that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite,
to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a
greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows
wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops
the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till,
having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed
the bottom of their matrix. Now my legislator--[The Pope who, as
Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]--
should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and
more fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than
permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own
fancy; instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and
desire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certain
friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the
opportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use. What
mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys
make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the
ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture. And what do we know
but that Plato, after other well-instituted republics, ordered that the
men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view
of one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account? The
Indian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooled
the sense of seeing. And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what
they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth
slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they
pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention
to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that
nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than
they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more
sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes. Livia was wont to say,
that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue. The Lacedaemonian
women, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the
young men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves
little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves,
says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe.
But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful
power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day
of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours,
for fear of tempting us again in that holy state. In brief, we allure
and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir up
their imagination, and then we find fault. Let us confess the truth;
there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame that
accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is not
more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuous
wife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, and
that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not be
more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices. Both we and
they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural
than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to
our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.
The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this
vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages
it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go
to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation,
rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so
difficult a guard. Do not they very well see that there is neither
merchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after this
sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with
labour and hunger?
"Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes,
Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes,
Permutare velis crine Licymnim?
Plenas aut Arabum domos,
Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula
Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat,
Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,
Interdum rapere occupet?"
["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had,
or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of
Licymnia's hair? or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns
her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger
denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and
sometimes herself snatches one!"--Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]
I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass
the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in
the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary
examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand
continual and powerful solicitations. There is no doing more difficult
than that not doing, nor more active:
I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's life
than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most
noble, as being the hardest to keep:
"Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,"
says St. Jerome. We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most
difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to
them the glory too. This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;
'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain
pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they
will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more
esteemed for it, but also much more beloved. A gallant man does not give
over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity,
and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;
we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no
allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed. 'Tis stupidity
and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a
virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exercise
of a noble and generous soul. They may acknowledge our service to a
certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us
not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them,
and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for
the difficulty of it. Why should they not give ear to our offers and
requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?
wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be
worse than they seem? A queen of our time said with spirit, "that to
refuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a
self-accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her
chastity who was never tempted."
The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a
little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the
frontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter. He that has beaten
and pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied
with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the
difficulty. Would you know what impression your service and merit have
made in her heart? Judge of it by her behaviour. Such an one may grant
more, who does not grant so much. The obligation of a benefit wholly
relates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincident
circumstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant
you that little, than it would do her companion to grant all. If in
anything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do not
consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give;
the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the
place. Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in
the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all
the advantage. I have known some whose reputation has for a great while
suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world's
universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;
every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and
said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced
to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour. Somebody told Plato that
all the world spoke ill of him. "Let them talk," said he; "I will live
so as to make them change their note." Besides the fear of God, and the
value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves,
the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I were
they, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputation
in so dangerous hands. In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasure
little inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who had
some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and common
table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secret
liberality of ladies. In earnest, 'tis too abject, too much meanness of
spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headed
people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charming
favours.
This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice
springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human
minds, which is jealousy:
"Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?
Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;"
["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?
Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose."--Ovid, De
Arte Amandi, iii. 93. The measure of the last line is not good;
but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled
Priapus.]
she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole
troop. As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a passion that,
though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me. As to
the other, I know it by sight, and that's all. Beasts feel it; the
shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out
of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and
crushed it. We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the
examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been
touched with it, and 'tis reason, but not transported:
"Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter
Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas."
["Never did adulterer slain by a husband
stain with purple blood the Stygian waters."]
Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were
cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in
those days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife
had used him so.
"Ah! tum te miserum malique fati,
Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"
["Wretched man! when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be
dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment
of thy adultery."--Catullus, xv. 17.]
and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his
wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,
"Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
Sic fieri turpis:"
["And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself
like to be so disgraced."--Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]
and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him;
complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his
affection:
"Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit
Quo tibi, diva, mei?"
["Dost thou seek causes from above? Why, goddess, has your
confidence in me ceased?"--Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]
nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers,
"Arena rogo genitrix nato."
["I, a mother, ask armour for a son."--Idem, ibid., 383.]
which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,
"Arma acri facienda viro,"
["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."--AEneid, viii. 441.]
with, in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leave
this excess of kindness to the gods:
"Nec divis homines componier aequum est."
["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods."
--Catullus, lxviii. 141.]
As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators
ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where
this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:
"Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."
["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her
husband's daily infidelities."--Idem, ibid.]
When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance,
'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it
insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it
has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of
good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all the
diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and
the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the
husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:
"Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."
["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."
(Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"
--Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]
This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good
besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste
and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and
wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity
quite contrary to its cause. This held good with one Octavius at Rome.
Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and
solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this
excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and
mortal hatred: he killed her. In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of
this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,
and cabals:
"Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"
["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."
--AEneid, V. 21.]
and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to
excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.
Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it the will that we
would have them restrain? This is a very supple and active thing; a
thing very nimble, to be stayed. How? if dreams sometimes engage them so
far that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in
chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust and
desire. If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in,
then? Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men in
pursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes,
into every woman's arms who would accept them. The Scythian women put
out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might
have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser. O, the furious
advantage of opportunity! Should any one ask me, what was the first
thing to be considered in love matters, I should answer that it was how
to take a fitting time; and so the second; and so the third--'tis a point
that can do everything. I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have also
sometimes been wanting to myself in matters of attempt. God help him,
who yet makes light of this! There is greater temerity required in this
age of ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; but
should women examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather
proceeds from contempt. I was always superstitiously afraid of giving
offence, and have ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, he
who in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time
the lustre. I would in this affair have a man a little play the child,
the timorous, and the servant. If not this, I have in other bashfulness
whereof altogether in things some air of the foolish Plutarch makes
mention; and the course of my life has been divers ways hurt and
blemished with it; a quality very ill suiting my universal form: and,
indeed, what are we but sedition and discrepancy? I am as much out of
countenance to be denied as I am to deny; and it so much troubles me to
be troublesome to others that on occasion when duty compels me to try the
good-will of any one in a thing that is doubtful and that will be
chargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and very much against my will:
but if it be for my own particular (whatever Homer truly says, that
modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person), I commonly commit it
to a third person to blush for me, and deny those who employ me with the
same difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me to have had a mind
to deny, when I had not the power to do it.
'Tis folly, then, to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is so
powerful in them, and so natural to them. And when I hear them brag of
having so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retire
too far back. If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptive
thing, though it be not altogether to be believed, at least they say it
with more similitude of truth. But they who still move and breathe, talk
at that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason that
inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation; like a gentleman, a
neighbour of mine, suspected to be insufficient:
"Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta,
Numquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam,"
[Catullus, lxvii. 2, i.--The sense is in the context.]
who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, went
about boldly swearing that he had ridden twenty stages the night before:
an oath that was afterwards made use of to convict him of his ignorance
in that affair, and to divorce him from his wife. Besides, it signifies
nothing, for there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no
opposing desires. It is true, they may say, but we will not yield;
saints themselves speak after that manner. I mean those who boast in
good gravity of their coldness and insensibility, and who expect to be
believed with a serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with an
affected look, when their eyes give the lie to their tongue, and when
they talk in the cant of their profession, which always goes against the
hair, 'tis good sport. I am a great servant of liberty and plainness;
but there is no remedy; if it be not wholly simple or childish, 'tis
silly, and unbecoming ladies in this commerce, and presently runs into
impudence. Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools; lying
is there in its seat of honour; 'tis a by-way, that by a back-door leads
us to truth. If we cannot curb their imagination, what would we have
from them. Effects? There are enough of them that evade all foreign
communication, by which chastity may be corrupted:
"Illud saepe facit, quod sine teste facit;"
["He often does that which he does without a witness."
--Martial, vii. 62, 6.]
and those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be feared;
their sins that make the least noise are the worst:
"Offendor maecha simpliciore minus."
["I am less offended with a more professed strumpet."
--Idem, vi. 7,6.]
There are ways by which they may lose their virginity without
prostitution, and, which is more, without their knowledge:
"Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive
malevolentia, sive inscitia, sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit."
["By malevolence, or unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife,
seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes
destroyed it."--St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, i. 18.]
Such a one, by seeking her maidenhead, has lost it; another by playing
with it has destroyed it. We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions,
we interdict them; they must guess at our meaning under general and
doubtful terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous:
for, amongst the greatest patterns that I have is Fatua, the wife of
Faunus: who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any
man whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband's
stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men. They must
become insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally
lies in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom,
not only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but with
singular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue.
Such a woman has been, who prized her honour above her life, and yet has
prostituted it to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her
husband's life, and who, in so doing, did that for him she would not have
done for herself! This is not the place wherein we are to multiply these
examples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as
I can give them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for
examples of ordinary lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us who
surrender themselves for their husbands sole benefit, and by their
express order and mediation? and, of old, Phaulius the Argian, who
offered his to King Philip out of ambition; as Galba did it out of
civility, who, having entertained Maecenas at supper, and observing that
his wife and he began to cast glances at one another and to make eyes and
signs, let himself sink down upon his cushion, like one in a profound
sleep, to give opportunity to their desires: which he handsomely
confessed, for thereupon a servant having made bold to lay hands on the
plate upon the table, he frankly cried, "What, you rogue? do you not see
that I only sleep for Maecenas?" Such there may be, whose manners may be
lewd enough, whose will may be more reformed than another, who outwardly
carries herself after a more regular manner. As we see some who complain
of having vowed chastity before they knew what they did; and I have also
known others really, complain of having been given up to debauchery
before they were of the years of discretion. The vice of the parents or
the impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor, may be the cause.
In the East Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custom
permitted a married woman to prostitute herself to any one who presented
her with an elephant, and that with glory, to have been valued at so high
a rate. Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of his
country Elis, made it his trade to prostitute the beauty of his youth, so
long as it lasted, to any one that would, for money thereby to gain his
living: and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his laws
gave liberty to women, at the expense of their chastity, to provide for
the necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been received
in many governments before his time. And besides, what fruit is there of
this painful solicitude? For what justice soever there is in this
passion, we are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: does
any one think to curb them, with all his industry?
"Pone seram; cohibe: sed quis custodiet ipsos
Custodes? cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor."
["Put on a lock; shut them up under a guard; but who shall guard
the guard? she knows what she is about, and begins with them."
--Juvenal, vi. 346.]
What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?