De planctu naturae

While I was reciting this elegy more and more often, with a lamenting melody, a woman seemed to hasten her approach to me, having glided down from the deeper palace of the impassible world. Her hair, sparkling not with borrowed light but its own, not merely representing the likeness of rays but by its native brightness surpassing nature itself, shaped the girl's head into a starry body. This hair, unfastening a double braid, without abandoning the heavens above, did not disdain to smile a kiss upon the earth. A certain narrow path, like a little lily's furrow, divided the hair's contest beneath a crossing slant, and that slant was never a detriment to her face, but rather governed its beauty. A golden hairband, gathering the gold of her hair into the dance of lawful order, marveled to find her face in harmony with it. For the appearance of the gold, following the color of her hair, produced a false conclusion for the sight. Her forehead, spreading into a broad plain, tinged with milky lily-white, seemed to rival the lily. Her eyebrows, starred with a golden gleam, straying neither into a thicket nor sunk into excessive thinness, held a middle course between the two extremes. The serene calm of her eyes, charming with a friendly clarity, offered the freshness of twin stars. Each nostril, embalmed with a honeyed fragrance, neither too humbly low nor unjustly prominent, presented a certain distinguishing mark. The perfume of her mouth offered to the nostrils a delicate feast of scent. Her lips, rising with a slight swelling, invited the recruits of Venus to kisses. Her teeth, in a certain harmony of their color, gave the appearance of ivory. The purple fire of her cheeks, kindled with the crimson of roses, made her face lovely with a sweet flame; for the pleasant whiteness felt a friendly balance, her face's purple wedded to its white linen. The polished, crystalline plain of her chin, circumspect with light, wore a silvery gleam. The not unjust length of her neck, moderated by its slenderness, did not allow her throat to be wedded to her shoulders. The little apples of her breasts graciously promised the ripeness of youth. Her arms, inviting the beholder's favor, seemed to ask for embraces. The even, balanced curve of her sides, stamped with the seal of just moderation, brought the beauty of her whole body to the height of perfection. As for the rest, which the more secret bedchamber kept hidden, faith declared it to be even better; for indeed, a more graceful face lay hidden within her body, of which her visible face displayed only a prelude. And although the joy of such beauty was so great, an inestimable weeping nevertheless tried to extinguish the laughter of this loveliness; for a stream flowing from the spring of her eyes proclaimed her mind's sorrow. Her very face too, bowed to the earth in chaste modesty, spoke in a certain way of an injury done to the girl herself; and a royal crown of a diadem, glowing red, sparkling with dances of gems, blazed upon her head from above, whose material, no counterfeit gold degenerating from its own honor, deceiving the eyes with a sophistical light, but rather its own nobility supplied its essence. In a miraculous circuit and eternal flight, this diadem, journeying from the east to the west, was carried back again and again to its rising by its recurring motion. And by exercising this same motion perpetually, from its excessive returning to its own starting point, the movement seemed idle and without purpose. Of the aforementioned gems, some offered to the eyes, at their proper time, new miracles of God with the new sun of their own light; but at another time, in the eclipse of their brilliance, they seemed to be exiled from the palace of the diadem. Others, set into the crown, perpetuating the vigil of their sparkling, kept an unending watch. Among these, a shining circle, starred with precious stones in the likeness of the zodiac's slant, interrupted with kisses the necklaces of their starry closeness. In this circle, a company of twelve gems, by successive and privileged splendor, seemed to demand precedence over the others. Also, in the front part of this same diadem, three precious stones, in the bold pride of their radiance, shone before the rest with a name above all names, one by one. The first stone bade the cold of night suffer exile in a blaze of light, in which, as the clever fictions of the picture told, the shape of a lion, engraved there, flashed like lightning. The second stone, not second to the first in light, shining in the bolder place of the aforesaid part, seemed, as if out of a certain indignation, to look down upon the other stones. In it, as the picture, that ape of truth, taught, a crab seemed to walk backward behind itself, advancing by retreating, moving forward by drawing back. The third stone made up for the poor splendor of the stone opposite it with the abundant riches of its own brightness. In it, just as the truth of the picture proclaimed, the shadowy offspring of Leda walked along, congratulating each other with a mutual embrace. In this way, three stones, equal in this honor and rank, set their throne on the opposing side. Of these, the first, imitating tears in droplets of sweat, saddened the gaze with a kind of imagined weeping. In it, as the fancy of courtly writing taught by its imagining, a certain young man's little jar received the flowing torrent. The second stone, driving away from its realm of heat all lodging by its icy numbness, claimed winter as its guest; in it, from a counterfeit fleece of goat's wool, the picture had woven the tunic of Capricorn. The third stone, putting on the face of crystalline light, prophesied the coming of winter. In it, the old man Chiron, by the constant bending of his bow, threatened wounds, yet never made good on his threats with actual effect. On the other, more indulgent and playful side, the kindly serenity of the gems delighted the eyes. Of these, the first, inflamed with a rosy crimson color, presented a rose to the sight; in it a bull, displaying the badge of its forehead, seemed to thirst for battle. Another, privileged with the temperate quality of its light, drew together the fellowship of sisters by the grace of its goodness; in it a ram, proud in the honor of its brow, claimed lordship over the flock. The third, showing an emerald greenness, carried within itself a remedy for refreshing the eyes; in it, beneath an imagined river, fish practiced, in their own nature, the exercise of swimming along the shore. On the opposite side of the throne, the beauty of the stars sparkled with a pleasing show of approval. Of these stones, the first, radiating with the golden sun of its own brilliance, displayed the grace of an untiring beauty, in which, as the figurative device of the carving showed, Astraea vied with the stars by a certain privilege of its own brightness. The second, luxuriating in no excessive splendor, nor begging for sparks of a needy brightness, rejoiced in a moderate flame; in this stone too, under an equal weighing, according to the rule of the painter's art, a set of scales promised judgments. The third, alternating its appearance in turns, now promised the benevolence of clear skies, now brought on the clouds of darkness; in it the reflected face of a scorpion threatened, with its expression, laughter, and with its tail's sting, tears. Beneath these dwellings of the twelve stones, a sevenfold company of gems, perpetuating a circular motion, carried on a pleasing dance with a miraculous kind of play; nor did this dance lack the sweetness of harmony, now playing wantonly in semitones, now growing young again with the moderate sonority of full tones, now proceeding with a more mature melody like a trumpet's, and by its modulation it stirred the desire of our ears, and offered to the eyes a prelude to sleep. But whereas a scarcity of listening earns offense for the ear, an excess of it brings on distaste; for from an overabundant supply of listening, the ear grows weary and faint. These seven stones, although held bound by no fastenings of joints to the diadem itself, never, by their absence, left the company of the higher stones orphaned. Now, the highest stone was a diamond, which, more sluggish than the rest in motion, more given to idleness, took an excessive length of time in traversing its wider circle. This stone grew so numb with the chill of such great cold that the kinship of its nature proved it born of the star Saturn. The second was an agate, which, as its course drew nearer to the others, transformed certain enmities; in it, while it also brought to maturity the favor and boyish good will of certain others by the imperial power of its own virtue, since by a close kinship of nature it was familiar with the trust of Jupiter, a gracious effect was seen to be at work. The third was an "astrites" stone, in which, with heat pitching its camp as ruling principle, by a certain continuity of property, the effect of the star of Mars was read; which, terrible in the threatening look of its shape, threatened the rest with destruction. The fourth was a carbuncle, which, bearing the image of the sun, casting beneath its wax-bright radiance a shadow over the rest, lulled to sleep the eclipsed lamps of its brothers, now commanding the others by the royal authority of its majesty to turn aside, now granting to their agitation a period of rest. With the sapphire, indeed, the hyacinth stone, following in its footsteps, waiting on it like an attendant servant, was never deprived of the sight of that aforementioned light, and within a short distance thrown between them, they run together in the same orbit, either following each other, or one, following as a star, yields to the other the honor of going before. Of these two stones, one carried the resemblance, by the harmony of its nature, of the planet Mercury; the other breathed forth the effect of the star of Venus. The last stone was a pearl, which, set into the border of the glowing crown, shining with a borrowed light, begged for support from the light of the carbuncle. This pearl, sometimes drawing near to the aforesaid light and thereby gaining, or else drawing away and thereby losing, submits its rays, in growing, as though in reverence to the carbuncle, so that, adorned again by its brotherly fires, and carrying around the renewed ornaments of its splendor, now nourishing, by solemn additions, the losses of its worn-down disk, now orphaned of its own light, it laments the loss of its own majesty. This stone, silvered with a crystalline gleam, shone with the effect of the moon. By all these splendors of stones, the serene nobility of the aforesaid diadem represented in itself the very image of the firmament. Her garment, however, woven from silken wool, covered in many-colored protection, served for the use of the girl's skin, its shifting variety of color, dyeing it, changing her face with many colors; which, at first whitened with the whiteness of the lily, struck the gaze. Second, as though drawn by a kind of poverty, as if laboring toward something better, it glowed, empurpled with the blood of blushing. Third, to the height of perfection, it delighted the eyes with a greenness, as if of emerald. This fabric, however, was made so extremely fine, escaping the searching of the eyes, that it had come to such a thinness of material that you would believe its nature to be the same as that of the air itself, in which, just as the picture pictured it to the eyes, a gathering of animals was being celebrated. There the eagle, after becoming a young man a second time and then an old man, was turning back once more into Adonis, away from Nestor. There the hawk, rendered violent and tyrannical by its subjects, made its demands upon them. There the kite, putting on the mask of a hunter, wore, by a stolen reverence, the disguise of a hawk. There the falcon stirred up civil war against the heron, yet not divided by an equal balance; for it ought not to be called a battle, where you strike and I only hide. There the ostrich, having set aside worldly life, dwelt in the solitude of the deserts, living a solitary life, as though made into a hermit. There the swan, herald of its own funeral, prophesied, with the instrument of its honeyed singing, the receipt due for its life. There nature poured such a treasure of beauty upon the peacock alone that you would afterward believe her to have gone begging because of it. There the phoenix, dead in itself, reborn in another, by a certain miracle of nature raised itself from the dead by its own death. There the stork, tithing its offspring, paid its tribute to nature. There, with the sparrow relegated to the smallness of a mere speck, in a pygmy's humility, the crane, by contrast, grew to a gigantic excess of size. There the pheasant, having endured the confines of its native island, destined to become the delight of princes, flew forth into our world. There the rooster, like a common astrologer, told the divisions of the hours by the clock of his own voice. There the wood-grouse, mocking the laziness of the domestic rooster, setting off on a journey abroad, wandered through the woodland provinces. There the profane owl sang the psalms of misery in a funeral lamentation. There the little owl was so foul with the dung-heap of its deformity that you would believe nature to have been drowsy in fashioning it. There the crow, foretelling things to come, was stirred up with idle chattering. There the magpie, painted with an uncertain color, kept an unsleeping care for the art of logic. There the jackdaw, hoarding stolen goods in praiseworthy thievery, showed proof of an innate greed. There the dove, made drunk with the sweet evil of Venus, labored in the wrestling-ring of love. There the crow, abhorring the disgrace of jealousy, denied that its offspring were its own pledges, until, by the evidence of their black color, it proved this point, as though arguing with itself. There the partridge shrank in horror, now from the assaults of the power of the air, now from the tricks of hunters, now from the prophetic barking of dogs. There the duck, together with the goose, under their own law of living, wintered in their river homeland. There the turtledove, widowed of her mate, disdaining to make any epilogue to her loves, refused the comforts of a second marriage. There the parrot, with the anvil of its own throat, forged the coinage of human speech. There the quail, not knowing the deceit of the dragon's shape, was deceived by the sophistries of an imagined voice. There the woodpecker, architect of its own little house, fashioned, with the chisel of its beak, a chamber within the holm-oak. There the hedge-sparrow, setting aside a stepmother's part, adopted, at her own maternal breast of tenderness, another's cuckoo-child as her son; yet this child, rewarded with capital wages, once it recognized its stepson, did not recognize it as its own son. There the swallow, returned from her journey abroad, plastered with mud her lodging beneath the roof-beam of her nest. There the nightingale, renewing the complaint of her own deflowering, playing the tabor with a harmonic sweetness, excused the disgrace of her smallness. There the lark, like a noble lyre-player, thoroughly taught the science of music not by the skill of study but by the mastery of nature, presented a lyre in her mouth, which, refining the tones into fine particles, divided the semitones into divisible pegs. There the bat, a hermaphroditic bird, held among the little birds the place of a cipher. These animals, although they lived there only allegorically, nevertheless seemed to exist there literally. A fine linen cloth, its whiteness adulterated with a shade of green, which the girl herself had afterward woven seamlessly and skillfully, growing wanton with subtle craftsmanship rather than cheapened by common material, served the office of a mantle; and this cloth, entwined with many embraces, took on the appearance of the color of water, in which, above the nature of any water-creature, a fable of picture-work commented in manifold particulars upon various species. There the whale, rivaling the cliffs in the crag of its own bulk, with the charge of its tower-like body, battered the little towns of ships. There the sea-dog, with the barking equivocation of its very name, indulging in no actual barking, hunted the hares of its own kind, sea-hares, in its watery groves. There the sturgeon offered the individual blessing of its own body's nobility to royal tables. There the herring, most common of fish, with the ample fellowship of its body, comforted the fasts of the poor. There the plaice, with the sweetened flavors of its body, redeemed the absence of meat in the austerity of Lent. There the mullet, with the sweet enticements of its flesh, seduced the palates of those who tasted it. There the trout, entering the sea's inlets and baptized in the ocean, was reckoned under the name of salmon. There the dolphin, by the constancy of its appearing, foretold the future assaults of the sea. There, in the loins of a siren-fish, a human face was to be read. To these inhabitants of the sea's region a middle portion of the mantle had been granted; but the remaining portion of the cloak belonged to the foreign fish, who, wandering through different waters, had made their home in the country of sweeter water. There the pike, by tyrannical exaction, not by the claim of merit, imprisoned its subjects in the workhouse of its own body. There the barbel, no less famous for the dignity of its own body, lived on familiar terms with the common rabble of fish. There the shad, keeping company with the season of spring, offering the delights of its flavor as one of spring's own delights, greeted human taste with the arrival of its own body. There the lamprey, pierced with many a window-like hole, was read by those at dinner as an introduction to fevers. There the eel, imitating, by a certain likeness of property, the nature of the serpent, was believed to be its granddaughter. There the perch, armored with the darts of its fins, feared less the assaults of the water-wolf. There the chub made up in its swollen head what it lost in the smallness of its lower body. These carvings, by the figurative device of the picture, elegantly figured on the mantle, seemed, as if by a miracle, to swim. Her tunic, however, embroidered with the work of many-colored embroidery, enclosed within itself the girl's maidenly body. This tunic, starred with many colors, gathered into a coarser material, aspired to the appearance of the earthly element. In the primary part of this garment, man, laying aside the sluggishness of sensuality, led by the chariot-driving of reasoning, penetrated the secrets of heaven. In this part, the tunic, suffering a division of its parts, showed the marks of the injuries done to it. In the remaining places, however, the parts, in elegant continuity, were in harmony, sustaining in themselves no discord of division. In these, a certain enchantment of the picture made the earthly animals seem to live. There the elephant, advanced into the air by the monstrous size of its body, doubled with manifold interest the mouth given to it by nature. There the camel, deformed with its swollen body, ministered, like a purchased slave, to the uses of men. There horns, usurping the place of a helmet, seemed to arm the buffalo's brow. There the bull, troubling the earth with its feet, thundering with its bellowing, sang beforehand the lightning-bolts of its own duel. There oxen, refusing the soldiery of bulls, gaped, like peasants, after servile tasks. There the horse, carried forward with a burning boldness, fighting alongside its rider, broke a lance together with the soldier. There the donkey, wearying the ears with its harsh braying, organizing as if by antiphrasis, committed a barbarism in music. There the unicorn, lulled to sleep in a virgin's lap, met the sleep of death from its enemies. There the lion, murmuring into the ears of its young the songs of its roaring, roused in them the small spark of life. There the she-bear, having given birth through the gates of her nostrils to shapeless offspring, licking them again and again into shape with the stylus of her tongue, coining them, brought them into a better form. There the wolf, lurking in hiding, usurped the office of a thief. There the leopard, playing the Nero more openly in its thievery, preyed upon the common herd of cattle not only in their fleece but in their very person. There the tiger violated the republic of its fellow cattle-citizens with a repeated shedding of innocent blood. There the wild ass, casting off the servitude of the donkey, manumitted into nature's own rule, dwelt in the boldness of the mountains. There the boar, flashing like lightning with the armor of its tusk, sold its own death to the dogs at the price of many a wound. There the dog, troubling the air with imaginary wounds, bit at the air with the persistence of its teeth. There the stag and the doe, made winged by the swiftness of their feet, winning their life by going ahead, cheated the unjust bites of the pursuing dogs. There the goat, clothed in a sophistical wool, seemed to offend the nostrils with a four-day-old smell. There the ram, robed in a nobler tunic, rejoicing in a plurality of wives, cheated marriage of its honor. There the little fox, casting off the ignorance of a brute animal, aspired to the cunning of a better man. There the hare, seized by a melancholy frenzy, terrified not by sleep but by the drowsiness of fear, dreamed of the coming of the dogs. There the rabbit, tempering with its fur the anger of our cold, overcame with its own flesh the assaults of our hunger. There the beaver, lest it suffer a division of its whole body at its enemies' hands, cut off the extreme parts of its body. There the lynx thrived with such clearness of sight that, by comparison with it, the other animals seemed bleary-eyed. There the marten and the sable, whose fur was asked to supply, with its own nobility, the half-finished beauty of cloaks, brought that beauty to its fullness. These figures of animals, this representation of a storied figure, gave, like a banquet of delight, to the eyes of those who beheld them. As for what the picture's industry dreamed up on the leggings and undergarment, buried within the outer garments, I have proven nothing with any certainty; but only, as certain fragile hints of probability taught, I suppose that there the wantonness of the picture had played, in its treatment, upon the natures of herbs and trees. There the trees, I imagine, were now clothed in purple tunics, now given hair of green leaves, now bringing forth the fragrant infancy of flowers, now growing old with a riper fruit. But since I recognized the sequence of this picture-work only by the slipperiness of mere probability, not by the certainty of true knowledge, I pass over this in buried silence. Her shoes, however, made of soft leather, followed so closely the very shape of her feet that they seemed, wonderfully, to have been born on those very feet, and inscribed upon them. On these shoes, hardly differing from true reality, shadowy flowers were made pleasant beneath the skill of the picture.

