suggesting that what they were giving was

pure soul—for suggestion was enough. A boor will strut about, listen

to his own voice, arrange his smile, select his words with a view to

effect—little absurdities, much less easy to endure than a really serious

fault. It was by their overweening though unconscious self-conceit that

the inferior clergy made themselves so odious in Renaissance society;

the monk would talk of nothing but his order, the parish parson fancied

that no service was so attractive as his, and that good music was not

to be heard except in his church.[262] They had better have been less

virtuous—and less fatiguing.

Conversation can glide along like a shallow stream. A pleasant talker

is not always capable of writing or painting profundities; there is

something more beautiful than a picture, and that is the face of

the woman watching him and enjoying his talk. In those days they

ridiculed—and not without cause—certain brilliant talkers clever

enough to win a wide-spread renown (without ruining their health by

profound study of Horace or Virgil) by nothing in the world but talking

on every subject in the same airy way—appearing to have forgotten half

they knew and to know half they had forgotten—able to bring in without

false modesty a stanza pat to the occasion. Such talkers are in reality

very second-rate, and it is not long before they get into difficulties.

Sometimes abstruse subjects crop up without warning in a drawing-room,

and then the conversation takes a course which gives opportunity for

judging men. At the instant when it appears to be merely disporting

itself on the surface, shining in full view, it takes a sudden plunge,

rises again, starts on another flight and again plunges; to follow it

demands an intellectual force and suppleness that cannot be improvised.

We can see this from the portrait Castiglione draws of the duke of

Urbino. The duke, notwithstanding his habit of keeping early hours, was

a good talker, like his guests; his speech was bland, polished, fluent,

and picturesque; he brought down his bird with one shot. But under

this appearance of ease and readiness he possessed an unequalled fund

of information. He could reel off long passages from all the classical

writers, particularly from Cicero. He spoke ancient Greek perfectly, and

lived by choice in intimate fellowship with the Greeks—with Lucian, and

more especially with Xenophon, whom he called “the Siren of antiquity.”

“We used to call the duke,” adds Castiglione, “a second Siren.”

Ancient and modern history, geography, the learning of the East, were

familiar to him. He died at thirty-six, after a long and very painful

illness; he had studied his complaint, and watched the slow-paced

approach of death, knowing perfectly that neither the pleasant climate

of Urbino nor the most assiduous attentions would retard it by an hour.

And yet, even under the burden of his last anguish, he retained full

possession of his intellect, with its charm and flame and serenity. His

friends pretended not to have given up hope: “Why envy me so desirable

a blessing?” he said to them gently. “To be freed from this load of

terrible suffering—tell me, is not that a blessing?” At the very last he

turned to Castiglione and recited to him one of the finest passages in

Virgil. He died talking. Thus, with noble colloquies like these, radiant

with natural kindliness, men lulled even pain asleep.

Philosophy and love were naturally frequent subjects of conversation.

People sought by their means to refine their sentiments, to analyse

themselves, to set themselves ingenious problems to be investigated at

leisure, to spiritualise love. For example:

“Is it easier to feign love than to dissemble it?—_Answer_: Yes, because

a voluntary act is always easier than an involuntary one.”

“Is it more meritorious for love to lead the wise to folly than fools to

wisdom?—No; it is better to build up than to destroy, and you can build

nothing on folly.”

“Is excess of love fatal?—Galen says yes; indirectly, through disease.”

“Who loves the more easily?—Woman, because of her fickle nature.”

“Who can best dispense with love?—Woman.”

“Which is easier, to win love or to keep it?—To keep it.”

“After perseverance, what is the best proof of love?—The sharing of joys

and sorrows.”

“Which is the stronger, hate or love?—Love.”

“Can a miser love?—Yes, love can destroy avarice.”

And so on.

Bembo, in a little book dedicated to Lucretia Borgia (for three years the

object of his passionate admiration), has left us an account of three

days of conversation which followed a wedding. After a charming fête, in

which young maidens furnished with tuneful viols had chanted hymns for

and against love in turn, three noble damsels remained in discourse with

three gentlemen on a flowery lawn, amid marble fountains and well-trimmed

groves.

One of their number, selected as the detractor of love, conscientiously

makes the most of its bitternesses, despairs, tears, revolts,

catastrophes. A discussion ensues, so searching, so touching, that at

times real tears are shed. The people who are perpetually at a white

heat and flaunt a salamander as their emblem come in for some ridicule.

But with what warmth the friends of love take up the defence of this

divinity, who is represented as nude because he is devoid of reason; as

a child, because like Medea he inspires eternal youthfulness; and torch

in hand, because in his school there is much burning of fingers! It is

towards this little torch that the whole world flits and gravitates like

a swarm of moths, while the divine archer speeds his shaft at the heart

of his victim.

Love, they add, is strength and life. When a man loves, he has no fear

of death. One of the company even declares in his excitement that he

invites death, and when the rest twit him with being beside himself, he

persists, and explains his subtle languor; he invites death, but does not

desire that most miserable condition! In spite of the extreme gravity and

conviction with which these questions of the heart were always handled

in Italy, the company cannot here repress a smile. But the speaker sees

nothing and waxes warm; his martyrdom is only too serious; the flame of

love can only be extinguished in a “lake of tears.” And another makes

answer: “When you see in famous sanctuaries a heap of votive offerings

bearing witness to the innumerable perils of the sea, do you go and deny

that these perils exist, or resign yourself never to set foot on a boat?

You do not, I trow. Well, we must likewise accept love’s crosses with

resignation.” And thereupon he glowingly describes its advantages.

At the end of three days, a hermit closes the discussion with a short and

sedative discourse on the vanity of the world!

Naturally conversation, even in Italy, did not always soar to such

altitudes. It passed easily from a vast subject to a pin’s point; to

make bricks without straw was a mark of talent! It was not everyone who

had the wit to frame an original remark about the weather, and follow

it up with a brilliant firework display of paradox! What did the idea

matter, so long as the shaft flew home? They would just as soon concern

themselves about the canvas a picture was painted on! They expatiated at

leisure on a large subject; but no one dwelt on trifles; they laughed,

wept, sparkled, they were pleasant and gay, elegant, coquettish,

artistic;[263] and all that they said was excellently expressed, with a

sure, keen, delicate touch. Conversation took a feminine stamp which it

had never had in olden times; it was the art of paying honourable court

to a lady.

The French did not approve of conversation taking this sentimental and

emotional turn. They talked to amuse themselves, for laughter’s sake. To

laugh was their chief concern; it was a mark of taste to take everything

with a laugh, even affairs of the heart; and any genuineness of sentiment

was sure to appear ridiculous, whereas in Italy a false sentiment strove

to appear genuine. Moreover, to speak of serious things, to appear in

any other character than that of an absolutely useless and incapable

man, far above (or below) everything literary, was unfashionable. On the

other hand the French appreciated the unexpected, a crispness of phrase,

the sword-play of wit, smart retorts.[264] Conversation was a duel. The

Frenchmen of that time were inimitable in verve and wit; they had a

really unrivalled ease and sprightliness of manner. When the Italians

tried to imitate them, they only succeeded in losing their suavity and

making themselves look foolish.

At the court of Francis I. talking and flirting were subdued to no

platonic considerations. If a man was inspired with a good thing, he said

it frankly and bluntly and with much gesturing. As La Bruyère observes:

“It costs women little to tell what they do not feel; it costs men still

less to tell what they do feel”;[265] and the more crudely the latter

expressed themselves, the more they were looked upon as right good

fellows. A woman of the world would listen to anything, and reply with

her “yes” or “no,” without ever taking offence.

The more the domination of man asserted itself, the more pronounced this

liberty in word and action became, and women came to think that they

could employ no better means of getting even with men than to adopt the

language of the barrack-room, and make frequent quotations from the

grossest books. They made men a present of their garters. Naturally the

men were very well pleased, by no means detesting women of so facile a

disposition. A German would entertain the young lady next him at table

with tomfoolery of the coarsest description, prating, for instance, about

heavy drinking, or low-necked dresses, or a woman showing her leg or

hunting for fleas: or perhaps, to appear intellectual, he would maintain

that evil has no real existence, but is only a human invention. Another

would allow fun to be poked at his wife or fiancée. Rabelais and Hütten

were the shining lights of this class of talkers. Even Savonarola, in his

character of a monk of the people, sometimes went very near the border

line; here and there in his sermons there are phrases at which a salted

skipper would blush.

Italian platonism was no enemy to laughter; it was quite the other way.

In the evening after dinner (the time when in these days men are lighting

their cigars), men who had wit and gaiety and no cares (three conditions

for which the cigar alone would hardly be a sufficient substitute),

laughed without stint and told pretty warm stories as a relaxation from

the ideal; but as the ladies were present and no one would have dreamt

of doing without them, form was always more carefully studied. Platonism

was nothing if not fastidious, correct, and ceremonious; and a platonist,

even when retailing a broad joke or when there was no occasion to put

himself about, did not cease to employ exquisite phraseology.

The French, on the contrary, laughed somewhat boisterously after dinner,

or on one of those oppressive afternoons when the dull sky seems to seize

us like mice in a trap. Our passion for broad wit has never allowed

itself to be cooled by the exhortations of moralists[266] or preachers.

Nor were ladies more successful in selecting subjects for conversation;

they had either to leave us to our own devices and be regarded as

nuisances, or to pitch their tune to the same key. An awkward dilemma

for them! They faced the music, and contented themselves with declining

to laugh when the jest displeased them; but in their hearts they

preferred a lady’s man who knew how to show them tenderness and respect.

Conversation is naturally composed of dialogues. Whenever it attains a

certain height, contradiction is necessary to keep the ball rolling. Some

one has said that contradiction is woman’s forte, and in this connection

La Fontaine retold the old fable about the drowned woman whose corpse,

from sheer perversity, insisted on floating up stream.

That may be true of worn, untutored women, good housewives to whom the

artifices of taste are a sealed book. The woman of fashion, preferring

to profit by all her privileges, hovers over a conversation, mingling

with it only to throw out a suggestion, a criticism, a reflection, an

argument, or to give a finishing touch. Margaret, for instance, launched

this aphorism in the midst of a discussion on love: “Women of large

heart yield rather to the spirit of vengeance than to the tenderness of

love.”[267]

It was often a man who had to devote himself to this duty of

contradiction; intellectual epicures took rather kindly to the little

amusement, and acquitted themselves with at least every appearance of

conviction. It was even a mark of genuine dilettantism to maintain

now one idea, now the contrary, like Filippo Beroaldo,[268] who has

recorded two of his declarations, one in favour of drunkenness, the other

against it. The question of the merits and defects of women furnished in

France an inexhaustible theme for social debate, and there was no lack

of disputants on either side. In Italy this subject was less popular,

because the ranks of the anti-feminists were thinner. At Urbino, however,

Fregoso[269] threw himself into the ungrateful task of attacking women,

and valiantly depicted them as imperfect animals of no intrinsic value,

whom it was impossible to compare with men, upon whom only modesty and

self-respect had any restraining power, and whose few merits were a

purely artificial endowment.

Yet, as it was impossible to be always engaged in dialogues or debates,

there was a large field for clever retailers of anecdotes and stories

grave and gay, and the talent was cultivated to perfection by certain

men of the world. Among these witty story-tellers we find another member

of the Mortemart family, Aimery de Mortemart, and the name of Germain de

Bonneval used also to be cited.

Story-telling in Italy was conducted with the same gravity and method

that were carried into everything. A “queen” was first elected,[270]

and she called upon each member of the company in turn. The stories

very easily verged towards salaciousness, but art ennobles everything!

Firenzuola dedicated a collection of such stories to the memory of an

idolised lady whom he calls his Diotima, his Monica, his Vittoria Colonna.

In France, story-telling ranked high among social amusements, filling up

the interval between mass and vespers. Everyone had fair notice of his

turn to speak, and made provision accordingly, whetting his own invention

on what fell from the lips of others. The _Heptameron_ is, so to speak,

nothing but a succession of conferences (without the platform and the

glass of water), at which each person present contributes his mite to the

discussion. Sometimes the remarks are rather free; when the anecdote is

likely to overstep the recognised limits, the speaker saves himself by a

gentle preliminary precaution:

Si ce n’estoit que j’ay peur d’offenser

La netteté de vos chastes oreilles.

_Des Périers._[271]

Margaret of France, who was not specially bashful, “could tell a capital

story, and could laugh, too, when she heard one.”

Another art which was still highly appreciated—a very elegant, charming,

and widely cultivated art—was that of impromptu verse-making—a pastime

for prelates and men of keen literary tastes. Leo X.[272] and Octavien de

Saint-Gelais[273] practised it with eminent success.

Boutrimés, or “_ventes d’amour_,” though somewhat antiquated, contributed

a share to the entertainment. A man gave a lady, or vice versa, the name

of some flower, and a response had to be made in verse of as epigrammatic

or complimentary a turn as possible. As aids to improvisation, manuals of

polite rhymes were published.

