_Tullia._
And I too, whom thou makest so much of, have undergone it, as thou.
Naught is more daring than a bridegroom, whom every delay doth
exasperate exceedingly, until he gathereth that flower of his bride.
_Ottavia._
I soon felt some hard and warm mass between my thighs. He forced me
to open; with a robust effort he directed that thing against my body
and that slit. But I, having mustered up strength, threw myself to the
other side, and slipping my left hand between us both, I laid it on
that place where the fray was so furiously raging.
_Tullia._
Thou couldst with one hand ward off so powerful a catapult?
_Ottavia._
Yea. “O naughty man,” would I say, “why dost thou annoy me thus? Let me
go, if thou lovest me: by what crime have I deserved this torture?” And
tears flowed from my eyes: but such was the state of my mind, that I
did not even dare open my mouth or utter a cry to call for help.
_Tullia._
Withal Caviceo did not even pierce thee with his lance[91]? it did not
enter into thy trench[91]?
[91] Erotic terms in English, French and Latin slang, respectively,
for the _penis_ and female _pudendum_. (_C.f._ Farmer, _op. cit._).
_Ottavia._
I seized it and held it aside, but unlucky event! I felt myself
completely drenched with a regular shower like fire, and, naked as I
was, wet up to the navel. I put my hand to it again; but when falling
on that sort of slimy fluid with which the mad fellow had flooded me,
my hand recoiled from fright and horror.
_Tullia._
Therefore neither was he vanquished nor thou victorious, since he was
very near carrying off a real victory.
_Ottavia._
Caviceo was far more agreeable to me since that day. Nor do I know the
powerful desire that doth agitate my soul. I ignore what I long for,
and cannot mention it. All I know is that Caviceo pleaseth me far more
than all mortals; I expect from him alone the supreme pleasure which I
do not understand, as I ignore what it may be like. I desire naught and
yet desire....
_Here we end our extract from Luisa’s Dialogues. We shall have
occasion to quote from them again in subsequent volumes of Anthologica
Rarissima._
_EXCURSUS_ to _THE SKIRMISH_.
Nicolas Chorier, the author of the _Dialogues of Luisa Sigea_ (the book
is commonly called the _Aloisia_ or the _Meursius_, after the name of
the supposed author or translator) was born at Vienne, Dauphiny, in
1612; he received a law-doctor’s degree in 1639, and practised the
profession of lawyer at the Court of Aids in his native town.[92] A
man of cultivated mind, a passionate lover of letters, a first-rate
Latinist, he devoted only a very limited part of his time to causes of
the bar.
[92] We are quoting from the English translator’s “Notice of Nicolas
Chorier” in the Liseux edition already mentioned.
While passing out of the Jesuit Academy, and during the course of his
law studies, he tried his hand at a variety of works both in French
and Latin.... The composition of the _Aloisia_, or at least the first
draft, for he must often have retouched this chief work, may be traced
back to that time. “I wrote then,” he tells us in his _Memoirs_,
“_Epistles_, _Speeches_, a _Political Dissertation_ on the French
alliance with the Ottoman Empire, and two _Satires_, the one Menippean,
the other Sotadical.”[93] ...
[93] The Sotadical Satire is so-called after Sotades, who lived three
centuries before Christ, and whose erotic poems are unfortunately
lost.--English Translator’s note. According to a note in _Priapeia_
(Cosmopoli, 1890, _Privately Printed_), Sotades, the Mantinean poet,
was the first to treat of Greek love, or dishonest and unnatural
love. He wrote in the Ionian dialect, and according to Suidas he was
the author of a poem entitled _Cinædica_ (Martial, 2. 86). The title
would leave us in no doubt as to the trend of the work. (Cinædus =
he who indulges in unnatural lust; Cinædicus = pertaining to one
who is unchaste.--_Smith’s Latin English Dictionary._) _C.f._ also
Sir Richard Burton’s “Sotadic Zone” in the _Terminal Essay_ to _The
Thousand Nights and a Night_ (_op. cit. sup._).
It was about the year 1660 that he had, according to all probability,
the first edition of the _Aloisia_ secretly printed in Lyons. The work
was supposed to have been written in Spanish, in the 16th century, by
an erudite young girl, Luisa Sigea, whose father, Jacques Sigée, a
native of France, had quitted his country to settle down at Toledo.
(Luisa Sigea, who was born at Toledo about the year 1530 and died in
1560, says the English translator in a note, knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
Syriac and Arabic. She was styled the Minerva of her time.) The Spanish
work was lost; but there remained a Latin manuscript translation of it,
which Chorier, in order to secure himself, attributed to the learned
Dutchman Joannes Meursius, dead twenty years before.... Chorier died in
1692; he left several manuscript works behind him, some of which have
since been printed.