There, the shape of a rose, faithfully painted, straying only a little from its true face, matched, in its own crimson, the true purple, and had tinged the earth with its own blood. Joined with its companion flowers, there was present the fragrant, pleasing flower of Adonis, and the noble lily, with its own silver, proclaimed the fields and the low places of the valleys. There the thyme, arguing with its scent to stand apart, strove, envying the rest of the flowers, and, in fellowship with the flower of Narcissus, the streams laughed, playfully, with a quiet murmur. The columbine flower, with its flower-bearing face, outshone the morning star of all the flowers, and, speaking of the leisure of the spring season, the little bloom of the violet starred the wild strawberry plant, a face of the picture, full of favors. Here the likeness of the flowers had been bidden to live, which was a kind of royal charter, in a sense, yet one unknown to any writing thumb. These are the riches of spring, and its own mantles, the beauty of the earth, and its own stars, which the picture brought forth by its own arts, fashioning flowers with a sophist's skill. With these tunics of flowers, blooming green, the lavish grace of spring ennobles the meadows. These give it fine linen, those give it purple; which the wise right hand of the west wind wove.

On the chariot, the charioteer, and the retinue of Nature. Although these ornaments of her garments blazed with the full ardor of their brilliance, their splendor nevertheless suffered an eclipse beneath the star of the maiden's own radiance. Now on tablets of clay, by the service of a reed stylus, the maiden joined together various painted images of things; yet the picture, not clinging closely to the material beneath it, quickly faded away and died, leaving behind no trace of the images. And though the girl, by often bringing them to life again, made them live repeatedly, still, in the design of the writing, the images could not persist. The maiden, then, as we have already described, emerging from the border of the heavenly region into the hut of this passible world, was carried in a chariot of glass, drawn by the birds of Juno, disciplined by the yoke of none, but joined to it by their own free will. And a man, rising above the maiden's head, whose face breathed the mystery not of earthliness but rather of divinity, making up for the powerlessness of her feminine sex, guided the chariot's course with a modest order of direction. And when I gathered together, as it were in sheaves, the visible rays of my eyes to gaze upon the beauty of his dignity, they themselves, not daring to face such majestic loveliness, dulled by the lashing of his brightness, fled, all too fearful, back into the company of my eyelids.