Such was happiness! Conversation in its various forms was the port to

which the barque of life made under full sail, trimmed with all the

safeguards, manœuvred with all the dexterities which we have described!

And the difficulties were compensated by the satisfaction derived from

bringing souls into communion one with another, from closely uniting

them, welding them in one enthusiasm of affection. Such a result is

beyond the attainment of writing. Genuine exquisites like Inghirami

thought writing was overdone, and if they employed the pen it was from

necessity, or at most to preserve for posterity the conversations,

the tales, the sonnets that pleased them; when a work involving time

and labour was asked of them, they wrapped themselves in an air of

austere solemnity, like people going to a funeral. All these brilliant

talkers lived quiet lives out of the public eye, seldom shifting their

quarters, with none of that moral trepidation in which the railway and

the telegraph keep us: they were light-hearted but not shallow, with

something of oriental insouciance, never forgetting that man has but

one life on this nether world, squandering their wealth of wit in lavish

profusion, with no attempt to economise it in order to sell specimens to

an innominate mob. They enjoyed to the full the exquisite pleasure of

letting their ideas float off at the mercy of chance; their thoughts took

flight and were seen no more, it is true; they burst like bubbles in the

air; but there remained the wherewithal to shape others like them.

And here was the great sphere of women. Their mission was to cause this

happiness to blossom, to tend it, nurture it, turn it to fitting use—to

make these bubbles a source of good.

This duty like every other had stern laws. It was not enough to be a

“queen” by election, or even by birthright, to fancy that the goal was

attained.

Women’s sway only imposed itself by dint of patience, tact, and a nice

regard for detail, and above all at the cost of genuine self-denial.

How many little trials and crosses had to be endured! To make herself

agreeable to the starched Spaniard and the boastful Neapolitan; to listen

resignedly while a Frenchman discoursed about his hunting and his limited

income, or while a Milanese or Genoese prated about his business; and

then with all gentleness, with a woman’s instinctive subtlety, almost by

stealth, to select among these men—to hold by an unconstrained and loyal

welcome those in whom she perceived some merit, and to bind them to her

by speaking their own tongue—wisdom to the wise, piety to the pious,

practical interests to the practical, gaiety to the young—and thus to

set them all on the path towards the desired perfection—what a task for

a woman! However, all that she needed in the rudimentary stages of this

education was to plant herself securely on her own rudimentary gifts—in

other words, to avoid scandal and tittle-tattle. But how difficult her

task became when she had to deal with men of parts, of warm affections,

of ardent temperament! Then, no doubt, it became interesting, and the

woman herself was reaping a profit which amply repaid her trouble.

“Ladies,” cries Champier, “if you must take pleasure in hob-nobbing with

men, choose at least those who can improve you and guide you.” There was

no question now of retiring to the Aventine, and fancying themselves

constantly in mortal peril[274]; a lady had to hold herself erect and

tighten the rein on these unruly men—to know the power of a word, a

gesture, a flash of silence.[275]

To retire to the Aventine! That would be criminal! Speech is necessary to

one who would minister to a mind diseased.

Conversation was not merely a pleasure. If they strove earnestly after

the Beautiful, it was because the reign of beauty is the most effectual

assurance of the reign of truth and goodness. Does anyone imagine that

a woman can shut herself in her drawing-room, and that all she need do

is to show herself beautiful, amiable, sweet, intelligent, tender to the

men worthy of forming her circle? No one thinks so. Woman rules because

she redeems. To direct or actively to engage in works of charity, to

send money to the wretched, without looking out of doors to see what

men are actually suffering or dying—this would be the absolute negation

of the social aim of conversation. Through conversation a woman comes

into living touch with realities. She must show herself as real flesh

and blood to the wretched; she owes them her smile, her beauty and her

grace; aye, it is her bounden duty to be beautiful, amiable, gentle,

intelligent, tender for the sake of those whose lot is solaced by no ray

from heaven. She must welcome the poor and lowly, and though she may not

be able to speak to them in Plato’s language, she must none the less

tend them with the supreme medicine of the Beautiful, enter into their

interests and their troubles, talk with them, shower on them her manna of

hope and patience, and—if she have it—light.

Perhaps we shall now be asked how many women attained to these altitudes

in the apostleship of beauty, and if we can cite many who attempted

to put their ideas into practice. Assuredly, we can. In spite of the

somewhat too artistic cast into which social intercourse was thrown

by platonism, more than one woman found in her own heart a commentary

which neither Ficino nor Bembo ever knew. In France we may mention

Anne of France as one who was thoroughly convinced that conversation

was a duty to society at large. In Italy, ladies of the highest rank,

like Isabella d’Este and Vittoria Colonna, slightly intoxicated with

Beauty, consorted almost exclusively with princes and prelates and men of

culture, and in this regard the Renaissance is perhaps rightly accused

of over-refinement; yet they possessed in a rare degree the talent of

diffusing around them an atmosphere of sweetness. At Urbino, a provincial

court of no little exclusiveness, even the stalls of the handicraftsmen

were lapped in a delicious air; Raphael grew up like a natural plant; a

thousand trivial incidents in the life of the place give us glimpses of

grace and amiability. The influence was indirect, but very powerful.

CORRESPONDENCE.

It would seem logical to consider correspondence as the complement of

conversation—as talk between persons at a distance. But it was not so;

talk it might be, but in writing, and consequently no one was very fond

of it; people distrusted it because of the risks involved. Yet certain

intellectual women of the 16th century displayed amazing activity as

letter-writers. While one might have supposed them to be wholly engrossed

with their rouge-pots or their friends, their intelligence and vivacity

actually carried them away; the pen appeared too lumbering a vehicle for

their impatient thought. In the letters of Julia Gonzaga, for instance,

it is often evident that the lady took the pen from her secretary at

the third or fourth line and finished the letter herself, rapidly, and

without troubling her head about grammar, handwriting, or decorum.[276]

To the student of handwriting, letters betray many little philosophic

secrets which are well worth attention. The handwritings of the 16th

century (for the most part illegible, particularly in France) are large

and free, highly nervous and characteristic of the writers, released from

the methodical and commonplace style of former days. The strokes are fine

and distinguished, sometimes a little angular, displaying all sorts of

vagaries, abbreviations and flourishes. What a “mirror of the soul” is

the close and tangled handwriting of Margaret of France, or the gaunt,

nervous, firm, aristocratic, jerky, disorderly style of the duchess of

Etampes![277]

The style of Vittoria Colonna is clear and plain, somewhat masculine

in character, but equally nervous and irregular, with a multitude of

abbreviations and splotches. A mere glance at the letters of these

influential women fills one with pity. Poor souls! At what a cost

of secret torment, distress, and agitation did they mould happiness

and peace for men! Looking at these human documents, these nervous

handwritings, one asks oneself if those sages are right who assure us

that to bestow happiness on others one must needs possess it oneself.

Was it at the cost of His happiness, or at the cost of His blood, that

Christ redeemed us? I may be deceived, but I sometimes fancy that I see

in these handwritings as it were a drop of blood. It was otherwise with

the men: they were happy. Castiglione’s writing has a graceful, tranquil

movement; his pen ran lightly and cursively; and if sometimes the strokes

seem laboured, it is due to an affectation in his manner of joining

the letters. Bembo placidly retains the old style, stunted, heavy, and

sprawling.

The tone of the letters confirms the casual glimpses we have already

obtained into the social relations of the time. People troubled little

about family letters; these were simple and short, of the “dutifully

affectionate” order, and composed of almost stereotyped commonplaces.

Hardly anything is referred to in them except the material affairs of

life—business, medicine, health, domestic events;[278] the sentimental

part is dismissed very briefly—probably because family sentiments are

necessarily sincere.

On the other hand, letters written to friends, which were very numerous

in Italy, were charming, tender, and graceful, ending often most

prettily: “Your little sister ... who loves your lordship as her own

soul—Isabella, with her own hand.”

These last words, “with her own hand,” were not unnecessary, for a

fashionable lady, not pluming herself on a telegraphic style, was

obliged on principle and out of regard for her dignity to leave as much

as possible to the pen of her secretary. Unhappily the secretary, not

caring to serve as a mere scribe, pays attention to style, and touches

up his periods, so that, failing an actual autograph, it is impossible

to be sure what in a lady’s letter was really her own. Moreover, a lady

of any position knew that her letter would be shown about, perhaps even

transcribed or published. Bernardo Tasso, Aretino and many another were

not startled when they saw books made out of their letters or of letters

written to them; and the most interesting letters of Vittoria Colonna

appeared early in the 16th century. It may be said then that letters

came midway between conversation and books. In a lady’s letter there

was nothing directly from the writer but the signature and the one or

two autograph words preceding; in spite of which, the letters of the

marchioness of Pescara and of Isabella d’Este form very pleasing and

characteristic collections.

After a visit from Isabella, the duchess Elizabeth of Urbino addressed

this note to her: “I know not how to cure myself of the regret your

ladyship’s departure has left me in. Methinks I have not only seen a

dearly loved sister leave me, but that my very soul is gone. I must needs

write you ever and anon, and make shift to say on this paper what I would

fain say with my lips; if therein I could clearly express my sorrow,

I am very sure ’twould be so potent as to cause your highness out of

compassion to turn back. If I feared not to be a burden to you, methinks

I should not hesitate myself to follow you. Neither thing is possible; my

sole resource is to beg your highness to think of me as often as I bear

you in my heart.”

Many examples of this delicate and sweet—almost too sweet—graciousness

might be cited. Emilia Pia, for instance, one of the Urbino set, writes

almost as she speaks, with great liveliness and humour, and always with

equal vivacity whether the subject be toilet specifics or philosophy.

The men have the same charm, and sometimes think themselves entitled

to employ the same exquisitely tender formulas. Brocardo calls Marietta

Myrtilla “my very sweet and dear little sister ... my sweet and matchless

little sister, loved as my own soul,” and signs himself: “Thy sweetest,

sweetest Brocardo.”

The terms in which a well-bred man could, indeed was expected to, address

a fashionable lady, may be seen from a letter from Castiglione, then

ambassador in Spain, to Vittoria Colonna.

“I have felt,” he says, “so much joy in the victories of the marquis

that at first I would not write a letter—a letter is so vulgar a thing!

One writes letters about events of no importance. I had thought of

fireworks, fêtes, concerts, songs, and other vigorous demonstrations, but

reflection has shown me that these are inferior to the concert of my own

affections; and so I am come back to the idea of a letter, convinced that

my marchioness will be able to see what I have in my soul, even though my

words fail to express it.” And he dilates on this talent of the divine

marchioness for penetrating hearts, and for reading there what the lips

fail to utter, and then congratulates her on the delight which she cannot

but feel. “And as to my duty towards your highness, seek, I beseech you,

the testimony of your own heart, and give it credence, for I am sure your

heart will not lie to you on what not only yourself, but the whole world,

sees shining through my soul, as through the purest crystal. And thus

I remain, kissing your hands and humbly commending myself to your good

favour. Madrid, March 21.”

Two years afterward he wrote in regard to the death of her husband:

“Calamity has fallen upon you like a deluge. I durst not write to your

highness at first, for I deemed you had died with the marquis; to-day in

all verity and admiration I hold that the marquis still liveth in you.”

Do we need other specimens of these gracious and somewhat ultra-refined

letters? Here is a letter from Castiglione to the famous Marchesa

Hippolyta Florimonda Scaldasole: “Most excellent lady, if your ladyship

were as pleased to know you dwell eternally in my memory, as ’twould

be infinitely delightful for me to dwell in yours, I should be keenly

desirous of giving you proof of it in this letter, since for the moment

I can do it in no other way. But as your ladyship has shown the world,

along with your many other wondrous gifts, that you are a woman valiant

in fight, and not only beautiful, but warlike also like Hippolyta of

old, I fear me lest you be somewhat puffed up with pride, and somewhat

forgetful of your servitors—and I would not have it so. Therefore have I

made bold to write to you, and to pray Messer Camillo Ghilino, my very

dear friend, to speak on my behoof, and to tell you that in Spain, as at

Milan and at Pavia, I am your man; and that, when I had come to Pavia,

whither the army led me, those walls, those ramparts, those towers, that

artillery, all those things spoke to me of your highness, knowing that

behind them you were all aglow with the thought of combatting so great

a prince as the King of France. You have gotten the victory, and now

and henceforth no one will be so daring-hardy, I trow, as to fight with

you. Deign to believe him, lady, as myself; and I beseech you, if you

be not of all ladies the least loving, bid me to be at Milan and where

you are. Messer Camillo will be able to tell how different it is to be

in such sweet company as your ladyship’s and to be in Spain. I kiss your

hands, and ever commend myself to you, deeply desiring to know that this

_benedictus fructus_ be reaped by a husbandman worthy of it. Toledo, June

21, 1525.”