At the coming of the aforesaid maiden, you would believe that all the elements were holding a festival, as if renewing their own natures. The firmament, as though with its own candles, lighting the maiden's path, commanded its stars to shine more fully than usual. Whereupon the divine light itself seemed to marvel at their boldness, that they dared to appear before its gaze, as it were, all too insolently. Phoebus too, showing a face more joyful than usual in meeting the maiden, poured out the whole wealth of his light. He also bade his sister, whom he had impoverished of the ornaments of her own splendor, to go out and meet the coming queen, her garment of gladness restored to her. The air, stripping off the tearful face of the clouds, burned with maidenly steps in the goodwill of a clear countenance; the air, which had first been troubled by the madness of the north wind's anger, now settled into rest in the favorable lap of the west wind. The birds, as if by nature's own inspiration, sporting playfully in the pleasing game of their wings, showed the maiden a face of veneration. Juno, who had long ago disdained the touches of Jove, was so intoxicated with joy that, by the frequent prelude of a glance, she incited her husband to the enticements of love. The sea, which before had raged with tumultuous waves, now, keeping holiday at the maiden's coming, promised an unbroken peace of tranquility. For Aeolus locked away the winds of storm in his own prisons, lest they stir up civil wars any longer in the maiden's sight. The fish, swimming along the surface of the waters, so far as the sluggishness of their senses allowed, adorned, with a certain festive gaiety, the coming of their mistress. Thetis too, even while celebrating her marriage with Nereus, resolved to conceive a second Achilles. Indeed, the beauty of the water-maidens would not only have stolen away the reason of men, but would have even forced the gods of heaven to forget their own divinity; emerging from their watery haunts, as though tributaries to the coming queen, they presented little gifts of scented nectar; and these being graciously received by the maiden, with a continual interlacing of embraces and repeated kisses, the maiden made known her love to these other maidens. The earth, long since stripped of its ornaments by the robbery of winter, took up, from the bounty of spring, a breathing tunic of flowers, lest, inglorious in ragged garments, it appear unfittingly before the young girl's sight. Spring, too, like a skilled craftsman in the weaver's art, wove garments for the trees, so as to applaud the maiden's steps, and these trees, in the drooping of their leafy hair, as if bowing their knees in a kind of adoration, made supplication to the young maiden. From these there came forth maidens, enriching the wealth of the material day with the day of their own beauty, and they carried, in cedar caskets, spices made from the choicest kinds of herbs, and, as though paying these as their own tribute to the young girl, they bought her favor with their gifts. The wood-nymphs, filling the royal chariot with flowers, at times made it bleed with roses; at other times whitened it with the pale petals of lilies. Flora generously presented to the maiden the linen garment she had woven for her own husband, so as to deserve his embrace. Proserpina, scorning the bed of her infernal husband, returning to the upper world, refused to be deprived of the presence of her own empress. The animals of the earth too, taught by some nature I know not, indulging more freely in play, learned to recognize the maiden's presence. Thus the whole universe of things, flowing to do the maiden homage, labored, in a wondrous rivalry, to win for itself the maiden's favor.

Flowery Zephyr had loosened the year from its bristling grip, quenching the wars of Boreas with his own peace. Drenched with a hail of flowers, he rained down the privet, and bade snows of these appear upon the meadows. Spring, like a fuller renewing his craft, mending the mantles of the fields, kindled their robes with the fire of crimson. He gave back to the trees the hair that winter had shorn away, restoring the garment that winter itself had taken. It was the season when the grace of spring, with the applause of the Dryads, spread abroad its lavish riches over the fields; when the infancy of the flowers, gaining greater strength, rising higher, withdraws from its mother the earth. when the violet, licking the mirror of earth, its cradle, with a new mouth demands the breath of the air. It was the season when the earth, its head starred with roses, vied with heaven, full of its own stars. when the almond tree, bearing the standards of the age's youth, proclaims its birth, and calls forth the joys of spring with its blossom; when the vine, its bosom bejeweled, embracing its husband the elm, thinks upon its own bearing of fruit. The sun's warmth outlawed the shadow of winter, forcing all the cold to suffer exile, when the illusory winter hid itself away in the deep woods, the shade that the fresh leaves of the woods had made. Now Juno had given her breasts of dew to the little flower, that her nursling might first suck milk from her own offspring. It was the season when the power of Phoebus rouses the dead grasses, and bids all things rise up from their graves; when the glad face of spring makes clear and calm the world, and wipes the tears of winter from its own face, so that the flower may be able to entrust itself to the good faith of the air, and winter's cold not scorch the first flower. when Phoebus visits the world, groaning under the numbness of winter, and greets it with a joyful light; when the age of time nearby lays down its old age, and the world, though older, begins to be a boy again; when Phoebus impoverishes the night of its own hours, and the dwarf day begins to become a giant; when the flock of sheep prepares lodging for Phoebus, and pays its tribute, the herd rejoicing in the sun as its guest; when Philomel celebrates the rites of her own spring, singing an ode of honeyed song with her mouth, in whose festival she plies the instruments of her throat, that with her own mouth she may proclaim her own god. when the lark, with a sweet sound, counterfeits the lyre, as she flies to the heavens and converses with Jove. A silvery brightness brought forth the wanton birds, and had bidden the day to be its own upon the rivers. You might see the varied running of the stream chattering, the murmur of its going was a prelude to sleep. And by the very look of its brightness, that spring was asking that a weary man might take up its cups.

So, in this youth of the delightful season, gladdened by no favor of things around her, the maiden could not moderate her earlier sadness, but, humbling her chariot to the ground, and gracing the earth with her own footsteps, she came to me with a modest step. And when I had caught sight of her, in the closeness of that place, I fell upon my face, and, wounded with amazement, I was emptied of my mind, and, buried wholly in the estrangement of ecstasy, I labored, neither alive nor dead, between the two. The maiden, raising me up in kindness, supporting my staggering feet, comforting me with the aid of her hands, and, weaving me into her embrace, sweetening my face with chaste kisses, cured me, weak as I was, of the sickness of my stupor with the honeyed medicine of her speech. And when she understood that I had been restored to myself, she painted for me, in the mental understanding of a material voice, an image, when, as though weaving together archetypal words in an ideal pattern, she brought them forth vocally into act.

"Alas," she said, "what blindness of ignorance, what estrangement of mind, what weakness of the senses, what infirmity of reason, has placed a cloud over your understanding, forced your spirit into exile, dulled the power of your senses, driven your mind to sickness, so that not only is your understanding deprived of the familiar knowledge of your own nurse, but, struck as if by the strangeness of some monstrous vision, your discernment should suffer an eclipse at the very rising of my appearance? Why do you make the knowledge of me a stranger to your memory, in whom my own gifts speak for me, gifts by which I have blessed you with such generous benefits? I, who from the very beginning of your life, acting as the deputy of God the Author, ordained by a fixed dispensation the lawful course of your life; I, who once brought forth into true being the matter of your body, when it wavered in the counterfeit essence of primordial matter; I, who, taking pity on its shapeless form, as it cried out again and again to me, sealed it with the seal of human form, and, its lack of decent shapes now made good, honored it with garments fashioned into something better; I, who, arranging within it the various workshops of the limbs for the body's service, and, within that same body, commanded the senses to keep watch like sentinels of a bodily city, so that, as watchmen against outside enemies, they might defend the body from outward molestation, so that thus the whole matter of the body, adorned with nature's nobler purple, going forward to its marriage, might be joined more agreeably to its husband, the Spirit; lest the husband, disdaining the deformity of his spouse, should refuse the marriage? I also marked out your spirit with vital powers, lest, poorer than the body, it should envy the body's successes. To it I assigned the power of native wit, which, as a huntress of subtle things, might capture them, once understood, in the pursuit of knowledge. Why too did I stamp it with the seal of reason, which, by the winnowing-fan of its own discernment, separates the empty husks of falsehood from the substance of truth? Through me too the power of memory serves you as a handmaid, which, in the cupboard of its own recollection, stores up the noble wealth of knowledge. With these two gifts, then, I have blessed each of the two, that neither might lament its own poverty, nor complain of the other's abundance. Just as, then, the aforesaid marriage was celebrated with my consent, so, at my discretion, that same marital union will come to an end. Nor is it in you alone, individually, but in each and every part of the universe, that the generosity of my power shines forth. I am she who, after the pattern and likeness of the great machine of the world, fashioned the nature of man, so that in him, as in a mirror, the written nature of the world itself might appear. For just as the harmonious discord of the four elements, a single plurality, a dissonant consonance, a dissenting agreement, holds together the structures of the world's royal palace, so the matched disparity of the four humors, an unequal equality, a shapeless conformity, a divided identity, builds together the edifice of the human body. And the same qualities that meet as mediators among the elements, these same qualities establish the firmness of peace among the four humors. And just as, against the fixed revolution of the firmament, the army of the planets fights with a contrary motion, so in man there is found a constant hostility between sensuality and reason. For the motion of reason, arising from the rising of the heavenly bodies, passing through to the setting of earthly things, turns round again in contemplation of things celestial. But, on the contrary, the wandering, planet-like motion of sensuality sometimes slides down, against the firmament of reason, into the west of earthly things. This latter motion leads the human mind down into the setting of vices, that it may die there; the former invites it toward the rising of virtues, that it may rise there. This one transforms man, degenerating him into a beast; that one potentially transfigures man into a god. This one banishes the light of the mind in the night of desire; that one illuminates the night of the mind with the light of contemplation. This one makes man run wild with the brutes; that one makes him converse with the angels. This one forces man into exile from his homeland; that one teaches man, even in exile, to find his homeland. Nor, in this matter, can the nature of man accuse the order of my dispensation; for by the counsel of reason I ordained such a contest of contradiction between these two combatants, that, if in this dispute reason should be able to bend sensuality to a refutation, the victory that goes before should not lack the reward that follows after. For rewards obtained by victories shine more beautifully than other gifts; and gifts bought by labors shine more pleasantly than all those given freely. For he deserves greater praise and honor who receives a reward by laboring than he who receives it by idling; for labor, going before, infusing a certain sweetness into the reward that follows, rewards the laborer with greater favor. In these things, then, and in the ampler gifts of nature, the world finds its own qualities in man; the providence of God governs all things. Consider how, in this world, as in a noble city, a certain majesty of the commonwealth is established by a fixed rule. For in heaven, as in the citadel of the human city, there resides, in imperial state, the eternal emperor, from whom an eternal edict has gone forth, that the particular natures of individual things be written in the book of his providence. In the air, indeed, as in the middle of the city, the heavenly army of angels, ministering by a delegated administration, applies to man its diligent guardianship; and man, indeed, dwelling like a foreigner in the world's suburb, does not deny obedience to this angelic soldiery. In this commonwealth, then, God commands; the angel acts; man obeys. God, by acting, creates man; the angel, by acting, brings him forth; man, by obeying, re-creates himself. God disposes a thing by authority; the angel arranges it by action; man submits himself to the will of the one acting. God commands by the mastery of authority; the angel acts by the ministry of action; man obeys by the mystery of regeneration. Now the course of our reasoning wanders too far, daring to raise its discussion to the ineffable mystery of the Godhead, for the understanding of which the sighs of our mind grow faint. Of this most orderly commonwealth, then, an image is reflected in man. For in the citadel of the head, sovereign Wisdom takes her rest, whom the other powers obey as demi-goddesses obey a goddess. For the power of native wit, and the faculty of reasoning, and also the power that recalls things past, dwelling in the different chambers of the head, burn with zeal in her service. In the heart, indeed, as in the middle of the human city, Magnanimity has set up her dwelling, who, under the rule of Prudence, professing her own soldiery, acts according as that same rule deliberates. The loins, however, as the suburbs, grant to the outermost part of the body the pleasures of desire, which, not daring to oppose the rule of Magnanimity, obey her will. In this commonwealth, then, Wisdom takes the part of the one commanding; Magnanimity, the concern of the one acting; Pleasure usurps the likeness of the one obeying. In the other parts, too, of the human body, the image of the world is figured. For just as, in the world, the benefit of the sun's heat is medicine to languishing things, so in man, heat proceeding from the foundation of the heart, gladdens and gives life to the parts of the human body. And just as the moon, too, in the machine of the world, exists as the mother of many humors, so the liver, in man, imparts a corresponding humor to the limbs. And just as the moon, deprived of the sun's light, grows faint, so the power of the liver, widowed of the life-giving comfort of the heart, grows sluggish. And just as the air, in the sun's absence, is clothed in darkness, so without the heart's benefit, the vital power breathes in vain. Besides these things, see how the world is put forward on the stage through the various successions of the seasons. Now it plays wantonly in the infancy of spring; now it advances in the youth of summer; now it ripens in the manhood of autumn; now it grows white in the old age of winter. A corresponding alternation of the season, this same variety, changes the age of man. For when the dawn of human life rises, the morning spring dawns for man; and when the course of life completes the longer boundary-marks of age, man stands at the noon of youth's summer. But when a longer life has completed, as it were, the ninth hour of its age, man passes into the autumn of manhood; and, with his age inclined toward its setting, and now the evening of life announcing old age, the wintry chill of old age forces man to grow white with its frosts. In all these things, the effect of my power shows itself ineffably, but nevertheless I have resolved to veil the face of my power under a great many figures for most people, defending its secret from being made cheap, lest, if I should impart to them a familiar knowledge of it, those things that flourished as precious while still unknown to them should afterward, once known, grow cheap. For as the common proverb bears witness: 'Familiar acquaintance with a thing is the mother of contempt.' And the trumpet of Aristotle's authority proclaims that: 'He lessens the majesty of secret things, who divulges secrets to the unworthy.' But lest, in this prerogative of my power, I should seem, out of arrogance, to detract from God, I profess most certainly that I am a humble disciple of the highest Master. For I, in acting, am not able to follow closely in the footsteps of God, who acts, but from afar, as if sighing, I look upon Him as He acts. His working is simple, mine manifold; his work sufficient, mine deficient; his work wonderful, my work changeable. He is unborn, I am born; he is the one making, I am the one made; he is the maker of my work, I am the work of the maker; he works out of nothing, I beg my work out of something; he works under his own name, I work under his name; he, by a mere nod, bids a thing exist, but my working is only a token of the divine working. And so that, with respect to the divine power, you may know my power to be powerless, know that my effect is a defect, and reckon that my strength is but weakness. Consult the authority of the theological faculty, to whose faithfulness you ought to give assent, rather than to the firmness of my own reasonings. For according to its faithful testimony, man is born by my action, and reborn by God's authority. Through me, he is called from non-being into being; through Him, he is led forward into a better being. For through me man is brought forth to death; through Him he is created anew to life. But from this mystery of the second birth, the ministry of my profession is dismissed; nor does such a birth need such a midwife; rather, I, by nature, do not know the nature of this birth, and for understanding these things, the keenness of my intellect fails, and the light of my reason is confounded; indeed, understanding itself is transformed when understood, and the senses are confounded by things beyond sense. And since, in all these things, natural reason grows faint, we venerate the mystery of so great a thing only by the firmness of faith. Nor is it any wonder, if in these matters theology does not show me its intimacy, since in many respects we hold views not opposed but different. I gain faith through reason; she gains reason through faith. I know, in order to believe; she believes, in order to know. I agree, knowing; she perceives, agreeing. I hardly see visible things; she comprehends incomprehensible things as in a mirror. I scarcely measure the smallest things by my understanding; she measures things immense by her reason. I walk upon the earth almost like a beast; she wages her warfare in the secret places of heaven. And though it is not my office to treat of these matters, I have nevertheless allowed my discourse to wander into them, so that, with respect to the surpassing power of God, you should not doubt that my power is diminished. But although my effect falls short when compared to the divine power, yet, when set beside human power, it far surpasses it. And so, in a kind of three-seated table of comparison, we may find three degrees of power, so that the power of God may be called superlative, that of Nature comparative, and that of man positive. All these things, without any inquiry into questions, grant you a familiar knowledge of me. And, to speak more intimately, I am Nature, who, by the gift of my own condescension, have made you capable of my presence, and have deigned to bless you with my company."

How Alan speaks to Nature. When, through these words, Nature had unveiled her face to me, and, by her admonition, as if by a preceding key, had unlocked for me the door of her knowledge, a small cloud of stupor evaporated from the borders of my mind, and, through this admonition, as though by the remedy of some potion, the stomach of my mind, as if in nausea, vomited up all the remnants of my confused fancies. Returning to myself, then, from the wandering of my mind, wholly restored, and prostrate again at the footsteps of Nature, I marked her feet, in place of a greeting, with the repeated pressing of kisses. Then, raising myself up, and unbending, with a reverent bowing of my head, as if before divine majesty, I offered her, with a living voice, the first-fruits of a greeting. Then, taking refuge in the aid of an excuse, I begged her goodwill with prayers seasoned with the honey of humility (lest she should attribute it either to the fault of my own feebleness, or judge it with the disdain of indignation, or ascribe it to the poison of ingratitude, that I had paid no tribute of joyful festivity to her arrival, but had rather been struck, by her appearance, as if by the strange apparition of some monstrous phantom, and had been put to sleep by the counterfeit death of ecstasy), saying that it was no wonder if, in the presence of such great dignity, the shadow of my mortality had grown pale; if, at the noonday of such great majesty, the small ray of my discernment had vanished into the evening of confusion; if, at the appearance of such great felicity, my own smallness had blushed with shame, since the dark fog of ignorance native to human frailty, the powerless dullness of wonder, and the frequent shock of stupor, are joined together by a kind of bond of kinship, so that, from their sociable fellowship, the frailty of human nature is like a pupil convicted by a teacher who is forming his character, one who, in the first beginnings of new things, in the wages owed to great things, is often accustomed to be darkened by ignorance, and struck by stupor, and often wounded by wonder. While, by this path of excuse, I was preparing for myself a favorable approach to the queen, and might more favorably earn her grace, and, besides, might gain for myself the confidence to hear greater things, I set forth for her examination a certain doubtful uncertainty of mine, which, by the force of too great disquiet, was troubling the lodging of my mind, and I went forth into these words of a question:

O offspring of God, mother of all things, Bond of the world, its stable link, Jewel amid earthly things, mirror for the fleeting, Morning star of the world. Peace, love, virtue, rule, power, Order, law, goal, path, guide, origin, Life, light, splendor, form, shape, Rule of the world. You who govern the world with your reins, Binding all things, made firm in a harmonious knot, And, with the glue of peace, wed The things of heaven to those of earth. You who, calling to mind the many patterns of that higher Mind, Coining each single kind of thing, Clothe matter with forms, and with your thumb Shape the mantle of form itself. You whom heaven favors, whom the air serves, Whom Earth honors, whom the wave reveres, To whom, as to the mistress of the world, Each single thing pays tribute. You who, chaining day to night in turns, Grant to the day the wax-bright torch of the sun, And, with the shining mirror of the moon, Lull to sleep the clouds of night. You who gild the pole with varied stars, Making serene the throne of our upper air With the gems of the stars, and filling heaven With its varied soldiery. You who, shifting the face of heaven Into ever-new shapes, transform even the dry Common mass of our air, endowing it With region, and bind it fast with law. At whose nod the world grows young again, The forest curls with the hair of its leaves, And the earth, clothed in your tunic of flowers, Takes pride in its beauty. You who bury the threats of the sea, and increase them, Cutting short the sea's raging course, Lest the tide of the ocean be able To bury the whole tract of land.

Alan's first question. Unlock for me, who ask, the cause of your journey: Why do you seek the earth, a stranger to the heavens? Why do you offer the gifts of your godhead To our lands?

The second question. Why are your cheeks wet with a rain of tears? What do the tears upon your face foretell? Weeping is a faithful enough tongue For inward sorrow.

Nature's answer. The maiden aforesaid, showing that the solution to this question stood waiting already at the threshold, said: "Do you not know that it was the earthly world's straying from its course, the disordering of the world's order, the neglect of the world's court, the injustice done to law, that forced me from the inner recesses of the heavenly mystery to turn aside into the common brothels of earthly things? If you were willing to gather up, in the loving affection of your mind, and store away in the treasury of your breast, what I would say, I would unravel the labyrinth of your doubt."

To this, then, with a checked and measured voice, I returned this answer in kind: "Nothing, O heavenly queen," I said, "do I hunger for with a more loving desire than the untangling of this question."