After all, there was a necessary resemblance between a letter and a

conversation. In Italy, the note of tenderness is always dominant,

flattering and caressing even when gay. Some of Bibbiena’s letters are

full of deep feeling, and yet it is impossible to mention a more jovial

man: his fun bubbled over at the slightest provocation. Isabella d’Este

once scolded him for no longer visiting Mantua. “How,” retorts he with

affected indignation—“how have they managed to drop into those dainty

little ears so many gross accusations against me?... Here I see your

daughter, who appears to me the very image of that serene highness her

mother. Tell me again I am a lecher, and by God it shall be true as

Gospel! Would you have me swear otherwise?... Most devoutly do I kiss

your hands, and to my dear lady Alda I commend myself a thousand times.”

The amiable prelate was at that time assiduously courting Signorina Alda

Boiarda, maid of honour to the marchioness; and, as usual, the mistress

was not altogether pleased.

Another charming custom in Italy was for a lady to recall herself to

the recollection of her friends by means of a little present. Vittoria

Colonna sent her portrait to Bembo, accompanied by a few verses from her

own hand: “Verses pure and dainty!” cries Bembo, “that touch the heart

far more than a mere letter.” On another occasion she charged one of her

friends, who was going to Mantua, to convey to the marquis “a friendly

and sympathetic” greeting, with some small token of her regard. The

friend thought he was doing right in offering a basket of roses, and the

marquis lost no time in sending his respectful thanks direct to the fair

donor. And then Vittoria formally apologised in very affectionate terms

that her messenger had “honoured him so little” as to offer so modest a

souvenir.

Truth to tell, Frenchwomen showed much less feminine grace in this

matter, which explains our dwelling on the charm of their Italian

neighbours. The most Italianised of them could not attain this seductive

charm. In all the correspondence of Margaret of France you will not find

one letter recalling those we have just quoted almost haphazard. Margaret

did indeed sedulously strive to attain that charm, as we cannot but

perceive, but her languishings resulted in little else than prolixity. It

will not do to strain one’s talent.

Renée of France, though she became duchess of Ferrara, never acquired

the Italian trick; she continued to write with French brevity. Diana of

Poitiers and the duchess of Etampes amaze us by the almost arid precision

of their style; they might have given points to the most dry-as-dust

of attorneys; there is never a sign of a gust of passion or of love’s

finesse. The rising generation of Henri II.’s time came nearer the

attainment of a pleasant style. The king’s two daughters, Madeline and

Margaret, wrote excellent hands—easy, graceful, even, with a uniform

slope, the letters broad and clear, the whole style very distinguished;

and they employed pleasant and engaging forms, phrases of genuine

affection, especially in their family correspondence.[279] But they too

were at their best in short notes, and their most pleasing letters are

always very brief. The higher charm remained the secret of Italy.

BOOK III. THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN

CHAPTER I

POLITICAL INFLUENCE

The foregoing pages will have enabled the reader to see how little

the platonist women sought to exert a direct influence in affairs.

They aimed rather at moral and social influence. In no sense were they

women of action, believing likely enough that the course of events

would become modified naturally when men had changed. Conforming to the

aphorism, “Woman is supreme only as woman,” they devoted themselves to

the skilful development of the sources of their superiority, leaving

their inferiorities carefully in the shade. They avoided all masculine

modes—the rustic sort of sexless unattractive women, most at home in

the stables, strong-minded creatures who looked for a love they never

inspired; they studiously left to men the keen-edged activities of

life—law, politics, military service, all the needful barriers against

social inundation. Louise of Savoy was almost the only woman who so far

cherished the old ideas as to regret that she was a woman; who loved to

play a part in politics, and whose intelligence and energy won praise

in terms that recalled the great women of the past, notably Blanche of

Castile. She was a realist of the old type, who had lovers as a matter of

course, but gave scant thought to winning hearts: thus wholly differing

from the new order of women. And yet, by a singular chance in the working

of the old laws of monarchical succession, the world has perhaps never

seen more women called to till the places of men in the sphere of

statecraft. After all, monarchy is not a principle of pure reason: it

is incapable of mathematical demonstration: it is a principle springing

wholly from sentiment. Its advantage lies in this—that in a world of

tragic pettiness it gives a nation something to love.

Many women played important parts in these masculine struggles, among

which they were thrown in their own despite. The period was one of

constant turmoil, and they had no opportunity of enjoying a life of quiet

secluded happiness.

Among them was that unhappy mother, Isabella of Aragon, who was

persecuted by Ludovico il Moro, the uncle, and, as some said, the

assassin of her husband, and held captive in France by Louis XII.—a

luckless, warm-hearted, valiant figure who, in the effort to win Milan

back for her son, maintained a desperate struggle with the whole of

Europe.

Then too there was Jeanne of Aragon, that beautiful sunny-haired woman,

with features of rare distinction and sweetness, in her day the idol of

Nifo and the prototype of beauty. She had married Ascanio Colonna, a

soldier of fortune who had brought his affairs to a desperate pass. Poor

woman! On every side she saw blank desolation. She had just lost her

eldest son by a sudden death when creditors began to harass her and drive

her second son to ruin; and from the magnificent windows of the Colonna

palace, where she was imprisoned by order of Pope Paul IV., she saw the

pontifical troops marching by on the way to seize her castles. She could

endure it no longer. One morning she disappeared, no one knows how, but

probably in disguise: at one of the gates of Rome she found a horse ready

saddled, and she performed the astonishing feat of riding to Naples

without drawing rein. At Naples she became the centre of a cruel strife:

her husband had her son arrested, and the son denounced the father.

Ascanio fell, struck by an unknown dagger. And when his charming wife,

whose golden hair had never a fleck of grey, came in her turn to die,

they must bury her with her husband, and could find for the shuddering

tomb no inscription but the touching words: “A great-hearted woman, a

very loving wife.”

In a higher sphere even Margaret of Austria was but a genuine woman, an

admirable mother who never had any children. Compelled by family duty

to rule the Netherlands during the long minority of her nephew Charles

the Fifth, through all those years of toil and difficulty she set but

one aim before her, the preservation of peace. She was good, benevolent,

intelligent, but not happy: “Twice married and yet a maid,”[280] as she

said, then the widow of the handsome Philibert of Savoy, she would have

preferred the ‘tiniest grain’ that satisfied her heart’s craving to the

dignities that were poisoning her life; and she made no secret of it. On

her tomb she ordered to be set this striking emblem of disillusionment:

‘_Fortune, Infortune!_’[281]

And the great Anne of France, ‘the lady of Beaujeu,’ condemned to an

attitude of ‘knitted brows’ and drawn sword as a means of reassuring

her good subjects and keeping the bad in awe, that haughty, ambitious,

close-fisted, masculine woman, as she was called by those whom she had

reduced to a proper sense of the duty of prompt obedience—no one was

in reality less like the cold statue she appeared in official life. It

was enough to watch her features in the hour of strife, and of triumph

even; they twitched and quivered, and were only controlled by a visible

effort.[282] A modest, it might almost be said a humble woman, she

was constantly a prey to self-distrust, never acting without advice,

almost heart-broken at her victories, for her one dream was of quenching

animosities; caring for nothing but peace, justice, and a well-ordered

State, and carrying her loathing of extreme ideas to the point of

appearing obtuse.

When her brother was able to assume the government she disappeared from

the scene, quietly, with the least possible display, happy to seek

retirement at her splendid place at Moulins, amid all she held dear.

She had conceived so little taste for political life that she gave her

daughter a forcible recommendation to avoid its mazes: “Mind your own

business,” she said; in other words, keep strictly to your own part, and

if duty demands a temporary withdrawal, resume it as quickly as possible,

and be egoistic enough to make the winning of love your sole quest.

Such was the attitude towards civil emancipation and the careers proper

to men that was taken up by women of the highest distinction, whom glory

might well have led off in the wrong direction. La Rochefoucauld could

hardly have had them in mind when he enunciated the unsound maxim: “There

is no renouncing ambition for love.” To renounce ambition was all that

these women desired, or rather their ambition was love itself; when the

chances of life forced them upon the stage, their one desire was for a

man to lean upon. Diplomatists, of necessity psychological folk, were

under no delusion in the matter; when they had dealings with a princess,

forthwith we see them on the look-out for the man or men behind. “Giacomo

Feo appears to me the pivot of the State,” wrote Prudhomme, ambassador at

the court of Catherine Sforza; the poor man had just made the discovery

that Feo’s will was law. The great trouble of Anne of France was that she

could find no support in her husband, a man of complete integrity and

excellent disposition, but unstable as water.

On the other hand, among women of but average intelligence, there were

busy bodies with a lust for notoriety, parade, admiration, always ready

to interfere in anything and everything, to the utter despair of serious

workers. Of these Renée of France, duchess of Ferrara, may serve as an

example. Born a daughter of France, she considered that her insignificant

husband had been too highly honoured in wedding her, denied him her bed,

lived in her own circle, and entered into diplomatic relations on her own

account. Not that she had any definite political aims: her method was

the simple one of pulling in opposite directions to her husband, which

at a distance gives her conduct a look of inconsistency. Did she hold

with Rome, or Geneva? She would receive Ignatius Loyola in the morning,

Calvin in the afternoon, and anyone else when the fancy took her. To her

France was all in all; but the French government had only to request

someone to cross the frontier for her to receive the exile with open

arms. In somewhat limping verse Marot acknowledged her grant of a pension

(diminutive, it is true) which entailed upon him no duties but those of

a lover:

Mes amis, j’ai changé ma dame;

Une autre a dessus moi puissance,

Née deux fois, de nom et d’âme.[283]

Re-born indeed both were, and it may even be said that their life was

a constant succession of re-incarnations, in creeds and amours of hues

as shifting as the chameleon’s; for Marot notoriously proved faithful

to nothing but his pensions. Neither of them had any part or lot in

platonism. Marot chose to become its recognised flouter; Renée was merely

a woman of a restless spirit, without any solid abilities. In public

ceremonies she appeared at her husband’s side; within their own doors she

was perpetually at odds with him: an exasperating woman indeed, dead to

the finer feelings. The duke of Ferrara was not master in his own duchy.

One day he banished one of the most obnoxious of his wife’s ladies, a

Madame de Soubise: the lady instantly proceeded to arrange an interview

between the duchess and the King of France, and it was with the utmost

difficulty that this menacing combination was prevented from becoming an

accomplished fact.

The duchess had a lover, by no means of the platonic order, in the

son-in-law of this Madame de Soubise. He was a M. de Pons, a scion of

a family which enjoyed the singular privilege of rendering services of

this nature to royal ladies. Again the duke of Ferrara had much ado to

stifle scandal in this direction. Having recourse to the time-honoured

method, he sent M. de Pons on a mission to France, with sufficiently

general instructions, which found a natural reflection in the vagueness

of the official despatches. But the private letters of the duchess to

the ambassador were explicit enough in all conscience. She tells him,

for instance, that she is giving the hospitality of her bed to the

little poodle he had left behind at Ferrara, fondling it and kissing

it, “since,” she adds, “I have no one else here now.” Now, mark the

complexity of this feminine diplomacy! Attached to the service of our gay

ambassador was a spy in the duchess’s pay. But this was matched by the

fact that her own letters were intercepted and read in the “dark closet”

of Ferrara, with the result that the duke lost whatever remnant of doubt

he may perchance have nourished, but had the charming consolation of

locking up in his archives the journal in which she set down her doings

and secret thoughts for the sole benefit, as she imagined, of her absent

lover. The inevitable outcome of this game of cross purposes was the

impossibility of foreseeing when the mission of M. de Pons would be

concluded. But it would argue great simplicity not to imagine that the

duchess also had her “dark closet”; and in fact, she had arranged for the

interception and perusal of letters addressed to the lucky Pons by one of

her own ladies of honour, letters which, like hers, embodied a private

diary, and were as ardent as her own. It remains only to add that Pons

had left at Ferrara a lawful wife (the inspiration of Giraldi’s muse)

who loved him with equal warmth and devotion, and bore him beautiful

children. But all things come to an end, even diplomacy when there are

more reasons for concluding negotiations than for commencing them. So it

came about that M. de Pons returned, and the duke philosophically shut

his eyes and stopped his ears until the day when he took the liberty

of turning the key on the daughter of France whom he had been so much

honoured in espousing.

The duchess of Ferrara belonged to a school which was unhappily of large

extent, and was in great measure the cause of the ruin of feminism: the

school namely of women who were somewhat intoxicated with their power,

and who forced their way by hook or crook into politics and life. In

France more than one woman of this sort might be cited from the reign of

Henri II.