Solution to the first question. Then she said: "Since all things are bound, by the law of their origin, in obedience to my laws, and owe me the payment due as a lawful tax, almost all things, by the lawful rendering of their tributary due, regularly obey my edicts; but from this rule of the whole universe, man alone is excluded, an anomalous exception, who, stripped of the robe of modesty, and prostituted to the harlot's brothel of shamelessness, dares to stir up the tumult of a lawsuit against the majesty of his own mistress, indeed even to inflame, against his own mother, the rage of an inward war. All other things, to which I have lent the lesser gifts of my favor, are bound, by the condition of their own calling, in willing submission, to the sanctions of my decrees; but man, who has all but drained dry the whole treasury of my riches, attempting to unnature the very natures of nature, arms against me the wickedness of a criminal Venus. Consider how almost every single thing, in keeping with the promulgation of my edict, as the reason of its own native condition demands, discharges the statutes of my law. The firmament, driving all things round in its daily circuit, according to the teaching of my discipline, and not with any idle sameness of revolving, returns to the point from which it set out, and advances toward the point to which it goes. The stars, blazing for the honor of the firmament itself, clothing it with their own adornments, and completing the short day's-journeys of their own course, measuring out, in their varied circling, the distances of that same space, do military service for my majesty. The planets, according to the edict that has gone forth from my ordinance, restraining the onward drive of the firmament, journey toward the east against its force, and afterward make their way home again to the region of their own setting. The air, disciplined by my teachings, now rejoices with a favorable breeze, now weeps, as if in sympathy, with the tears of the clouds; now grows angry with the wranglings of the winds; now is lit up with flashes of lightning; now is shaken by the threatening roar of thunder; now is baked in the furnace of heat; now is roughened by the harshness of cold. The birds, marked out with their various natures, under the rule of my direction, crossing the waves of the air on the oarage of their wings, hang eagerly, with all their heart, upon my teachings; by the intervention of my counsel, the level plain of the sea, bound to the land in the firm ties of friendship, not daring to violate the sworn pledge of faith toward its sister, is afraid to wander beyond the fixed limit of its roaming into the dwelling-places of the land. Only at the pleasure of my will does it now grow angry into the wrath of a storm, now return to the peace of calm, now, lifted up in the pride of its swelling, pass into the likeness of a mountain, now stretch out, leveled, into an even plain. The fish, bound by the pledge of my provision, are afraid to depart from the rules of my canons. By the command of my edict too, the rains are wedded to the earth in a kind of nuptial embrace; and these, laboring toward the making of offspring, with an unwearied bringing-forth, never cease to be parents to the various kinds of things. The animals of the earth, under the scrutiny of my rule, profess various forms of service in obedience to my command. For the earth now grows white with the hoariness of winter, now grows her hair long with the tresses of flowers. The forest now is haired with the locks of its leaves, now is made bald by the sharp razor of winter. Winter buries the seeds hidden in the bosom of mother earth deep within her; spring lets loose those that were shut in; summer bakes the harvests; autumn shows forth its own abundance. And why do I let myself wander through each single thing in the course of my account? Man alone spurns the lyre of my governance, and runs mad beneath the lyre of a maddened Orpheus; for the human race, degenerating from its own noble birth, behaving like a barbarian in the joining of genders, and altering the rules of Venus, makes use of a far too irregular figure of grammar. Wandering away, then, from the correct spelling of Venus, man is found to be a sophist, a false writer. And likewise, avoiding the true analogy of the Dionaean art, he degenerates into a vicious inversion of word-order; and while he destroys me in such a question, he contrives, in his own madness, a wrenching-apart of me, his own mother. It grieves me that I have so often granted to men's natures the privilege of so many graces, men who, by their abuse, disgrace the very glory of beauty; who deform the fairness of form with the deformity of lust; who discolor the true hue of beauty with the dark stain of a counterfeit desire; who, in making the flower of Flora bloom into vice, rob it of its own bloom. Why did I adorn with a godlike beauty the face of Helen, who forced the true use of beauty to pass over into the abuse of harlotry, when, deserting the pledge of her royal marriage-bed, she foully bound herself in a pact with Paris? Pasiphaë too, driven by the furies of an excessive lust, under the guise of a cow, sophistically celebrating a bestial marriage with a brute beast, concluding for herself, by a still fouler false reasoning, was enclosed, to her own amazement, within the sophistry of the bull. Myrrha too, goaded by the stings of desire toward the sweetness of her own father, degenerating from a daughter's love, took on, with her father, the office that belonged to her mother. Medea, indeed, playing the stepmother to her own son, in order to seek out an inglorious deed of Venus, destroyed a glorious little work of Venus. Narcissus too, deceived by his own shadow into thinking it another Narcissus, wholly absorbed in that mere reflection, and believing himself to be another self, ran, from himself, into the peril of loving himself. Many other young men too, clothed by my favor in the honor of beauty, drunk with a love of money, have turned the hammers proper to Venus over to the service of the anvil's office. Such a multitude of monstrous men ranges abroad through the whole breadth of the world, by whose bewitching contagion chastity is poisoned. Indeed, of those men who profess the grammar of Venus, some embrace, as their own familiar practice, only the masculine gender, others the feminine, others the common, or promiscuous, gender; and some, as if irregular in their gender, are declined, out of due order, now in the feminine gender through the winter, now in the masculine through the summer. There are some who, disputing in the logic of Venus, in their conclusions, obtain by mutual exchange the rule proper to subject and predicate. There are some who, though playing the part of the subject, do not know how to be predicated. There are others who, only predicating, pay no attention to the lawful submission owed by the subject. Others, disdaining to enter the royal palace of Venus at all, keep company, at her very threshold, with a tearful game. Against all these the laws bring their complaint, statutes are armed, since they seek to have their own wrongs avenged by the sword of a punisher. Do not wonder, then, if I break out into these profane novelties of speech, since profane men dare to run wild in a far more profane fashion. For I belch forth such things in indignation, so that chaste men may hold the mark of modesty in reverence, while the unchaste may be shut out from the brothels of shamelessness. For the knowledge of what is evil is a useful caution, which brands with the guilty mark of shamelessness those who deserve to be so branded, and rewards those who are free of such things. Now the file of my solution has worn away the sharp edge of your question."

Solution to Alan's second question. "For this reason, then, going forth from the upper chambers of the heavenly palace, I have come down to the setting-place of this fleeting earthliness, so that, concerning the detestable excesses of men, I might set forth to you, as to my own intimate and secretary, a lament of complaint, and might determine with you what answer of punishment ought to be given to such an array of crimes, so that a punishment equal to the bite of the aforesaid misdeeds might bite back with the fitting reprisal of penalty."

Then I said: "O mediator of all things, were I not afraid that the abundance of my questions might provoke distaste in your kindness, I would set forth the darkness of another doubt of mine before the light of your discernment."

Then she said: "No indeed, share with my hearing all your questions, not only the young ones, but even those grown old with the rust of age, so that, by the firmness of our solutions, the pressing force of your doubts may be set at rest."

Alan's third question. Then I said: "I wonder why, in treating the fictions of the poets, you arm the barbs of your invective only against the plagues of the human race, when we read that the gods too limped along on that same crooked foot of straying? For Jupiter, carrying off the young Ganymede to the world above, carried a mutual, reciprocal Venus over into the one so carried off; and him whom he set up, by day, at his table, to serve him his wine, he made, by night, subject to him in his bed. Bacchus too, and Apollo, joint heirs of their father's wantonness, turned boys into women by pretense, not by the command of some divine power, but by the trick of a superstitious Venus."

Nature's response. Then she, tumultuously composing her face into a look of authentic serenity, said: "Are you, by usurping a question unworthy of the very appearance of a doubt, trying to give it the mere image and clothing of a real question? Or are you trying to lend credence to the shadowy fictions of the poets, which the craft of the poetic art has painted? Does not the elder treatise of philosophy, with the finer file of its discernment, eliminate those things that are debated in the childish cradle of poetic teaching? Do you not know how the poets, without any remedy of disguise, prostitute naked falsehood to their hearers, so as to intoxicate, as if enchanted, the ears of their audience with a certain honeyed sweetness? How they disguise that very falsehood with a kind of hypocrisy of plausibility, so that, through the images of their examples, they may stamp the minds of men upon the anvil of good conduct? Yes, on the outer surface, in the bark of the letter, the poetic lyre sounds a falsehood, but within, it speaks to its hearers a hidden meaning of a deeper understanding, so that, once the outer husk of falsehood has been thrown away, the reader may find, secretly within, the sweeter kernel of truth. Yet the poets sometimes join together historical events with fabulous jestings, in a certain elegant fiction, so that, from the fitting combination of different things, a more elegant picture of the very narrative may result. But nevertheless, when a plurality of gods is dreamed up by the poets, or when the gods themselves are said to have put their hands under the rod of Venus, in these things the shadow of falsehood is plain to see, nor, in this, is the poet found to have strayed from the true kind of his own calling. For though the dreams of Epicurus are now put to sleep, the madness of Mani cured, the sharp arguments of Aristotle refuted, the deceits of Arius exposed as false, reason proves the single unity of God, the world proclaims it, faith believes it, Scripture bears witness to it; in which no flaw at all is found, which no plague of vice assails, with which no motion of temptation joins battle. This is the splendor that never fails, the life unwearied, undying, the ever-welling fountain, the wise seed-plot of life's own seed, the principal first principle, the initial beginning of goodness. Although, then, as the poets have borne witness, many men have abused, quite literally, such terms belonging to Venus, that narrative nevertheless lies, whether in saying that they were gods, or that they themselves lurked in the schools of Venus, and it sinks into the evening of an excessive falsehood; and so I have drawn over this matter the cloud of silence, but have set forth other matters in the light of a true narrative."

To this I said: "Now I recognize that my question breathes the ember of far too much crudeness, but if some other poor little question of mine might dare to win the hearing of your dignity, I would ask something more, in asking it."

To this she said: "Have I not already, some time ago, without any obstacle of restraint, let loose the free reins of your asking?"

Fourth question. Then I said: "I wonder why certain portions of your tunic, which ought to be joined as closely as the weave of a marriage, suffer, in that part, a divorce of their union, in the very place where the dreamlike images of the picture represent the figure of man?"

Solution to the question. Then she said: "You can already gather, from what has been explained, what mystical meaning the figured parenthesis of that tear represents: for since, as we have said, so many men arm themselves with wrongs against their own mother, the vices, thereby establishing between themselves and her the greatest chaos of discord, they lay violent hands upon me in violence, they tear apart, piece by piece, my own garments, and force me, stripped (so far as lies in them) of the garments they ought rather to clothe with the honor of reverence, to play the harlot. In this covering, then, through this tear, it is depicted that, under the vicious assaults of man alone, my ornaments of modesty suffer the insult of being torn."

Then I said: "Now that the waves of my doubts have been calmed by the clear serenity of your solutions, my mind is granted a truce in which to press further questions. If it should please your kindness, I would eagerly wish to know—"

Alan's fifth question. "What reasonable reason, what undiscerning lack of discernment, what crooked misdirection of love, has so forced the spark of reason to sleep in man, that man, made drunk by the draught of sensuality's forgetfulness, should become an apostate from your laws; indeed, should even wage lawless war against your very laws?"

Solution to the question. To this she said: "If you wish to know the origin of so foul a plague, kindle the small flame of your mind to a higher pitch, and you will find a more eager appetite for understanding: let subtlety drive away dullness of wit, let steadiness of attention check the wandering flood of thoughts. For, taking my beginning from a higher point, I wish to weave the thread of my account from a more excellent starting-point of inquiry. For I do not wish, as before, to set forth my proposals in the plain, level ground of ordinary words, nor to profane profane things with profane novelties of speech; but rather to gild shameful things with the golden trappings of modest words, and to clothe them in the various colors of graceful speech. For it follows that I should give a purple sheen, with gilded readings, to the dross of the aforesaid vices, and perfume the vicious stench of such words with a honeyed fragrance, lest, if the stench of so great a dung-heap should reach the ears through too plain a telling, it should invite the people to the disgust of indignation, and to the vomiting of nausea. But nevertheless, at times, as we have already touched upon above, since it is fitting that our words be akin to the things of which we speak, the deformity of speech ought to be made to match the formlessness of the things themselves. But in the following treatise, lest the harshness of plain speech offend the hearing of my readers, or shamefulness find a place in a maiden's mouth, I wish to grant a cloak of pleasing speech to the aforesaid monsters of vice."

Then I said: "Now the hunger of my understanding, the keen edge of my burning wit, the ardor of my kindled mind, the steadiness and constancy of my attention, all demand those things which you promise."

Then she said: "When God wished to trace out, from the ideal chamber of his preconception, the fabric of the world's palace, wishing also to depict, by the real existence of that same thing, as if by a material word, the mental word that he had conceived from eternity concerning the constitution of the world—like the elegant architect of the world, like the goldsmith of a golden work, like the skillful craftsman of an astonishing craft, like the maker of a wonder-working work—not laboring with the aid of any outer instrument, not with the help of matter lying ready beforehand, not under the compulsion of some driving need, but by the command of his sole and free will alone, God fashioned the admirable beauty of the world's palace; and, assigning to the world's palace the various kinds of things, kinds set apart from one another by the strife of discordant genders, he tempered them into the harmony of a lawful order, gave them laws, and bound them with sanctions: and so, things that were opposed to one another by the opposition of their kinds, between which a natural gap had set opposites apart, he changed, joining them by the mutual kisses of a certain reciprocal relation, into the peace of friendship, turning the strife of their conflict into concord. So, then, with all things brought into harmony by the subtle, invisible chains of their joining, plurality returned to unity, diversity to identity, dissonance to consonance, discord to concord, in a peaceful union. But after the universal craftsman had clothed all things in the appearance of their own natures, and had wedded them all, one to another, in the lawful marriages of due proportion, wishing that, through the cycle of the mutual relation of being born and dying, stability might be granted to perishable things through instability, infinity through an end, eternity through time-boundedness, and that the ordered succession of things might be perpetually woven together by the repeated cycle of being born, he ordained that, stamped with the seal of an expressed likeness, along the lawful path of a propagation to be handed down, like things should be brought forth from like. Me, then, he appointed as his own deputy, as the coiner charged with stamping the seal upon the kinds of things, so that I, striking the images of things upon my own anvils, should not allow the thing so shaped to stray from the form of the anvil, but that, through my own working skill, the face of the thing copied should in no way stray from the face of the model, defrauded of the endowments of no natures. Obeying, then, the command of him who commands, and working, as it were, by stamping the various kindred things according to the image of the model, fashioning the likeness of the copy after the pattern of the model thing, and shaping like things, in conformity, from things alike, I have given back the sealed faces of each single thing. Yet I carried out the ministry of this work under the command of divine power in such a way that the right hand of the majesty above guided the hand of my own attention, since the pen of my writing would stray, in a sudden swerving off course, unless it were guided by the finger of the supreme disposer. But since, without the assisting craft of a subordinate craftsman, I was not able to polish so many kinds of things, and since it pleased me to dwell in the delightful palace of the ethereal region, where the quarreling of the winds does not destroy the peace of serenity, where the accidental night of clouds does not bury the untiring brightness of the upper air, where no injury of storm rages, where no madness of raging thunder threatens, I set Venus, skilled in an ineffable knowledge, as an under-deputy of my own work, in the suburb of the world, so that, under the direction of my own command, with the aid of the industry of her husband Hymenaeus and her son Cupid, laboring in the varied fashioning of earthly animals, fitting the craftsman's hammers regularly to their anvils, she might weave together, in an unwearied continuation, the ongoing line of the human race, and might repair the wrongs done by the hands of the Fates as they cut life's thread. While, in the course of this narrative, some mention of Cupid arose, I inserted the substance of this question, interrupting the aforesaid narrative with this parenthesis of my own words."

Alan's sixth question. "Ha, ha—unless I feared, by the offense of interrupting your speech, and by my hunting after so many questions, to incur the displeasure of your kindness, I would wish to learn the nature of Cupid, of whom your discourse has already made some slight mention, through the picture of your own description. For although many authors have depicted his nature under the wrapping cover of enigmas, they have nevertheless left us no sure trace of certainty: whose power and authority over the human race is read, by experience, to be so great, that no one, whether marked with the seal of nobility, or clothed in the graceful privilege of wisdom, or fortified with the armor of courage, or robed in the mantle of beauty, or endowed with the honors of other graces, can manage to exempt himself from the general dominion of Cupid's rule."

Solution to the question. Then she, with a measured movement of her head, and with words that promised a rebuke, said: "I believe you are serving, as a hired soldier, in the camp of Cupid, and are joined to him by a kind of close, familiar kinship; for you try, with such eager interest, to search out his inextricable labyrinth, when you ought rather to fit the attention of your mind, with greater care, to my own account, enriched as it is with the wealth of its judgments. But nevertheless, before the course of my speech passes on to what follows, since I feel compassion for the weakness of your human frailty, I wish, so far as lies within my power, to root out the darkness of your ignorance. Moreover, I am bound, by the pledge of my promise, to the solutions of your questions; and so, whether by describing it with a sure description, or by defining it with a lawful definition, I will demonstrate a thing that cannot be shown, I will untangle a thing that cannot be untangled; although this thing itself, bound by no obligation to any of nature's own workings, and not awaiting the searching-out of the understanding, could be marked out by the seal of no description at all. Let this description, then, be given of a thing that cannot be circumscribed; let this explanation go forth of a nature that cannot be explained; let this be held as knowledge of the unknown, let this be gained as the science of the knowable, tempered, nonetheless, to a restrained height of style:"

"Peace with hatred, faith with fraud, hope joined to fear: this is love, and madness mixed with reason. A sweet shipwreck, a light burden, a welcome Charybdis, a healthy sickness, and a hunger fully fed. A hunger that satisfies, a drunken thirst, a false delight, a joyful sadness, joys full of pain. A sweet evil, a bitter sweetness, a sweetness bitter to itself, whose smell is savory, and whose taste is bland. A welcome storm, a bright night, a shadowed day, a living death, a dying life, a pleasant evil. A sin worth pardoning, a venial fault, a playful punishment, a pious crime, indeed, a gentle wickedness. An unstable game, a stable illusion, a strength that is weak, a firmness that is fickle, a firmness that moves. A foolish reason, a mad good sense, a gloomy good fortune, a tearful laughter, a sickly rest. A soothing hell, a gloomy paradise, a pleasant prison, a spring-like winter, a wintry, evil spring. A savage moth gnawing at the mind, one that the purple robe of a king can feel, yet it does not pass over the cloak of a beggar either. Does not Cupid, working, by way of opposites, so many wonders, transform every kind of man? While that madness rages, Scylla lays down her own rage, and pious Aeneas begins to turn into Nero. Paris flashes with the sword like lightning, Tydeus grows soft with love, Nestor becomes young, and Meleager grows old. Thersites begs to borrow the beauty of Paris, Davus that of Adonis, and Adonis passes wholly into Davus. Crassus, though rich, is needy; Codrus, though needy, has abundance, Bavius gives forth songs, while the muse of Maro grows dull. Ennius speaks eloquently, and Marcus falls silent; Ulysses becomes foolish, and Ajax, by his very foolishness, grows wise. He who once conquered by resolving the sophistries of the learned is conquered by this monster, though he tames all other monsters. Any woman at all will rush headlong into wickedness, and of her own accord, if this madness should infect her mind: a daughter will kill her father, a sister her brother, or a bride her husband, by treachery, forestalling the hand of fate. And so, by a wicked ascent, she cuts off, out of due order, her husband's body, when, with a stolen sword, she reaps his head. A mother herself is forced not to know the name of a mother, and, in the very act of giving birth, plots treachery, while she who bears is herself a mother. A son is astonished to find a stepmother in his own mother, and treachery in place of loyalty, deceit in place of devotion. So too, in Medea, two names fight against each other equally, while she desires, at once, to be both mother and stepmother. Byblis did not know how to be a sister, or how to keep herself a sister, when she became far too fond a friend to Caunus. So too Myrrha, all too subject to her own father, was, in her begetter, a mother; in her father, a wife. But why should I teach you more? Every lover is forced to march beneath Cupid's spear, and swears his oaths to him. He does battle in all things; scarcely does anyone escape his rule; his thunderbolt and his anger strike everything. Against him, uprightness has no power, nor good sense, nor the grace of beauty, nor a flood of riches, nor the height of noble birth. Thefts, tricks, fear, anger, madness, fraud, violent impulse, error, sadness: these hold guest-right in his kingdom. In him, reason is to lack reason, and to have no due measure is itself the measure; and faith is to have had no faith at all. Setting sweet things before us, he takes for himself bitter ones; he brings in poison, ending the best of beginnings with a bad conclusion. Enticing, he ensnares; laughing, he mocks; anointing, he stings; and, showing affection, he infects; the lover, loving, hates. Yet you yourself will be able to curb this very pain, if you flee it; no better remedy is given. If you wish to avoid Venus, avoid the places and the times, for place and time give her the fuel she feeds on. If you pursue her, she flees; by fleeing, she is put to flight; if you yield, she yields; if you flee, she flees."

"Alas, with what headlong step does Virtue, overcome beneath vice, labor toward ruin? Every semblance of Virtue exults no more, the reins of madness are loosed by vice, the Lucifer of justice grows faint; scarcely does even a shadow of its shadow survive, and it mourns the extinguished star of its own honor, lacking light, abounding in night, while the lightning of crimes flashes across the world, the night of fraud clouds over the south wind: yet no stars of the virtues redeem the abyss of this night, the evening of faith settles upon the world, and the nocturnal chaos of fraud abounds. Faith grows faint through fraud, and fraud too deceives fraud with fraud, so guile presses upon guile, the world's customs lack the custom of custom, laws lack law, and right of its own tenor loses its rights; now without right does every right come to be, law thrives without law. The world degenerates; already the golden ages of the world degenerate; the world is now clothed by the poverty of iron, whom once nobility clothed in gold; now, now hypocrisy is what frauds seek as a cloak, and the reeking stench of crimes, that it may lend a cloak to its depraved odor, seeks for itself the balsams of the virtues. So the nettle cloaks the poverty of its form with roses, seaweed with hyacinths, dross with silver, dye with purple, so that faces may sometimes redeem their crimes. But crime strips off all its trappings, nor does it color itself with the light of justice: for vice glosses itself openly, fraud itself becomes the tongue of its own madness. What safety remains, when guile arms even mothers against their own flesh? When brotherly love labors under fraud, and the right hand lies to its sister? The right of honesty is reckoned reprobate, to observe the honest, and the law of piety, is dishonesty; to be chaste is now, for all, a shame. Without shame, the man who is not human strips himself of human practices. Degenerate, then, he puts on the degenerate acts of the beast, and thus, unmanning himself, is to be unmanned."