Serious women, however, very clearly saw that if they were to avoid a

fall they must take only an indirect part in affairs. When the great

sculptor Sansovino appeared on the point of sinking under a moral crisis,

it seemed quite natural that Aretino should appeal to his young wife

to come to his aid! There you have the woman’s rôle! Vittoria Colonna,

likewise, restrained her husband in the flush of an intoxicating

and perhaps perilous triumph, by a letter which has justly remained

celebrated: “Not by the greatness of your domains or titles, but by your

virtue, will you win the honour which your descendants may make their

boast. For my part I have no desire to be the wife of a king; I am the

wife of the great captain who has vanquished all kings, not by his valour

merely, but by his magnanimity.”

Such was the language of a philosophical woman, accustomed to take

lofty views of things, and to live in the atmosphere of the Beautiful,

that is to say, a life of mingled serenity and strength. Her reserve of

energy, lying hid under a wealth of kindliness, could only show itself

in times of difficulty: “The tongue is feminine, the arm is masculine,”

said an old Italian proverb.[284] The tongue directs the arm; there are

circumstances in which the tongue may sustain the arm, but that is not

its chief duty.

Woman’s part, it is admitted, is to act as a moderating influence in

joy or grief. We shall therefore not dwell upon that point, but confine

ourselves to answering a question of some delicacy. Women have been

reproached with misusing their powers, and with holding men too much

under their thumb.

To loathe war, to advocate perpetual peace, conciliation, hatred of

everything resembling an appeal to force, is admirable enough; but this

advocacy itself has its limits. Is not war also a salutary thing? Does it

not brace up nations sunk in the torpor of bourgeois materialism? War has

a nobleness and beauty of its own. And indeed, are we to degrade men into

carpet knights, jousting in cap and feather before a court deliciously

feminine? Horses, standards, heraldic devices, the sheen of armour,

the clash of weapons, the din of clarions and trumpets, of flutes and

hunting-horns and all the instruments that stir the blood,—inspiriting

as all these are supposed to be, and well as they may symbolise courage,

are they sufficient to preserve the masculine virtues? Love is often

enervating. Where will the army be,[285] what will become of the country,

if women carry us up with them into the clouds? Mantegna replies by

showing us Samson and Delilah,[286] Botticelli with his picture of

the cupids stripping Mars of his armour as he lies sleeping by Venus’

side.[287]

But we have already given the true answer.

Certainly woman’s place is not in the camp. The virago has no vogue:

men do not fight women nor take them prisoners. Women do in truth

loathe war. But when the war is noble they become its advocates. War is

a noble thing when it is waged in self-defence, when honour and life

and liberty are at stake. Then, be sure, women are not lagging in the

rear. Beatrice d’Este with a stout heart dragged Ludovico il Moro to the

camp facing the French; and there, showing him an army quaking for all

its cheers at that solemn hour the eve of battle, she set the feeble

heart of her husband beating in time with her own. In November 1502 the

ladies of Urbino besieged the ducal palace with offers of their jewels

for the purpose of repelling Caesar Borgia. At Sienna, the women, led

by ladies of the highest rank, set to work to carry baskets of earth

upon their heads, and, what is still more extraordinary, they agreed

to perform this service systematically under the orders of three lady

captains recognisable by their satin petticoats. One young girl pushed

her enthusiasm to such a length as to disguise herself in a soldier’s

uniform in order to pass the night on the ramparts. Monluc[288] himself,

that hardened old warrior, waxed enthusiastic in praise of such notable

courage, and promised eternal glory to these fair ladies. And was not

Anne of France familiar with the camp? Have we not told the story of that

Françoise d’Amboise who raised a troop to repel a band of brigands!

But to fire a woman’s heart a just cause is needed, otherwise she

execrates war. Clever people may talk as they please,—praise the Amazons

of Georgia, the ancient Ligurian women who tilled their fields, or recall

the visions of Plato in the fifth book of the _Republic_ or the seventh

of the _Laws_ on the military and political aptitudes of women: these

are paradoxes which influence no one. Maria Puteolana, who attained the

rank of captain in the Italian army, was laughed at; and, to tell the

truth, the military inspiration of certain heroines at critical moments

was regarded as purely adventitious. It came to St. Catherine of Sienna

“by the riches of grace”; to Joan of Arc “by divine grace, by mystery

divine.” So strong was the belief in Joan’s saintship that it brought her

to the stake. She resembled Deborah and Judith; her story was repeated in

the most insignificant hamlets, and all France gave ceaseless thanks to

God for so clearly manifesting Himself through the feeble arm of a woman,

a shepherd-lass: “_sicut populum tuum per manum feminae liberasti_.”

But this was only an additional stanza in the love litany (long enough

already) lisped by poets and the faithful to the Virgin of Virgins: a

love-poem, but at the same time a malediction on war and the spirit of

conquest.

When men spoke, even in favourable terms, of the women who had been

thrown by the force of circumstances among tragic incidents like these,

it was as though they were celebrating a sort of suicide. Castiglione

has devoted verses charged with real emotion to the memory of a young

girl who was mortally wounded at the storming of Pisa in 1499, at the

moment when she was leading on the defenders. She was carried away dying,

he says, and as she lay upon her mother’s bosom, she exclaimed that her

country owed her no other bridal! “Virago,” he adds, wiping his eyes.

The last word on these military women was said by a woman, the charming

Isabella Villamarina, who was resolved to don man’s clothes and start for

the army like the wife of Mithridates, with no thought of fighting, but

to be with her husband, the prince of Salerno, whom she madly loved. But

the prince insisting on her staying at home, it occurred to her to pass

the whole of the day in bed, hoping to see her husband in her dreams!

It was not simply by dint of philosophical reasoning that women avoided

active and masculine occupations. They were well aware that they had

everything to lose if they lived the life of men. Men rode rough-shod

over them. Such women as an evil star did actually fling into the

vortex—and these were rare—were invariably women of a robust and sensuous

type.

Could a more striking example be cited than Catherine Sforza, a luckless

princess perpetually condemned to stand on the defensive, and on this

account fated to remain on the outskirts of the world in which she might

have played so lofty a part? A notable woman, endowed with nature’s most

prodigal and magnificent gifts; tall, strong, good-looking enough, with a

clear, superb complexion; in speech warm, forceful, impulsive, her voice

ringing out for the most part like a trumpet call, but capable also of

enchanting caresses. There was nothing theatrical in her wonderful force

of mind, which asserted itself in grand outbursts on all occasions, as

when, for instance, she wrote to her sons from the depth of her dungeon

in the castle of Sant’ Angelo, bidding them not to be concerned for her.

“I am habituated to grief,” she said; “I have no fear of it.” Or on that

other occasion, the day of the storming of her capital, when the boldest

of the French, forcing their way into the innermost entrenchments,

succeeded finally, after unheard-of exertions, in capturing her, like

a lioness caught in a snare. Here we have the reverse of the medal:

strip her of her armour and she is a woman, one of the feeblest of her

sex. Catherine exhausted all her vigour in politics: she was swayed by

her senses; almost unknown to herself she imparted to all about her

the unquenchable thirst for sensual pleasure by which she was herself

devoured. Her first three husbands died by the assassin’s knife. The

magnificent Ordelaffi, one of her foes, would never have wrested the

county of Imola from her by mere force of arms; but to vanquish the

woman herself by the magnetism of the senses was but the sport of an

afternoon. And when Catherine, hopelessly entangled in these toils, heard

the people discussing her, the lioness roared: sentences of imprisonment

and the strappado were the outward and visible signs of her love. The

scene changes; the amiable Ordelaffi gives place to a lover more worthy

of her. Before the virile force of this man, threatening constantly to

sell his soul to the devil, and (a more serious matter) the state to the

Turks, Catherine is subjugated: she marries him. Feo becomes an odious

tyrant: denunciations, persecutions, tortures are his wedding gifts. As

was to be expected, Feo fell stabbed to the heart under the very eyes of

his sovereign, and then Terror spread her vampire wings, and the silent

prisons swam with holocausts of blood.

Were we wrong in saying, at the outset, that under the exquisite charm

of life’s manifestations, the brute in man was struggling all the

time! Possibly it was imagined that in muzzling the brute, women were

obeying a natural instinct, and that there were certain sensualities and

bestial horrors little to be feared in regard to women brought up in an

atmosphere refined almost to rarefaction. According to Nifo and others,

all that was wanted was to encourage recourse to the platonist theories.

And yet here we see, in appalling contradiction, this great figure of

Catherine Sforza dominating her epoch, as though to show to what a pitch

the intoxication of masculine women could rise. For at bottom she was a

woman of an excellent heart—this Catherine who died under the name of

Medici; a genuine sister of mercy, thoughtful, generous, diligent in

feeding the poor in time of famine, and, when an epidemic was raging,

marvellous as a sovereign and a sick-nurse! And how lovely she was!

How well she knew, in the intervals of her frenzied existence, how to

enjoy life, when she gave herself up to the beauty of her flowers,

the charm of her gardens, the delight of seeing her splendid drove of

cattle peacefully grazing in her parks! Dogs never had a more tender

protectress. She evoked her people’s enthusiasm and applause when, riding

in a red skirt at the head of her huntsmen, like a legendary fairy, and

reining up her horse with her delicate scented hand, she smiled upon them

all, her beautiful white teeth flashing between her full ruby lips.

What did she lack, then, to make her in very truth a woman? Only

womanliness, and the exquisite power of using love as a quickening

instead of a destroying spirit. With her, it was quite useless to assume

airs of ethereality. The style she needed is that which we find in the

letters of one of the men she loved, Gabriele Piccoli. This Piccoli

served her as ambassador, and one day Catherine scolded him for making

too free a use of poetry in his despatches. Upon that, he lost his head;

he felt that his heart was all aflame, “boiling over” he says; he was

beside himself with exultation, speaking of his Divinity, his Hope,

anxious to take flight and abandon everything in order to live “under

the shadow and in the confidence of his princess”; then, with a sudden

transition, he reports in the most precise terms various diplomatic

schemes, not a little complicated. In reality, the letter is that of a

man speaking to a woman of forty, and seeing her as she was, good-hearted

and tender, yet vigorous and virile. Why did he love her? Because, all

said and done, she intoxicated men. In the evening she would dance like

a mad thing,[289] and next morning go on a pilgrimage: a strange wild

creature. She ended by marrying a Medici, a man of delicate, idealistic,

almost effeminate temperament. There is nothing so strange as the

colloquy which took place between her and Savonarola. She had written to

the monk to request his prayers, and he replied in a charming letter, of

mingled serenity and strength, in which he takes high ground in rebuking

her life. This letter is dated June 18, 1497, the very day on which all

the churches in Florence were thundering with the papal proscription

launched against him. Ah! how tragic, how impressive an encounter was

this, between two souls equally belated, though in a different sense: the

pure monk face to face with death: the woman, born too soon or too late,

the prey of destiny! The French formed an excellent judgment of this

woman of bronze and thunder, who had ceased to be a woman: they called

one of their most formidable pieces of artillery “Madame de Forli.”

There was one woman, perhaps, who diffused through the camps a real

chivalrous enthusiasm: but this was in Spain, and faith and fatherland

were concerned. Isabella the Catholic ordered that she should be buried

on the battlefield of Grenada, wrapped in the broad folds of her royal

mantle, as though to preach lessons of valour even after her death. To

this day her great soul appears to hold sway in Spain.

She was a wonderful mixture of different kinds of heroism. She was

brave and resolute without a touch of the virago. After a night spent

in dictating orders, she would tranquilly resume a piece of church

embroidery, or, like Anne of France, the practical education of her

daughters. In her own private affairs she was plain and simple, in

public she was all ostentation. She was a conversationalist of the first

order, and loved to attack high philosophical questions, here and there

dropping into a discussion some original phrase, some bold and clear-cut

thought, while her deep blue eyes lit up and darted upon her company a

certain glance of warmth and loyalty the renown of which still clings

to her name. A strange woman! ardent like Anne of France, guileless,

straightforward, somewhat starched perhaps, but all heart for her

friends, so fond a mother that she died of the loss of her children, so

thorough a woman that she declared she knew only four fine sights in the

world: “a soldier in the field, a priest at the altar, a beautiful woman

in bed, a thief on the gibbet.”

No king could ever have exercised the same ascendancy. Spain is too

proud a country! A Spaniard to whom you speak of an army will tell you

with perfect coolness that it consisted of 3000 Italians, 3000 Germans,

and 6000 soldiers, that is to say, 6000 Spaniards. Isabella and Anne

of France were of a style which could only succeed in Spain or France.

Castiglione himself shrinks in awe before such figures, declaring that he

knows nothing like them in Italy.

Michelangelo showed himself to be less pessimistic, and has constantly

endowed his women with ideal traits of greatness of soul. His _Virgin_ of

the Casa Buonarotti, with the profile of a Roman matron, holds herself

erect and looks straight before her with the forceful eye of a woman who

would dare anything in defence of her treasure, this feeble little man

to be, gathered so close to her breast that but little of his back is

visible: in very truth, _fructus ventris tui_.

Every lady must have seen the exquisite _Pietà_ in St. Peter’s at

Rome.[290] It is the finest monument ever erected to the honour of the

sex. Overwhelmed by the tragedy of Savonarola, Michelangelo has given

utterance in that picture to the cry of his soul: he makes his appeal to

women in the name of Christ.

On her knees, with simplicity, without sensible effort, the Mother bears

her dead Son—a cruel burden! Her wide-flowing drapery, her beautiful

form, the purity of the lines of her face, all reveal so great a force

of soul that the fact of her appearing as youthful as her son causes no

surprise. But the Christ is not, for His part, pressing heavily upon her.

Though He is dead, one feels that He still lives, from the love which

speaks forth from His wan, worn features: by the power of love He has

vanquished divine Death, a death He sought, and almost loved. And the

pure, grave mother, filled with a profound compassion, seems yearning to

bring Him forth a second time, into a complete imperishable life: hers

is an impersonal type, not representing this or that woman, this or that

mother:

Le corps, enfin vaincu, recule devant l’âme,

Et la terre, ayant vu cette Vierge et ce Dieu,

Va comprendre l’Amour et respecter la Femme.[291]

Michelangelo exalts the eternal woman, sustaining the Man of Sorrows by

the strength of love. He has left us as his final bequest, as it were,

the symbol of all the strenuous women of the fifteenth century, who had

just run so glorious a race in Italy, and who saw from serene heights

the suffering they themselves never felt—the ancestors of Vittoria

Colonna and Margaret of France. And yet he had no wish to exaggerate.

When he came to paint the _Last Judgment_, he no longer set woman in the

foreground, like the naïve old masters; he placed her respectfully in the

rear, giving her an attitude of humility, suppliance, and compassion,

because, even for him, woman was before all things the incarnation of

sweetness and kindliness, and because, in those dread hours when it is

for power and justice to pronounce the final doom, every woman must needs

stand in the shade.

CHAPTER II

MORAL INFLUENCE

The moral purification of society is assuredly one of the conditions of

happiness; hence it was one of the chief ends of platonism. The 16th

century, unfortunately, was one of the most corrupt periods known to our

history, an undisputed fact from which some people have concluded that

art was the cause of moral decadence, because art in itself is unmoral,

and never acts otherwise than as “a stimulus to debauchery.” These

good paradoxical souls had ancestors as long ago as the 15th and 16th

centuries—ancestors who held the same theory and saw in aestheticism a

fatal blight to humanity. They refused to acknowledge the idea of the

beautiful: and the belief that a careful observation discovers some

trace of beauty everywhere—that even in the mind of a criminal there

are sometimes uncommon, indeed splendid faculties, unhappily turned to

evil—seemed to them, as it seems to their successors to-day, a miserable

error calculated to lead mankind to perdition. Platonist women and the

Roman world saw in it, on the contrary, a pledge of regeneration and

civilisation.

We have already said that the world needed no further urging on the

downward path; love was only understood apart from marriage, and all that

remained to settle was whether this love should remain material or might

possibly become spiritual.

All the contemporaries of platonism who regretted the “good old times”

(and in France they were many)—Marot, Rabelais, Collérye nicknamed Roger

Bontemps, Coquillart the sworn foe of the fashionable world, “bucks” as

he called them—all these clearly explain their position; they lamented

the disappearance of love “_à la française_,” a whole-hearted love

without qualifications and periphrases; a love that was very pleasant if

not very moral. And as to the folk who believed that virtue was corrupted

by the salons, they had only to stroll through the fairs, look in at the

rustic festivities and balls, and chat with one or two tavern wenches

or a village “old wife,” or even to penetrate into some of the country

houses. In Germany, where morals retained their antique savour, it cannot

be pleaded that Dr. Faustus, with the little crippled love who waits

on him, or the coarse bourgeois Venuses of Wohlgemüth or Albert Dürer,

existed only in imagination!

The first contact with Italy, so far from purifying these manners, only

brought about the exaltation of sensualism; one of the most popular of

French writers, Octavien de Saint-Gelais, had no scruple in raising a

statue to “Sensuality.” The French saw in Italy only the pagan side

of the Renaissance, that of the Malatestas[292] and others, and, as

often enough happens when the field of contemplation is so narrow, they

perceived nothing but the more striking and startling phenomena—the flash

of daggers, the poison bowl; so much that an excellent young man, Louis

de Beauvau, who had wedded a young person of humble rank against the

wishes of his family, and repented of it, profited by the expedition of

Charles VIII. to get together a fine collection of poisons as he went

from town to town. Certain Italians who had come to France were regarded

as so many jinnish heralds of moral anarchy. “The only way to escape

women is not to see them at all,” exclaims one of them, Andrelini. In

truth, it was not long before Italian society presented a lamentable

spectacle of decomposition; observers felt painful heart-burnings and

overwhelming disgust. “This is too much,” cries Palingenius, dubbed the

Star of the Renaissance: “let me flee away to some peaceful, solitary

shore.”

From the year 1515 onwards the court of France advanced boldly along

the same path, dragging the country with it. “Paris is a fair city to

live in, but not to die in.” What a pass things had come to! When five

years had elapsed, Lemaire, who had been one of the prophets of the new

order, paints the situation in terrible colours, demanding as remedy

a convocation of the Courts of Love. Charming tribunals, indeed: but

what good would they serve? In the forefront of this corrupt and putrid

society the official poet shows us his young king, with his coarse

sensual lips wrinkled in a hideous smile, “consumed by women” body and

soul.

Free love flourished. The saying, “In case of love, one dame doth not

suffice,”[293] answered to the accepted axiom on the fickleness of women.

The noblest of ladies declared themselves “lieutenants of Venus.” It

was love in its basest form, a matter of trade and barter, cold as ice;

nothing was wanting to its degradation—diplomatic husbands, women who

were “merchandise for kings,” but a merchandise which proffered itself!

It is alleged that Louis XII. in his decrepitude knew not in Italy how to

defend the virtue of which he was so tenacious. The excellent Margaret

of France was amazed when a young girl of good family did not rush to

sacrifice herself to a caprice of her brother.[294] Young or old, it

made no difference. Women were known to get up bogus law-suits for the

pleasure of corrupting the judges. Others, with greater attractions,

flocked to the favourite or the minister of the day; others, more

numerous, threw themselves at the moneyed men, as rivers rush to the sea.

No one would guess what shameful shifts masked some lives that seemed

a brilliant round of music and receptions and play; or what a singular

population of waiting-maids, pimps, and procuresses of all ranks, forced

their unwelcome services upon a respectable man—

Piteulx comme ung beau crucifix![295]

Vice was everywhere the same, except for some trifling shades. If an

Italian and a Frenchman told the same story of an honest woman seduced

by means of gold, they practically differed in nothing but the tariff;

the Italian lady exacts a thousand crowns and disappoints the purchaser,

the Frenchwoman asks only a hundred and faithfully keeps her word. When

the matter comes to light, the Italian husband is very deferential to the

seducer, but poisons the lady; the French husband contents himself with

sending her home to her parents for a time.

We must not be understood to believe that honest women no longer existed:

on the contrary, there were still many. The only difficulty was to find

them, because they kept out of sight, or, at any rate, were too apt to

regard the exercising of an influence as beneath them.

Good women are often passive, incredulous, or at least resigned in regard

to evil. Many of them, brought up on the ancient principle of subjection

and abnegation, would ask nothing better than to shut eyes and ears

with the quasi-felicity of mummies petrified in an eternal sleep, and

to decline to believe in evil. There the evil is, under their own roof,

touching them closely, wounding them: yet still they smile and smile,

wishing to appear crowned with roses, and doing their best to fancy they

are happy.[296] What delightful reasoning, and how precious to feeble and

timid women who would fain eschew strife, and love always!

Vittoria Colonna, for instance, feigned sleep one night while her

husband, by her side, indulged in wild antics that pained her deeply.

Nifo relates, with the perfect serenity of an egoist, an incident that

happened to himself. He had shut himself up in his study to write a

_Thesserologia astronomica_. After some days his wife grew anxious, and

employed all kinds of stratagems to induce him to relax the rigour of

his seclusion. Not succeeding, poor woman! she went in search of a young

lady in the neighbourhood, of whom she knew her husband was enamoured,

and whom, after she had given her a piece of her mind, she brought back

with her. She shut the two up together, with the simple happiness of a

faithful dog, flattering herself on having discovered the solution of the

puzzle. But no, Nifo remained glued to his _Thesserologia_. Then the good

woman lost her head, vowed herself to saints innumerable, made pilgrimage

after pilgrimage, and gave many a votive offering. Three months

afterward, Nifo, when he had written his last line, issued tranquilly

from his tomb, and condescended (so he assures us) to raise his wife from

her depression.

Devotion of this kind was apparently not rare among the women of old.

There was indeed a classical little story which passed from hand to hand

about a Madame de Varambon. Monsieur de Varambon (so the story ran: we

must do him at least this justice) was a thrifty fellow, and his wife

was grieved to know that his mistress’s apartments were rather poorly

furnished. She ended by going herself to look after the furnishing, in

profound secrecy. This story excited the hilarity of men every time it

was told; some of them regarded Madame de Varambon as an old humbug;

others, as a poor godly old soul;[297] and that was the sole reward of

her virtue!

Apart from this bent of women themselves for submission and seclusion, we

must note also that Frenchmen formed themselves into a sort of league,

by no means chivalrous, against women who got “talked about.” If a

woman was talked about, it seemed a necessary deduction that there was

something bad to say about her, and the mere fact of a lady acquiring

any sort of public reputation, though entirely to her honour, apparently

gave everyone the right to fling mud at her. This was one of the most

formidable obstacles to the moral influence of women. It seemed to many

people, in short, that there was no choice between virtue starched,

prosaic and wearisome, or no virtue at all: that it consisted for women

in the simple devotion to an ideal of family duty—in which, however,

they did not always find happiness, and which religion did not always

succeed in beautifying, for the family affections are terrestrial, and

doubtless will not survive the earth. Husbands maintained this position,

finding it convenient. Vice and virtue in all their coarseness (there is

a coarseness of virtue) were each shut up, so to speak, in a water-tight

compartment: “to each his calling”; no compromise, no nuance, no degree

was acknowledged; virtue is always represented by Titian and others with

harsh malevolence as uncouth and ill to look upon, while opposite her

they represent the true woman as an embodied caress.

Untrue and untenable as this distinction was, no one cared to seek a

way out of the dilemma, not even the moralists. Lotto as well as Titian

represents the virtuous woman as a goose-girl, in conflict with Venus!

And indeed the singular comparison in course of time penetrated to the

core of platonist society, though it was softened down like a much

attenuated echo. Raphael, then a charming boy of twenty, fresh moulded by

the tender hands of two princesses, was conscious of the same thing in

his _Vision of a Knight_ in the National Gallery.

To him also the grave woman holding a sword and a book seems a timid

creature; he leaves her in the background as though unwilling to show

herself, and limns behind her only a rocky steep and a church spire

soaring into the sky. The other lady, on the contrary, graceful in form

and feature, stands out distinctly before lovely meadows sloping down

to a swift-flowing stream. What does she hold? A flower, no more. This

is love indeed, but eminently tender, eminently reasonable, almost

ineffectual. Raphael was so young!

Why then, even in the eyes of this delicate-minded stripling, does virtue

keep this character of ungainliness and frigidity? Were there in his day

none of those women of sound mind and steadfast soul who, while knowing

how to leave men undisturbed in their pride, how (so to speak) to respect

them, knew also how to stimulate them to set happiness above the woes of

life? It is not even the lash of passion we are speaking about; great

love has some trenchant quality that cleaves a way through materialities;

it is purification _par excellence_; it would remove mountains and still

the waves. Happy the woman who has once encountered it, thrice happy she

who has been able to recognise it and seize it ere it passed! For it has

but one defect, its exceeding rarity; and if the moral regeneration of

society were absolutely dependent on it, a woman would do better to fling

up the struggle, encase herself in triple brass, mystically shut her eyes

to evil, await a miracle, and hope for nothing on this earth but the

repentant tears of her husband!

We are speaking merely of women of vigour, made to support and guide

men—the women whom men style “dragons.” They are a species which

achieves little success in the world; men regard them as somewhat too

masculine, and are constantly making fun of them, especially when there

are good reasons for so doing. At Naples, for instance, one of these

dragons—Doña Maria d’Aragona, a respectable mother of seven—created no

little amusement because (so the story ran), in her desire for a large

experience, she had wished to live with her husband three years as a

wife, three as a sweetheart, and three as an enemy. Men do not understand

such women; it is a sense they are deficient in. These women were out

of date,—women of the 15th century, of the time before Savonarola. They

remind one of those old, high, rugged ramparts which perforce crumble

away, and to which we prefer a spick-and-span, vulgar boulevard, blocked

up with gingerbread stalls.

And yet the moral influence of women, from a social and general

standpoint, did make itself felt, especially in Italy. “You must not

judge men from the crust,” as Anne of France very well said. The opposing

parties were so little divided from each other that it is not easy to

distinguish them; there were materialists who did not scorn the ideal,

and idealists by no means unsympathetic to the material, and it was that

which gave an opening to the moral preacher.

For instance, Nifo, whom we have mentioned as a personal foe to Plato,

had begun by fighting against Thomas of Aquinas in the materialist camp;

but on being shown his folly by the Bishop of Padua, a prelate of parts,

he changed sides with a great flourish of trumpets, fell lustily upon his

master Pomponazzi, and became a Roman count with the name and the arms of

the Medici: to his own satisfaction and delight, for logical minds love

success. And by and by we discover him, folios in hand, falling at the

feet of female beauty with surprising agility,—quite eclipsing Victor

Cousin, whose passions were of the mere milk-and-water order and very

much behind the times. Renan, who has left us an excellent appreciation

of Nifo, reproaches him with the somewhat wobbly character of his

doctrine; but this is the very thing that interests us. If men were not

inconstant, platonism would have no further utility. Nifo, in short, was

a converted character. If men are bent on fighting, we must not complain

that a woman’s hand can sometimes draw them into the crack regiments.

This means, someone will say, that the conscience and the lofty

deductions of a serious or even a distinguished man depend on the rustle

of a petticoat or the colour of certain eyes? Even so; if the woman

stands for more than a petticoat and two bright eyes, if she really has

a heart, ardent and vigorous affections in which the man’s spirit finds

refreshment, what could be more natural or moral?

Look at Nifo again. Ugly, hideous, untractable as he was, he completely

changed his tune under the influence of a few artificial (perhaps too

artificial, indeed!) courtesies; if he retained some of the claws of the

primitive man, some thorns of the wild stock which it was so difficult to

graft, what does that prove but that under a woman’s fingers the roughest

bushes burst into brilliant flower? Nifo even came to wear almost the

same moral livery as Bembo. He speaks of Plato only with respect, and

of materialism only with disdain as a not very formidable doctrine from

which good taste and spiritual refinement cannot but preserve women;

he pretends to go as far as the “imaginatives” in the direction of

sociological love; he adopts in principle Plato’s theory of love as

an intermediary between the Creator and the creature; “beauty—aye, I

gladly confess it—is that which produces love.” His only weakness (a

very natural one) is that he cannot arrive at the Absolute, as Socrates

understood it, without traversing this earth; that he prefers to vague,

immaterial, supersensual dallying with love the personal encounter of two

living beings. On this head the meanest logicians do not allow themselves

to be silenced. They unreservedly, enthusiastically recognise the

religion of beauty and love, and its admirable effects on society and the

world; but at the same time they are not quite at one about definitions.

They pause in a sort of numb fascination before a pretty little piece

of piety who suddenly pretends she forgets her body and is only a soul;

they are like Dante in Purgatory, when he opened his arms and clasped

nothing but air. They do not prostrate soul and body in adoration before

a shadow, a reflection, a transient gleam of beauty; it seems good to

them to love a particular woman in virtue of a special affinity, or a

need of settling down; and in these circumstances they would in good

sooth think it great folly to torture themselves under the fallacious

plea that sweet love if gratified is slain. Love, they say, is one and

indivisible, not too base nor too divine: “You may cite me your heroes,

your saints, your angels: you may explore the whole realm of antiquity

to unearth types like Socrates and Anaxarchos (or, if you please,

Xenocrates, who spent a whole night in tranquil admiration of Phryne):

everything is possible. I myself furnish a magnificent example in loving

Fulvia without any base desire. But these are masterly achievements of

saints or philosophers, and St. Jerome shows a keen insight into humanity

when he ordains that men shall either regard all the Lord’s virgins with

a generic affection, or shall not love any of them. Horace maintained

that with greybeards the flesh is dead; St. Jerome replies: ‘You say that

the flesh is dead, and I tell you that the devil is eternal.’ Love must

be distinguished from friendship.”[298]

In France it was another story. Men were much more self-assertive. We do

not find them appealing to these circumlocutions or these tender ironies.

The annihilation of matter would have struck them as almost an outrage.

Among them things took an entirely different complexion from that which

we have indicated in the feminist society of Italy. Being the masters,

they regarded love as indispensable, and beauty as always good: “If we

thought ladies were without love, we should long for death”; only, adds

Erasmus, “they grant women nothing but from love of sensual pleasure”;

and the more highly placed they happened to be, the more natural it

seemed to them to degrade love. “To gratify a prince”—we know what that

means; there is no question here of an elevated love like the love which

fills princesses’ dreams.

The moral conflict on this point was in France acute. When Margaret

essayed to purify the society of her court by a leaven of beauty, her

entourage checked her, refusing to allow any effort towards embellishing

human life with the ideal. These men held too closely to the old logical

and realist spirit. They loved Plato, but truth still more. They did not

realise that their brutal realism had the effect of throwing women off

at a tangent, for a religion of some sort is always necessary; to save

themselves from men, women of high birth and noble bearing, carried away

by an enthusiasm in some sort heroic, attained to a mystic conception of

a life of pure sensibility.

But then what is the beginning and what the end of the dream? Without

touching on the cruel questionings of philosophy about the reality of

our physical perceptions, or on many of the ambiguous phenomena, where

does the vision begin in the moral life, if life involves so many

fancies, illusions, loves, gleams, which act upon us but have no real

existence?—so many vague aspirations, admirable but unsubstantial? To

fall headlong from a height into an abyss is a violent experience which

kills too quickly; the mystic vision is only possible on condition of

coddling the soul within the four walls of a convent; out in the world it

falls and is lost: that was the opinion of the logicians. When Margaret

relates with what energy of virtue she escaped the realistic assaults

of Bonnivet, and how, at the cost of a few scratches, she has reduced

him to the cold comfort of the Ideal, her husband is the first to laugh,

saying: “If I had got so far, I should think myself disgraced to fail of

attaining my goal.”[299]

It is a cynical saying, and raises a general protest; but Henri d’Albret

explains it very placidly, and we cannot give the gist of his retort

better than in the following sentence of M. Bourget: “You have the

morality of life, without having the morality of the heart.” Henri

rejoices to see his wife keep up appearances, but, from the moral

standpoint, he finds no great difference between her and himself, except

in practical conduct: “She and I are both children of Adam and Eve.”

He laughs and sneers at the nebulous philosophical aspirations of the

princess, and is not the only man who has got this strange impression

that the sins of the spirit and the sins of the flesh are equipollent. “A

fortress which parleys is half won,” says with feigned good-humour one of

the speakers in the _Heptameron_, appearing to forget that Margaret as an

inveterate gossip had readily accepted the sobriquet of Parlamente.[300]

Not merely did the adversaries of platonism accuse it of being only

moral in appearance, but this very semblance of morality, resting on a

misapprehension, seemed to them an hypocrisy that aggravated the fault.

They regarded platonism as evil and wanting in seriousness; Louise of

Savoy, an inveterate kill-joy, at once sour and sympathetic in regard

to pleasures she is past enjoying, inveighs bitterly against love that

is only skin-deep—the vanities and tricks, the husk and chaff of love

that is simply a comedy in which two actors show their skill; she prefers

a fault without scandal to a scandal without fault. However, the issue

seems to her perfectly clear: “Either you love, or you do not. If you

love, why impose on yourself the torment of Tantalus? If you do not, why

impose it on others?” She would rather succeed in a piece of folly than

fail in a virtuous action, however logical and practical.

She has a way all her own of squelching the fancies of her daughter;

she allows them to swell and swell, and then gives the merest little

pin-prick. Someone speaks, for instance, of a queen clever enough to

impose seven years’ preliminary probation on her lover: “Then she didn’t

wish to love or be loved!”[301] If someone feelingly exclaims: “When love

is strong, the lover knows no meat and drink but the look and voice of

the loved one,” she retorts that she would much like to see how he looked

on such fare![302] At the conclusion of a droll story, a maid of honour

who is a little over-excited declares that she would rather be flung into

the river than live in intimacy with a Franciscan; and Louise replies

with her placid smile: “Then you can swim well?” The other retorts in

great irritation: “I know some who have resisted more prepossessing men

than a Franciscan, without blowing their own trumpets about it.” Louise,

laughing more than ever, replies, “Still less do they beat the drums

about what they have done and granted.”[303] She is a sceptic and a

logician; with all her boldness of speech, she is never over-paradoxical.

Moreover, she applied her principles to herself, and had such a way of

encouraging her daughter’s lovers that they quite naturally paid their

addresses to her. At the opening of the _Heptameron_, for instance, one

of Margaret’s numerous admirers, furious to see his princess receive a

passionate declaration with laughter, hies him to the mother.

Almost everybody in France shared the views of Henri d’Albret and

Louise of Savoy. Platonism sprang up among thorns. And so far from

there being any bias in its favour, there awoke a reaction against the

finnikin absurdities of bygone days,—for instance, against the “bashful

knights” who sported furs in summer, and summer cloaks in winter, in

order to give ocular demonstration that “love was all-sufficient.”

That sort of mysticism struck men as sickly. They preferred frankness

and vivacity,—the frothy sparkle of champagne to the sugared liqueur,

golden, soft, limpid, heavy, old in bottle, which bore the Italian

label. Rabelais, who is our Michelangelo, takes great care not to dive

into the mysteries in Ficino’s way, or to pile up a heap of folios after

the example of Nifo. Look at him, with his learning and his consummate

intellect, sitting before a dish of peas fried in fat, seized with

inextinguishable laughter as he thinks of the “celestial and priceless

drug” of Plato’s _Symposium_, and deriding all the Picos della Mirandola

past and future in the person of Messire Pantagruel, who maintains

against all opponents 9764 conclusions, some of them highly platonic, on

“the philosophical cream of encyclopaedic questions,” on “the platonic

idea, hovering dexterously under the orifice of chaos.” Rabelais

dedicates his _Life of Gargantua_ to topers and the gouty.

And then you hear the loud chant, the babel noise, of gold, of Plutus,

rising above and drowning all other sounds. Artists no longer cling to

the old shabby studio in which they strove after the ideal: they have

now come to dwell in palaces, and some there are whose art consists in

coining false money or running after the philosopher’s stone—if not in

worse occupations. Even where men are wistful and dream, in the heart of

melancholy Brittany, the poor human soul, compared by a preacher to a

runner started upon the long race for eternal life, halts and stoops at

every moment like Atalanta, to pick up apples of gold.[304]

Thus the battle was joined on all sides at once, and the struggle was

fierce. Among so many ingratitudes, so many keen-pointed shafts, women

needed a proud courage to continue imperturbably spreading through the

world the spirit of love, the religion of beauty.

They did not succeed in subduing mankind at large, nor in directing

their moral energies. That dream had to be relinquished. They resigned

themselves to the thankless task of individually doing what little they

could do through their sympathy and tenderness. This was all they could

give, and it cost them dear, for it too often involved concessions, many

bitter and secret tears, a love mingled with disgust, an unavoidable

duplicity!

They had perforce to content themselves, then, with this measure of

success. To show clearly in what this success consisted, we shall divide

our brief account into two parts; for their sensibility was exerted in

two directions. Under their influence virtue and vice became each an

art: their defects and excesses were moderated. On the one hand the over

harsh virtues were softened, or, if we may coin a word, de-austerified,

and endowed with a cheerfulness of aspect they had formerly lacked; on

the other, vice was ennobled, and the gap between vice and virtue thereby

diminished. In brief, women tried to make life beautiful rather than

good, and piously to rehabilitate everything which had possibilities

of beauty, in virtue of the principle that the Beautiful _is_ good and

purifies all things.

1. THE SOFTENING OF VIRTUE.

The principles already established are, briefly, as follows: happiness

resides in love, love consists in self-surrender. Of this there are

several modes: one may surrender body and soul, or soul alone—or nothing

at all! To give the soul is the true platonism; to give nothing is the

false. The surrender of the body is the time-honoured sacrament of

marriage.

How did they set about reconciling these various elements? In a manner

that was simplicity itself.

We have said that marriage had become a human and reciprocal contract,

concluded with a definite object between two fellow-creatures; and

logically there was no reason why it should not have ended as it began,

by mutual consent, that is, in the community of women[305] according to

Plato’s idea.

But on the contrary the platonists, who looked for no poetry in the prose

of wedlock, regarded one marriage as quite sufficient, if not excessive.

Further, the institution was an ancient one; it was a matter of use and

wont. To maintain the organisation of society and the foundations of

aristocracy, it was necessary to retain the formula and merely to draw

from it the moral consequences implied in the principle of equality of

rights.

Up to that time the morality of marriage had been regulated by the

authority or even the caprice of the husband. A bastard (provided he was

begotten by the husband) had almost the status of a legitimate child;

in many cases he was bred at the paternal hearth, away from his mother,

under the charge of his father’s wife; and in Italy he very easily

secured legitimation,[306] and, if other heirs failed, carried on the

family. What was much worse than deceiving his wife, the husband believed

he had the right to neglect her. From that time forward retaliation

appeared to be the guiding principle; instead of remaining head-nurses,

of adopting children from heaven knows where, of toiling to efface all

signs of the caprices of their lords and masters, women “unhappily

married” no longer saw the necessity of fettering themselves, of refusing

their share of happiness, of carefully guarding what was despised.

Luther gave material fixity to this principle by permitting divorce;

he maintained marriage, but at the same time allowed re-marriage; in

other words, he retrograded as far as possible towards the manners of

the past. In case of default, even involuntary, on the part of one of

the contracting parties, he thought it quite right to replace “Vashti by

Esther.” We know what fortune attended these ideas. Melander,[307] when

blessing a “duplicate” marriage of the Landgrave of Hesse, proceeded to

say that everything in this world wears out, and that monogamy had had

its day. A book of extremely liberal views attributed to Bugenhagen[308]

adduced examples of bigamy among the early Christians. Polygamy met with

some support; near the end of his life, Ochino[309] became its advocate.

The platonists, however, allowed no retouching. The ancient doctrine that

the body, with all its weaknesses and infirmities, received with marriage

an indelible brand, as in former days convicts were marked, after all

seemed to them to be salutary, since the end of marriage was obedience to

the physical law “increase and multiply.” But, the law once fulfilled,

by what strange aberration did they wish to bind souls to this abandoned

body, truly a derelict of life? So far as heart and soul were concerned,

the community of women (or rather, the community of men) seemed a moral

reality, constituting indeed the clearest distinction that could be

drawn between mankind and the animals. This “spiritual libertinage” was

condemned. Calvin flouted it and preferred divorce—a singular taste,

not very refined, eminently worthy of countries where fleshly love was

cultivated, with rope-ladders and without platonism.[310] Wedlock has its

good points, but, as everyone knows, it is never supremely delightful;

love ought to be a delight and a religion. The wife, stepping forth in

her turn into life, has a right to think a little about herself and

her highest needs, to cultivate her heart and soul, to blossom out and

complete herself. “Complete herself!” some one will say: “then ’tis a

question of a subsidiary marriage?” Yes, but of a marriage wholly moral,

in which the carnal concessions are purely aesthetic and ostensible,—in

which she boasts (so far as essential points are concerned) of a

platonism as perfect in regard to her lover as in regard to her husband.

In the year of grace 1523, a young lady of the Roman aristocracy, whom

history names Costanza Amaretta, pretty, refined, and pious, made a

journey of devotion to Florence for the Easter festivals, and there met

her ideal in the shape of a cultivated and distinguished man named

Celso. They lived together under the same roof in perfect chastity.

When Easter was past, they set out with four kindred spirits for a

country house of Celso’s, and there, in the joyous spring weather,

among the cypresses and tufted pines and early flowers, this idyllic

society of platonists gave themselves up to the delights of poetising

and philosophising at large. Costanza, elected queen of the coterie,

unbosomed herself to them. She had been married when very young, as

the custom was, to a man of business with little of the ethereal in

his composition—a man of eminently practical mind, and manners almost

intolerable. With him she had contracted no real moral ties. “But for

this man’s desire of having children by me—for he thought me beautiful—we

should have felt nothing but hatred for each other.” In Celso’s company,

however, the path of virtue seems to Costanza covered with roses instead

of thorns, and hence to-day her eyes are opened to the truth, she

perceives with perfect clearness the moral utility of the platonist

distinction between the two kinds of love, the one bestial, matrimonial,

fraught with peril, a thing of this world, perishable,—the other

celestial, life-giving, a foretaste of Paradise, a love that enraptures

the soul and fills it in truth with a radiance divine.

Perfect lovers thus found perfect pleasure in making an offering, but

not a sacrifice, of their flesh—in deliberately lifting themselves

above gross physical rules and living delicately as angels incarnate.

Castiglione with extravagant eulogy reminds us of the wonderful feat

accomplished by two of these dilettanti of love, who spent six months in

conjugal intimacy and perfect continence; that was what he calls love,

the ideal existence, pure beauty! There was even, at Milan, a religious

order devoted to the mutual edification of the sexes on these lines, but

after a time the archbishop decreed its dissolution.[311]

Truth to tell, we do not know exactly how far this species of platonism

extended; it is a land difficult to map out; in such matters no

statistics are available, and even in these days when we can reel off the

number of bushels of wheat or dozens of eggs France can produce in any

month, there is no official return on the virtue of women.

But we are not indisposed to believe that the platonic life _à deux_

numbered more adepts than might be imagined. So many women of loveless

heart aspired to the happiness of finding for it some safe repository,

and regarded the body as so much dross, infinitely inferior. The example

of Judith struck them as not only above criticism, but sublime. If one

had groaned under the burden of the first marriage, surely it was all the

more needful to set the second upon a pedestal, and so to preserve above

everything the illusions, the dreams, the anticipations, however vague,

which bring us out of moral and physical distress into light and life!

The young platonist lady, all soul, who lived in the arms of her lover

and relinquished nothing but her soul, fancied that she was realising a

holy and religious dream; love, which purifies all things, wafted her

in peace and confidence towards the celestial spheres; for faith, hope,

love—what are they but the sheet anchors of the soul? That was her whole

position. If by this means she could enter into fulness of life, was she

so very foolish in availing herself of it?

Unhappily, love sought as a rule only its own abasement, and the mission

of these fair apostles declared itself rather in aggressive sallies than

in spiritual edification. Platonism had to come down a peg, and to meet

the demands of men it had to turn distrustful, descend to trivialities

and deceit,—to place reliance on artifice. Thus was born a new species of

platonism—more popular, and more open to criticism in point of morality.

This secondary art of platonism was hardly known beyond the borders of

Italy; it demanded a patience and a consummate suppleness which we do not

possess. The impatience of Frenchmen in matters of love was proverbial;

they would rather seize than woo; they would boil and chafe, utterly

unable to appreciate the wily tactics of Ovid or Martial, very often

expecting to begin at the end without any preliminary finessing, and

making flirtation altogether impossible. And Frenchwomen, too,—must we

confess it?—were but poor hands at the game. Some of them caught fire

instead of winning love without loving, and there were young girls like

Mademoiselle de Piennes who wrung their hands before the whole Court in

despair at a lover’s desertion. The French were so constituted; they

applied principles they did not possess, while the Italians excelled in

holding principles without applying them. And thus, whatever else they

did, the former were not very successful in finding salvation through

chimerical ideals, and virtue had infinite trouble to convince them of

her intoxicating charm: they could not manage to persuade themselves that

stones and arabesques are man’s proper sustenance, but remained faithful

to the realities they knew through the senses. Everything else was only

ridiculed, and, as few women are insensible to mockery and a cutting

phrase, the ladies were sometimes led where their own hearts would not

have taken them.

Platonic love, then, was regarded in France as a complicated business.

The women had to confess that no means had yet been discovered of

crystallising the things of life apart from the dispensation of

Providence which has given us bodies, nor of curbing men by the mere

vision of the ideal.

So, as we have seen, Margaret of France strove to make her body the

transparent vesture of her soul. We have seen, too, what tender

familiarities the ladies authorised at their morning toilet, and at other

times.

Modesty to them consisted not in the more or less brutal systems of the

“all in all or not at all,” but simply in remaining women.

Chary of making a confidant of doctor or chaplain, because unwilling

to subject themselves to either, they valued the man who regarded them

as women and had eyes only for them; as a reward for his exclusive

attentions they certainly thought they owed him some little privilege

beyond what they allowed to others. It was they who were the doctors, the

confessors, or rather the rescuers; they sprang into the water to save

the drowning man. To save him by bestowing on him the true gift, a little

of themselves, appeared to them a good, a moral, a meritorious work! This

was far, you perceive, from the commonplace, masculine handshake which

women nowadays grant to all and sundry! Seriously, they fancied they were

thus winning heaven; their own hearts constantly heard echoes of the

sweet strains of Plato’s _Phaedo_ or _Crito_; his exquisite distinction

between soul and body made music in their ears, and the familiar spirit

of Socrates bound them to an immaterial world, whispering his counsels

and intuitions.[312] They saw no harm in bestowing their indulgent

favour, their smile, and a little more. It was enough for them “to hold

fast unto the end,” and to remain firm as rock on the essential; they

were innocent of “false scruples,” and would have thought it cruel and

ridiculous to torture a man by refusing him “familiarities that Nature

has permitted to beauties,” now that this small change cost them so

little, and above all touched them so little. Ah! that was not where the

temptation lay! At the bottom of their hearts, how they despised the

shallow, insignificant men who, with their large and canting talk of love

and sentiment, could be caught like gudgeon with this paltry physical

lure!

The critics of a certain lady went so far as to accuse her of “losing all

shame,” because when receiving one of her friends, as she lay in bed in

the morning, she tolerated not a few familiarities, “without any offence

to my honour,” as she observed. She replied with heat that she saw in

her conduct nothing but what was excellent; her friend would esteem

her doubly for having seen body and soul united in her “in one strain

of chaste beauty.” As to the danger of this familiarity, listen to her

subtle and delicious reply: “The man I love, the man I dread is not he;

it is another who has laid siege, not to my body, but to my soul. Ah! if

I did not keep a rein on my heart, it would long ago have spoken to me

in favour of the other man!”[313] This is the cry of the fastidious woman

who dreads only the rape of the mind! We do not discuss her moral scheme,

we pass no judgment; we confine ourselves to relating.[314] Her end was

to make herself loved, and in a manner which would be worth the trouble.

It is not hard to believe that the bounds were sometimes overstepped:

some men abused their privileges, especially with regard to princesses

of literature like Louise Labé;[315] and sometimes it happened, indeed,

that cries a little too genuine broke from the lips of women, and were

heard above this tender, philosophic poetry, and this scorn of earth. Yet

many women, in their devotion for spreading pure happiness, for holding

men captive lest they sold themselves, would often have preferred that

conversation should be the sum total of their intercourse, and that their

friends should be content to dip in their eyes and their soul.

Their aim was to reduce everything to conversation; they had little

love for a contemplative silence, for songs without words: conversation

allowed opportunities of probing, caressing, penetrating the soul,

turning it inside out without the least inconvenience and with many

benefits. Among close friends they showed their art by getting someone

to sing to them the old cantilena, “I die of thirst beside the gushing

fount”; sometimes they held under their eyelids a large unsuspected tear.

They made a hungry man forget his food; “they contented their lovers with

words, promised a reward, and deferred it till to-morrow.”

The Italians, as we have said, delighted in tasting love thus at leisure

in little sugared sips; they were not gluttons like the French: they

appeared born, not to construct railways or to inflate balloons, but

simply to love, to love loving, to nourish themselves on futilities and

surprises, to sing always the same meaningless song. They cut marvellous

figures at the feet of those women “before whom desire burnt away like

candles at a shrine”; they glossed over realities, as if they really

believed more in happiness that came from the unknown than from the

known, as the great scorner of women, La Rochefoucauld, has well said;

to such an extent that the inexhaustible springs of the heart were

sufficiently depleted, so far as they were concerned, to spare them the

risk of embarrassment from love, and to enable them safely to find the

recreation necessary to the overtaxed human mind. Happy creatures, these

men without a care! The narrow world in which they fluttered seemed too

big for them, and their long wings touched the ground; they were young,

yet old; they were gay with brilliant, yet faded colours; a woman could

take their arm in complete confidence that all would end where it began.

Life was for them one aimless flirtation, a mere battle of flowers.

Love, as thus carried to extreme perfection in society, came in for no

little mockery. No one was under any illusion as to the impossibility

of finding in it a secret source of strength and life; it was a mere

avocation, a little intellectual pastime—with no overpowering demand on

the intellect.

The Italian “cicisbeo” or “death of love” became a sort of amiable

spectre, a harmless necessary cat; he was practically non-existent to his

friends, and had the right of not answering his letters. Sweetly scented,

with a well-hosed leg, a rose in his hand and a flower at his ear, his

lips pursed up, his bearing graceful and gallant, at his heels a lackey

whose duty was to flick off the least speck of dust—there you have him,

always the same, whoever the object of his passion. All he troubled about

was rightly to place his glances and sighs, his nods and salutations, and

when he had been rewarded with a gracious smile or an arch look, he would

go off humming to indite a sextain or a madrigal.

The mawkish execrable creature! more womanish than women, a woman

spoilt in the making, a half-woman! Sticking like a shadow to the

lady of his thoughts, his functions were to carry her lapdog, her

prayer-book, or what else she pleased. At her house he installed himself

as the centrepiece of her receptions, kept the conversation alive, and

overwhelmed the husband with affectionate attentions.

He was a hypocrite, a rakish fop! In the Roman aristocracy he usually

took the shape of a sanctimonious recluse; at Naples he was a man of

energy and go; at Venice a man of mystery; in Lombardy he had the joyous

self-assurance of the North;[316] at Florence he was a vivacious talker,

responding to the challenges of silvery voices with audacious quips.

He took everything as it came; he had not an ounce of sincerity: his

cleverness consisted first in adapting himself entirely to the beloved

object, in abdicating all individuality, in being hers and hers alone;

secondly, in proceeding platonically and without passion, with extreme

prudence, trusting to suavity and tenderness, always securing a line of

retreat, and striving above all to melt the obdurate heart. In all this

part of the programme the eyes often were better servants than the tongue.

This point rounded, every man for himself! An eclectic, a hot lover, an

abstract philosopher, a symbolist, an idealist—let him be any of these if

his heart bids him. He is a fine talker; well, ’tis a great talent, which

will permit him to turn to account a thousand little incidents, but will

often (let him not deceive himself) lead to only superficial successes. A

wary woman holds fine talkers in awe; with them, she thinks, there is all

the making of domestic broils; she knows how indiscreet they are, and she

smiles on them and keeps them at a distance, knowing that this is the way

to set them proclaiming her virtue abroad. Often she prefers a taciturn,

above all a bashful man, “a lenten lover,” as someone said, easy to

feed.[317]

But it is impossible to enumerate all the eccentricities that were part

and parcel of this flirtation. The ridiculous became the rule: it was

an afflicting spectacle for human dignity. Old men cut capers, young

men lost their heads, the witty turned imbecile, the imbecile set up

for wits. What a masquerade! The lugubrious blubbered about their love,

sighed in prose and verse; the sincere embraced a whimsey—adopted a

colour, for instance. One of these, having vowed himself to green, so

strictly embargoed the rest of the spectrum that not only was everything

on him green, even to his shirt-buttons, but he ate out of none but green

plates, drank out of none but greenish glasses, never rested till he had

discovered green bread, and made green meadows and groves the exclusive

burden of his song.

Happily, conversation somewhat raised the level of this extravagant

and lamentable affectation. Surrounded by a circle of friends, a man

would amuse himself by launching a graceful declaration concealed in an

aphorism or a double entendre; it sometimes happened that a lady who

had never entered the speaker’s head fancied that hers was the heart

aimed at, and that was provocative of fun. Or perhaps they would linger

out the pleasure of a tête-à-tête reel off their witticisms[318] and

amiable compliments, and unravel little puzzles in sentimental casuistry.

Sometimes they reached the stage where the tête-à-tête that was really

delightful was one in which neither said a word.

Here some one will stop us and ask whether all this did not have an end.

Bless you, no! An end was in no wise necessary; genuine platonic romances

never end.[319] And what years and years they may last! A clever woman

excels precisely in spinning them out; if she feels that the fire is

burning low, she has a thousand means of fanning it into flame—a word,

a tender gesture,[320] a little present, a gracious act here, a secret

gentleness there, a touch of jealousy; and then she suggests that you

should recommence the little game—church, the park, sighs, tears, oaths.

And thus you may go on for ever.

There are, however, some romances which do end, well or ill. As a rule

the event is announced by rolling clouds and a lightning-flash. The

majority of men only enter the platonic life with the idea of an early

departure, and implicitly believe that in the life of every woman—even

though she be a “dragon”—there is one inevitable, irrefragable hour.

Psychologists, philosophers, poets, preachers[321] all have repeated

_ad nauseam_ the saying of Ovid: “A chaste woman is she whom none has

tempted,”[322] or, as La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère will phrase it

later: “An insensible woman is she who has not yet found the man she must

love.”

The lady affects not to see the storm brewing; she bears up against it

gallantly; gentle banter is her cue; she declares that talk of love is

very pleasant to her, but ’tis well known among decent people what that

word signifies; there is no question of a coarse, sensual love, but only

of amorous discourses. The man gives himself up to demonstrating his love

anew; his plaints become louder, his tears more copious; his lady-love

never gets to sleep o’ nights without hearing serenades or “Spanish

lamentations” beneath her window, or sighs that would seem belled out

by some familiar spirit, but which are really a performance got up by

obliging neighbours, for a consideration. All day, at church, in the

ballroom, in the street, under the thin disguise of masks, he is here,

there and everywhere, never out of her sight.

One morning the maid announces to her mistress that the gentleman is

at the door with something most urgent to say—here he is, indeed,

pushing past the girl; and he will be eloquent, you may be sure. Or

he resorts to the grand means of melodrama—false keys, rope-ladders,

narcotics, sorcery, lying confessions of apostate monks; or to the

stale and hackneyed devices of comedy; he enlarges eloquently on his

high qualities, proffers a thousand services, and even opens his purse;

full of promises the while, erecting beautiful castles in the air. One

will employ menace, another will boldly haggle and argue with father

or husband. What a warmth of language, what sighing and sobbing, what

fretting and fuming! “Fulvia being come on horseback to see me, I

straightway feigned a superb wrath, as though her action seemed to me

that of too forward a minx. And this fine choler of mine was of great

avail in my courting.” There are some who carry the fortress by dint of

lavish praises, superlative verses, outbursts of jealousy. Others by

continual dropping wear away the stone.

If a princess had the idea that her rank would prove a sufficient rampart

against this final assault, she had to find out her mistake, especially

in France. Why should not the man she loved—the dear good fellow!—after

so many labours, and discreet frenzies, and stratagems, and covert

approaches, expect an advancement he so well deserved?

A bien servir et loyal estre,

De serviteur on devient maistre![323]

“Madam,” proudly says one of the young nobles of Margaret of France,

“when our mistresses stand on their dignity in halls and assemblies,

seated at their ease as our judges, we are on our knees before them;

we lead them out to dance with fear and trembling; we serve them so

sedulously as to anticipate their requests; we seem to be so fearful of

offending them and so desirous of doing them service that those who see

us have pity on us, and very often esteem us more simple than foolish,”

and sing the praises of ladies able thus to win service. “But when we

are by ourselves, and love alone doth mark our looks, we know right well

that they are women and we are men, and then the name of liege lady is

converted into sweetheart, and the name of servitor into lover.”[324]

And it need not be supposed that in such circumstances they remained

satisfied with words or menaces, even in dealing with ladies of the most

exalted station. There were violent characters who stuck at nothing,

like Bonnivet! It also happened at critical moments, even in the most

platonic of circles, that love turned into rage. “Unico Aretino,” one of

the Urbino talkers, upset by what he thought a piece of base ingratitude

on the part of the charming duchess Elizabeth, got so beside himself

with anger as to call his sovereign lady “Urbino’s traitress, witch,

trickster.” (Aretino was an exceedingly clever man, but after all he was

only the fourth part of a prelate; he filled at Rome the fourth-rate

office of “apostolic abbreviator,” and pretty badly at that; but as

he afforded the Sacred College a deal of amusement he was licensed to

indulge in all sorts of jocularities.) He never forgave the duchess, and

even after her death pursued both her and her daughter with persistent

rancour.[325]

The ideas of men in these matters simply beggar imagination. They fancied

that they erred on the side of bashfulness, that they suffered wrong when

ladies suggested “reckonings,” to use their term. They thought it would

be ridiculous to die of despair like the heroes of romance, and that it

was “folly and cruelty” to praise the beauty of a fountain to a poor,

thirsty fellow and then kill him because he wished to drink.[326] “Whom

will you get to believe,” cries Henri d’Albret, “that we ought to die

for women, who were made for us, and that we should hesitate to require

of them what God bids them give us?”[327] That was the conclusion that

must be expected: everyone knows, in Calvin’s words, whither “all roads”

lead. So a woman was neither surprised nor panic-stricken in the hour of

battle. She had taken or ought to have taken her precautions; her first

care, as we have said, was to distribute her favours. She went forth to

the fight with a gallantry which some old fogies called impudence; her

sins were no longer sins of omission, like those of her grandmothers.

And that she often triumphed there is no manner of doubt. Margaret of

France, at the turning-point of the battle, is found as firmly fixed on

principles as Anne of France. Billon assures us that in Normandy, a land

of pretty women, where he would not care to go bail for a single man, he

would not hesitate to name a very large number of women whose virtue he

could guarantee with every confidence. Assuredly there existed stainless

women,—just the women to play with fire!

But did they always come off scatheless? No one will believe it.

Further, it must be remarked that the point of view of casuistry had

changed. The body was, so to speak, the sign-manual of the soul; just as

the base, passionless, sensual vice prevalent in the world seemed ignoble

and disgusting, so it was remembered that love had a purifying power. The

merciful words of the Gospel were recalled, and, remarkably enough, it

was those who were most rigorous in regard to themselves who showed the

most indulgence towards an error springing from sincere affection.

Margaret of France spreads her nets, like the Gioconda, but for the good

of others, for she knows whither the mist-enveloped paths lead; she

cannot tear her eyes from the vast and gloomy background of life, and all

that passes in front of it inspires her at times with cruel loathing.

She loves mankind, but without the least touch of fetishism; to look

aloft and not believe in any individual man is the condition of her

love; her sole consolation is the thought that Italian morals are worse

than French. Her approval of a German husband, who had the fantastic

notion of locking his wife up along with the skeleton of her lover,[328]

was so exaggerated that all her friends were compelled to laugh. And

yet, when pulled up short about the ethics of love, and asked if the

sin is venial or worse, she gets a little muddled. Assuredly, nothing

is more “untuneable and harsh” among the joyous strains of the divine

concert than the frailty of the flesh: “truth compels us to condemn it”;

but is there any need to get huffy, to decline to see any extenuating

circumstances, because the spiders web that has been centuries aweaving

is rent by one dab of the paw—because, in spite of all the cooings and

flutings, no one has succeeded in turning men into big babies instead of

villains, or even (I go this length) because in the heat of the battle

some women may have lost their heads and gone over to the enemy? Is

the conclusion inevitable that the outcome of platonism is necessarily

evil—more evil than anything else?

How stood the fashionable ladies who rebelled against platonism?... On

the principle that “the honour of a man and that of a woman are the

same,” and that a wife, whether from love or vengeance, has a right

to the same independence as her husband, it was the husbands’ game to

wink at things. Far from making an outcry and playing the Othello, they

meditated philosophically on their own position[329] and the virtue

of silence, and, drawing in their horns with something of fatalism,

could not find fault with their wives for “using their power” as they

themselves did. It was rare for a husband to kill his wife; wedlock had

become a stagnant pool of mutual indulgence, in which unlawful love

was but an incident so long as it left no more trace than a pebble

cast into the surface slime, or a bird flitting through the air. As to

believing that Lauras or Beatrices could still exist, not only did the

sceptics deny it outright, but they even declared that if Laura or

Beatrice were to revisit the glimpses of the moon, great would be her

disillusionment.[330]

The only matter that Louise of Savoy troubled about was to keep things

dark.[331]

Can we wonder that, in an atmosphere so saturated with immorality, many

even of the best-intentioned women allowed themselves to drift with the

tide, or that Salel, the Attic friend of Margaret, represents them even

on the shore of Acheron as still enchained to ungovernable love, and

imploring pardon for their tyrant?

When they succumbed, it was with a sublimity of passion which the world

almost always misconstrued. “The fortress of the heart, where honour

dwells, was so battered that the poor lady granted what she was never

a whit inclined to refuse.”[332] “You mean to say, then,” says a lady,

“that all is lawful to those that love, provided no one knows?” “In good

sooth,” replies the other, “’tis only fools who are found out.”[333]

Their love, fashioned out of dreams, thus dissolves into reality. Pure

women, platonists armed at all points, let themselves go from a spirit

of gentleness (“for pity in their spirits rules”), from a tenderness of

compassion, out of charity toward others, if not for themselves. They are

almost martyrs of love or kindliness, since their kindliness goes such

lengths as to be taken for love, just as their love, reserved as it is,

may be taken for kindliness. Unlike the anti-platonists, though they may

perchance be surprised into a fault, they surprise no one, they commit

no follies. It is the fault of poor human nature that platonic love does

not remain always a “stork love,”[334] as Montaigne calls it. There is

never a battle but some dead and wounded are left on the field. Pity the

dead by all means, but the survivors are already inviting those who have

never sinned to cast the first stone!

A woman “so cozened,” concludes Castiglione philosophically,

unquestionably merits such indulgence as is accorded to _messieurs les

assassins_. She was toiling, as Michelangelo said, “to lift souls to

perfection. Sensuality slays the soul.”