"Now from this artifice of my teaching, the theory of the amatory art shines forth; but through the book of experience, you will be able to acquire its practice. Nor should it seem strange if, in the aforesaid depiction of Cupid, I insert some notes of reproof, although he himself is bound to me by a certain tie of blood kinship; for it was not the smoky rust of slanderous malice, nor the fervor of blazing hatred breaking forth, nor the tyrant of envy raging outside, that drove me to these invective accusations, but rather that I might not seem to strangle in silence the evidence of truth that speaks for itself. For I do not fault the original nature of Cupid as dishonorable, if it is hedged in by the reins of modesty, if it is chastened by the bridle of temperance; if its shoot does not overstep its appointed bounds, or its heat does not boil over into excessive swelling. But if its spark has escaped into a flame, or its little spring has swollen into a torrent, the luxuriance of that excess demands the sickle of amputation, and the swelling of that overflow craves the comfort of medicine. For every excess disturbs the pace of tempered moderation, and the swelling of morbid abundance festers, as it were, into certain abscesses of vice.

The foregoing theatrical speech, then, having wandered off into playful frivolities, was served up as a first course to your youthfulness; now let my pen, grown a little more mature, return to the purpose of the narration I had set out to give.

As I taught above in passing, I appointed Venus over the propagation of earthly animals that must be given matter, so that in forging the various materials into things requiring matter, she might lay a foundation; while I myself, in the manifold purification of natures, in order that I might set my hand to the final polishing of the works, and so that the fidelity of the instruments might exclude any ferment of wicked operation, fashioned for her two lawful hammers, by which she might both guard against the snares of the Fates and present the manifold things of essence. I also assigned to her craft the noble workshops of the anvils, instructing her that, by fitting these same hammers to them, she should faithfully devote herself to the fashioning of things, and not allow the hammers to wander from the anvils by any deviation. For the office of writing, too, I had granted her a most capable pen, so that on the fitting tablets demanding the writing of that same pen, of which she had been made mistress by my bounty, she might, according to the little rule of my orthography, shape the kinds of things, lest I should let her stray from the path of proper description into the byway of false writing.

But since the genial coupling itself, in its ordered unions, was bound to join together the dissimilar things of different sexes for the carrying out of the propagation of things, so that in its couplings it might observe the canonical constructions of the art of grammar, and so that the nobility of its own craftsman might suffer no detriment to her glory through ignorance of any art, I taught her, under courtly precepts and masterly discipline, that very discipline which would admit the rules of the art of grammar into the artful unions of its constructions; but would exclude all others, irregular and redeemed by the excuse of no figure of speech. For since, on the testimony of grammar, the reason of nature has recognized two genders specially, masculine and feminine, although certain men deprived of their mark could, in my opinion, be reckoned under the designation of the neuter gender, nevertheless I impressed upon Cypris, under the most intimate warnings and the thunder of threats, that in her conjunctions, by reason of what is required, she should celebrate the natural construction only of the masculine and feminine genders. For since the masculine gender takes to itself the feminine by the requirement of a genial relation, if the construction of these genders should be celebrated anomalously, so that things of the same sex should be construed with one another, that construction indeed could earn no pardon from me, whether by the remedy of evocation or by the support of conception. For if the masculine gender should claim its like by a kind of unreasonable demand, no honesty of figure could excuse that joining of construction as anything but a vice, but it would be disgraced by the monstrosity of an inexcusable solecism.

Moreover, my precept enjoined upon Cypris that she, in her constructions, observing the ordinary rules of subject and apposition, should assign the thing marked by the character of the feminine sex to the office of the subject; but the thing specified by the masculine gender she should set in the place of the apposite, so that neither might the apposite presume to decline into the place of the subject, nor the subject be able to migrate into the region of the apposite; and even when each is governed by the other, the apposite should keep the property proper to the adjective, the subject the property proper to the subjective, as summoned by the laws of requirement. I further added that the Dionean conjunction should not take on the uniform habit of a transitive construction, nor the course of reciprocation, nor the winding path of a retransitive return, but should be content with the straight direction of transition alone, nor should it suffer the excessive interruption of any digressive nature, so that the active gender might pass over into the passive by a usurping assumption, or the same might return into the active by the disposition of its own property, or, while keeping beneath the letter of the passive the nature of the active, might take upon itself the law of a deponent term.

Nor should it seem strange if many of the greatest maxims, inscribed under the title of the grammatical faculty, suffer rejection from the dwelling of the amatory art, since that art admits into the bosom of her intimacy those maxims that obey the rules of her own teaching; but those which strive, with the assaults of a most eloquent contradiction, to storm her laws, she suspends under the exclusion of eternal anathema, although the authority of philosophical assertion confesses that most of the maxims are common to different faculties; while certain others have no license to range beyond the dwellings of their own disciplines.

But because I knew that Venus, a new combatant, was about to enter into conflict against such sharp oppositions of the Fates, lest Venus, through the evasiveness of some fallacy, should fear the constraining subtleties of Atropos's conclusion, I taught her that very discipline by which, according to the precepts of the art of debate, she might get beyond the mere forms of her own arguments. And I taught her how, in the deceitful arguments of an adversary, she might find the hiding place of the fallacy, so that she might more safely wage the agony of debate against the snares of the opposing side, and, by bringing forward an instance, refute similar arguments of opposition. I also enjoined that her syllogistic combination, content with the brevity of two terms, subject to none of the Aristotelian figures, should be woven together in the fitting arrangement of three propositions, to such a degree that, in each proposition, the greater extremity should perform the office of predication, while the lesser should be held by the laws of subjection. In the first proposition, indeed, the predicate should inhere in the subject by no mode of true inherence, but by the sole reason of an intrinsic contract; but in the assumption, by the reciprocal impressions of relative eyes, the greater extremity should be joined more expressly to the lesser. But in the conclusion, of the most express inherence, the connection of subject and predicate should be celebrated by a truer, carnal bond. This too was my counsel, that the terms of the Venereal combination, keeping the rights of analogical predication, should exchange their places by turns, with no pestilential retrogradation of conversion. And lest the fallacy of the consequent, born from the conformation of like things, should hinder the industry of Venus, I marked the terms with special signs, so that, by a free and familiar recognition, she might boldly know which terms the lower degree of subjection, and which the higher summit of predication, might claim by right of their own condition, lest, if an inconsistent combination of terms should not keep a proportioned relation in common, a uniform deformity of nonsense should be born.

But just as I wished to banish, by the incursion of a most hostile inhospitality, certain observances of grammar and dialectic from the schools of Venus, so too I forbade to the craft of Cypris the metonymic propositions of the rhetoricians, which mother Rhetoric, embracing them in the bosom of her own amplitude, forges together into her reasons with many honors, lest, by too harsh an excursion of transference away from its protesting subject, the reward should be alienated into something else: wit into crime, urbanity into rusticity, a figure of speech into a vice, and too much color into a discoloration.

With these instruments and marks of nobility, Venus passed from her heavenly dwelling into her earthly one. There, laboring and sweating with her auxiliary instruments to weave together the succession of the human race, and mending with a subtle needle whatever had been slain by the hands of the Fates, she knots these things together yet more subtly. And so she discharged the duties of her stipendiary office with the most dutiful diligence.

But because a mind grows weary and indignant from the sameness of a mother's satiety, and the appetite for carrying out one's purpose is extinguished by the daily onset of labor, the oneness of a task so often repeated began to plague Cytherea with distaste, and the effect of continued labor shut out the affection for laboring. She, therefore, preferring to be made effeminate by a barren idleness rather than to be exercised in fruitful labors, setting aside her workaday practice in favor of business, began, out of the desires of excessive idleness, to grow young again in a childish way. And since, wherever the torpor of idleness makes camp, from there the whole army of virtue is banished, and the barrenness of idleness is wont to bring about the fruitfulness of a wicked offspring. A flooding deluge of drink, too, foams over into excessive lusts, and the unbridled gorging of food belches up like feelings of surfeit and nausea.

Venus, goaded by these deadly furies, staining with the plague of adultery the chastity of the marriage bed owed to her own husband, began to fornicate in concubinage with Antigamus, and, entangled by the deadly suggestions of her adulterer, wrongfully changes her liberal work into a mechanical one, the regular into the anomalous, the civil into the rustic; and, having broken faith with my precept, disinheriting the hammers from the fellowship of the anvils, she condemns them to adulterous anvils instead. The native anvils themselves, lamenting the absence of their own hammers, seem tearfully to cry out for them. And she who used to raise the shield of defense against the sword of all-mowing Atropos is now bound to that very sword by the stability of a mutual pact of reconciliation, allowing the sickle of fate to range too freely over the harvest of the human race, and paying for the loss with no new origin of seed; but rather, destroying herself in her grammatical constructions, inverting herself in dialectical conversions, discoloring herself with rhetorical colors, she turns her art into a figure of speech, and that figure of speech into a vice: and while she perpetuates the enticements of concubinage with her adulterer through fornicating excesses, she receives from him, in place of a son, and is made mistress of a bastard instead. And since he rejoices in the charm of no delight, and wishes to bask in the pleasures of no playful joy, so that, as though by antiphrasis, jest is named from jestlessness, common usage stamped upon him his name.

Two sons, then, were given to Dione, differing in their disparate kind, unlike in the law of their birth, soon at odds in their titles, deformed in their craft. For Hymenaeus, in the bond of a shared-womb brotherhood bordering on kinship, whom a lineage of more excellent dignity exalts, begets for himself Cupid from Venus as a son; but Antigamus, sprung from a low and scurrilous stock, by his adultery playfully fathers for himself an adulterine son, Jest. The solemnity of marriage excuses the birth of the one; the vulgarity of a notorious concubinage accuses the begetting of the other. In the one, the urbanity of a father's civility shines forth; in the other, the rusticity of a father's incivility grows dark. The one dwells in silvery fountains bright with silver gleams; the other unweariedly frequents places condemned to everlasting dryness. The one has pitched his tents on a pleasant plain; the wooded places of the valleys please the other. The one spends the night unfailingly beneath a tent; the other continues his days and nights beneath the open sky. The one wounds with golden hunting-spears the one he hunts; the other pierces with iron javelins the one he strikes. The one makes drunk his guests with a slightly bitter nectar; the other destroys his with a draught of sour wormwood.

Now my speech has inscribed upon the little page of your mind how the ruinous blight of idleness nurtured an overwrought Venus, how the flooding of a deluge of drink works a poisonous conflagration, and how, taking its origin from the gorging of food, an elephantine leprosy of lust has struck down so many. Behold, over men languishing from the sharp fever of Venus, I have sung a plaintive song of sorrowful lament; now let us likewise tune the lyre of a complaining speech, in elegiac song, for others whom the sickly throng of other vices troubles. For many, while fleeing the yawning, devouring gulfs of gluttonous Charybdis, are shipwrecked by unexpected peril in the abyss of a malignant Scylla. Many more, while escaping the swollen onset of an impetuous torrent, are caught fast in the mire of a stagnant pool. Others, while, with cautious counsel, they avoid the precipices of an overhanging mountain, are dashed down by a sudden fall on level, even ground.

Fix these things, then, which I shall set forth, into your mind with the nail of a tenacious memory, and shake off the sleep of torpor with a watchful spirit, so that, roused with me by a mother's inmost feeling, you may grieve in sympathy with the shipwrecks of endangered men, and, armored with the shield of this preliminary warning, may confront the monstrous army of vices, and, if any wicked seeds should dare to sprout in the garden of your mind, may root them out with the sickle of a timely cutting."

Then I said: "Already my mind, cheered by the compendium of your teaching, inclines a most willing ear to your corrections."

Then she:

Alan's seventh question. To this, then, I said: "Since this general understanding wanders about like a runaway in open air, but understanding is truly befriended by particularity, I would wish that you should unfold, in the varicolored intervals of their most specific species, those vices which you enfold in a certain ball of generality."

Nature's reply. "Since it would be unbecoming to defraud the well earned reason of your request of the merit of fulfillment, it is right that each vice should be marked out for you one by one, with notes proper to itself. Since it has already been told how nearly the whole world is endangered by the general conflagration of impure Venus, it now remains to tell how that same world is shipwrecked by the most general flood of gluttony. For gluttony is, as it were, a kind of prelude to the carrying out of Venus's work, and a kind of antecedent to the consequence of lust. Know, then, that certain daughters of the ancient idolatry, though torn out to its very marrow, are striving in this present moment to restore their mother's rule, and to rouse her, revived, from the dead with certain ominous incantations; who, in the office of harlots, whitening their faces with the look of a fantastic affection, entice their lovers by deceitful allurement: who, under a sorrowful gladness, under a friendly cruelty, under a hostile friendship, sweet even unto ruin like the Sirens, holding out on their faces the melody of delight, lead their lovers on to the shipwreck of idolatry: one of these, if I may speak with a coined name suited to her proper nature, might fittingly be called Bacchilatry."

On excessive drinking. This Bacchilatry, robbing her lover of the little spark of reason, exposes him to the darkness of brute sensuality, and, in the manner of a harlot, makes her lover so drunk that he is compelled to court Bacchus with all too emphatic devotion, to such a degree that the drinker, bound to Bacchus by the chain of excessive delight, is believed to render to him the worship due to divine majesty. So much so that the man who worships Bacchus, generally unable to bear being separated from him even by the space of a room, does not allow his god to lodge long in the little vessels of others, but, so that the divinity of that same god may attend upon him more intimately, shuts him up in the cask of his own belly. But because the vessel of the stomach generally cannot long sustain the divinity of so great a guest, that same god shamefully evaporates, either through the arctic pole of the eastern gate, or through the antarctic of the western region. Often, too, the worshipper of Bacchus builds a lodging for Bacchus in cups made powerful by the honor of their material, so that the divinity of that same god might shine forth more divinely in a golden vessel; whence that god, vying in brightness with ethereal splendors, contending in greenness with emerald colors, and surpassing most flavors with the majesty of his own flavor, provokes the sons of drink with the sophistic dignities of his own properties, so that they might celebrate Bacchus, as though he were the secret of an ineffable divinity, with an ineffable love. And these men, animated by him, lest any part of that divinity remain undrained, swallow Bacchus down to the very dregs, and so shamefully force their god to descend into the infernal abyss of the belly, and, thus passing from the specific to the most general kind of drinking, they ascend to the superlative degree of drunkenness. This plague is hostile not only to men of common, plebeian stock, but even makes the haughty necks of prelates bow down to it, for whom the graces of Bacchus, which the grace of nature has poured out upon him, do not suffice, but who, seizing also upon a reedy attraction, now glory in Bacchus wedded to roses, now breathe in the fragrance of some other flower, now claim for him a certain privilege in fellowship with hyssop; and, enriched from without with the endowments of other things, they swallow him down the impetuous Charybdis of gluttony, to such a degree that they fall into shipwreck without a sea, weeping without sorrow, lethargy without illness, and the sleep of drunkenness without slumber. And while these men, struck by the force of drunkenness, devote their effort to psalm singing, breaking the verses with too much interruption, they intersperse the unwelcome north wind of their crapulence.

On excess in food. Nor is it only the aforementioned lust for drink, but also a doglike avidity for food that ensnares so many, whose disordered pleasures and ill-composed thoughts dream up ever new preparations of food for themselves. And while they pay out too abundantly to the tax collector the daily debt owed to their appetite, the overabundant collector is forced to render payment back to his own debtor. These men treasure up whatever they possess in the strongbox of the stomach. And although that deposit is not gnawed by the tooth of corroding rust, nor stolen away by the cunning of a pilfering thief, yet it vanishes, more shamefully, through the more shameful robbery of a digesting heat. These men invite their purse to vomit forth its coins, and their strongbox to a nausea of money, so that they may flatter the tax collecting stomach all the more carefully. Within, they enrich the belly with the riches of foods; without, they stand in bare and simple poverty. This plague, not content with common lowliness, advances still more deeply to prelates, who baptize salmon and pike, and other fish marked out with an equal nobility, tortured through various martyrdoms of stewing, corrupting the office of baptism, in a font of sacred pepper, so that, baptized by such a baptism, they might attain the grace of a manifold flavor. At the same table, a creature of the land is submerged in a flood of pepper, a fish swims in pepper, a bird is bound fast in that same viscous sauce: and while so many kinds of animals are imprisoned together in the single dungeon of the belly, the creature of the water marvels to find itself entombed in the same sepulcher with the creature of the land and the kind that belongs to the air. And if these were given license to depart, the very width of the door would scarcely suffice for their going out. These aforesaid plagues build the bridge by which one arrives at the brothels of excess. These are the introductions by which one enters upon the art of thieving. These give birth to diseases, and sow poverty. These are the nurses of discord, the sisters of madness, the mothers of intemperance, the huntresses of uncleanness. Through these, the human race oversteps the bounds of moderation, sets aside the reins of temperance, breaks the seals of chastity, and pays no heed to the grace of my bounty. For although my generosity procures so many courses for so many men, and rains down so many abundant dishes, yet these men, ungrateful for that grace, abusing all too unlawfully what is lawful, loosening the reins of gluttony, while they exceed the measures of eating, extend the lines of their drinking without limit; and, their palates seduced by the sharpness of salted things, so that they may drink often and much, are all the more often compelled to thirst.

On avarice. There is also another daughter of idolatry, whom, if the propriety of a name may keep its kinship of meaning in the word, it is fitting to call, by a fitting term, Coinolatry. This is that malice by which money is made a god in the minds of men, by which the authority of divine veneration is shown to a coin, by which, where money speaks, the trumpet of Tullian eloquence grows hoarse; where money serves as a soldier, the lightning flashes of Hectorean warfare fall silent; where money fights, Herculean virtue is overcome. For if anyone is armed with money, as though with silvery breastplates, the torrent onset of Tully, the lightning charge of Hector, the strength of Herculean virtue, and the shape shifting cunning of Ulysses are counted as nothing; for so far does the hunger for possession spread that the subtlety of dialectic grows mute, and the civility of rhetoric grows faint. Where the fullness of coin pleads its case, now Tully sells the very coinage of his own eloquence, now Lucretia exchanges the jewels of her modesty for gold; Penelope lays down, at a price, the honor of her twenty years chastity; even Hippolytus, should he hear the whispered pleadings of money, would no longer play the stepson against his stepmother's advances. For if money should whisper in a judge's ear, the lyre of Orpheus, the song of Amphion, and the muse of Virgil are all drowned out by the voice of money. Now the rich man, shipwrecked in the depths of his own riches, thirsts for wealth with the burning of a dropsical thirst, and, set in the very midst of it, suffers the torment of Tantalus. The poor man too, although he cannot in fact actually practice avarice in matter, nevertheless retains within himself its archetype of stinginess. Alas for grief! the burdens of metal bestow honors, weighed out according to the weight of the metal. Now it is not Caesar but money that is all in all, since it runs through, as a mediator, every single honor, from the least particular up to the most general. Money is our patriarch; it enthrones bishops and archbishops. It fits some to the offices of archdeacons; and it matches others, in turn, to the affairs of other dignities and offices. What more is there to say? Money conquers, money rules the world, money commands all things. What good does it do, with Ptolemy, to pursue the fleeing courses of astronomy, elusive in its subtlety, by a running course of subtlety; to investigate the prophecies of the stars, the seemingly wayward errors of the planets; with Euclid, to search out the secrets of geometrical riddles; to descend in understanding to the depths of the sea; to reach the height of the heavens with the measures of the intellect; with the Milesian, to discover the harmonious friendships of musical proportions; with Pythagoras, to examine the battles of numbers by the power of multiplication; with Tully, to stud a speech with the stars of rhetorical colors; with Aristotle, to divide the false from the true with the two edged sword of dialectic; with Zeno, to clothe falsehood in the sophistic tunic of probability; with Donatus, to weave together words in the agreement of their accidents, when in our times wisdom is rewarded with the wages of no profit, when the favorable breeze of fame extols her not at all, while money itself buys the titles of honor and the heralds of praise? And yet wisdom alone truly stands preeminent above every possession. A noble possession, which, though scattered, is gathered in; though spent, returns again; though made public, receives increase! Through her, the noble treasure of knowledge is born in the secret inner chambers of the mind, and the fruit of inward delight is acquired. She is the sun by which the mind grows bright in darkness, the eye of the heart, the delightful paradise of the soul. She turns the earthly into the heavenly, the perishable into the immortal, man into god, by the authority of a deifying transformation. She is the true remedy of our wandering exile, the sole comfort of human calamity, the singular morning star of man's night, the special redemption of your wretchedness, whose keen sight no mist of the air confounds, whose working the density of the earth does not hinder, whose gaze the depth of the water does not dull. Although, therefore, among many who grow brutish through the fickleness of the senses, she languishes in excessive contempt, yet among those who have fanned the original spark of reason back into flame, she is not defrauded of the gift of renown. For although prudence disdains the pleasing applause of a fantastical flattery, yet, since it is the glorious property of true fame to despise those who court her and to court those who despise her, she is won by fleeing from her, and lost by pursuing her. Therefore, even if you see money reigning among certain men, and prudence lying low, riches serving as soldiers, and wisdom sent into exile, still, with a victorious spirit, trample down beneath you the weight of riches belonging to that cowardice, and pursue prudence with the inmost love of your affection, so that you may be able to gaze, with an unhindered eye, deep into the very bedchamber of wisdom, our mother." Then I said: "I would wish that, with the reins of reproof let loose, you would attack the daughters of avarice yet more to the heart." Then she, turning the course of her narration to the sharpest bites of invective, said: