Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme

“ Here stand my two daughters, the which I will direct, albeit they are not so well accomplished as they should be, to bear you company after the French fashion, to wit to laugh, dance, play and talk freely, modestly and honourably, even as you do at the Court of France. And I would gladly enough offer myself for one; only ’twould be very irksome to a young Prince, handsome and gallant like yourself, to have to entertain an old woman, worn out, tiresome and unlovable such as I. For verily and indeed youth and age do scarce accord well together. ”

“ At the last was she so fired by such contemplations and sights and longings as that she did bid a long farewell to her virtue and her marriage vow, and did practise new love with a new lover.
This is how a woman’s beauty doth kindle and inflame her, constraining her to have resort to such, whether husbands or lovers, as may satisfy her desire; while ’tis always the nature of one love to lead to another. Wherefore being thus fair and sought after of some admirer, and if she disdain not to answer to his passion, she is at once in the snare. ”

“ He did take her from him to send her to Rome, there to live out the rest of her days as a wretched slave,—if Massinissa had not found a remedy to save her from this fate. The Conqueror’s glory had been fairer and nobler, if she had appeared at Rome as a glorious and stately Queen, and wife of Massinissa, so that folk would have said, as they saw her go by: “Look! one of the fair vestiges of Scipio’s conquests.” Surely true glory doth lie much rather in the display of great and noble things than of mean and degraded. ”

“ Moreover he had a right beauteous and worthy subject, to wit the fair Queen Blanche of Castille, mother of Saint-Louis, of whom he was not little enamoured, but indeed most deeply, and had taken her for his mistress. But in this what blame or what reproach for the said Queen? Though she had been the most prudent and virtuous of women, yet could she in any wise hinder the world from loving her and burning at the fire of her beauty and high qualities, seeing it is the nature of all merit and high perfection to provoke love? The whole secret is not to yield blindly to the will of the lover. ”

“ Myself once saw the fair Duchesse de Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers) at the age of seventy, as fair of face, as fresh-looking and lovable as at thirty; and verily she was well loved and courted by one of the greatest and most gallant Kings in all the world. I may tell her age frankly, without wrong to the beauty of this fair lady, seeing whenever a lady is loved of a great King, ’tis sure sign perfection [320] doth abundantly reside in her, and make her dear to him. And surely that beauty which is given of heaven should never be spared in favour of heaven’s demigods. ”

“ We have yet among us to this day Madame de Nemours, of yore in the April of her beauty the wonder of the world, which doth still defy all devastating time. I may truly say of her, as may all that have seen her with me, that she was erst the fairest dame, in her blooming days, in all Christendom. I did see her one day dance, as I have told elsewhere, with the Queen of Scots, they twain all alone together and without any other ladies to bear them company, by way of a caprice, so that all such, men and women, as did behold them knew not to which to adjudge the palm of beauty. ”

“ Well! if at that moment the gallant Abbé chanced to pass, what more natural than for the fortunate gentleman to seize and buttonhole him? Then he would recount his incomparable good fortune, adding a hundred piquant details, and drunk with his own babbling, enumerate one after the other the most minute particulars of his intrigue, ending by letting out the name of the husband at whose expense he had been enjoying himself. Love is so simple-minded and so charmingly selfish! Every lover seriously thinks each casual acquaintance must of course sympathise actively in his feelings. ”

“ The best proof of the position he was able to win at Court is this Book of Fair and Gallant Ladies which has come down to us as its result. Amid all the gay and boisterous fêtes of the time, and the thousand lights of the Louvre, men and women both smiled graciously on our Author. His perfect discretion was perhaps his chief merit in the eyes of all these love-sick swains and garrulous young noodles. The instant a lover received an assignation from his fair one, his joy ran over in noisy fanfaronnades. A happy man is brim full of good-fellowship, and eager for a confidant. ”

“ The game of love, whereat youth takes its delight, may be likened to a chess-board. On a chess-board we lay down the pieces,—dames, ladies; then ’tis the time to marshal our men, and herein we have but to make the best game we can. Many play the masterful king; and is it not merely fair play, and an abomination of dame Nature, that a man should make his game in hearty, joyous wise? ”

“ Well, to draw to an end, no need to be astonished that the Spanish lady named above did hold the maxim she did enunciate good of all such fair ladies as have been greatly loved of others, and have loved, and do love, themselves, and do take delight in being praised, albeit they may have but little left of their by-gone beauty. But yet ’tis ever the chiefest pleasure you can give them, and the one they do love the most, whenas you tell them they are still the same, and are in no wise changed or aged, and above all those of them which grow not old from the waist downwards. ”

“ How many of these Lesbian dames have I seen who, for all their customs and habits, yet fail not at the last to go after men! Even Sappho herself, the mistress of them all, did she not end by loving her fond, favourite Phaon, for whose sake she died? For after all, as I have heard many fair ladies declare, there is nothing like men. All these other things do but serve them but in the lack of men. And if they but find a chance and opportunity free from scandal, they will straight quit their comrades and go throw their arms round some good man’s neck. ”

“ Catherine hated Mary Stuart, his young Queen, whose only fault was to have exaggerated in herself all the frailties together with all the physical perfections of a woman; and dreadful words had been whispered with bated breath about the Queen Mother. An Italian, deprived of all power while her husband lived, insulted by a proud and beautiful favourite, yet knowing herself well fitted for command, she had brought up her children with ideas of respect and submission to her will they were never able to throw off. ”

“ And ’tis easy to judge by her beauteous face that she hath other hidden beauties of great charm and parts which are not seen. Just as by looking at the noble façade of a fine building, ’tis easy to judge that within there be fair chambers, antechambers and closets, fair alcoves and privy places.” In many another spot likewise hath she displayed her beauty, and no long while since, in this autumn of her days, and especially in Spain at the marriage of Monsieur and Madame de Savoie, in such wise that the admiration of her and her charms did remain graven in that land for all time. ”

“ I do know of a certain gentleman, a very gallant and honourable man, which only by having seen at Rheims at the Consecration of the late King, the lovely leg, in a white silk stocking, of a great and very fair lady, a widow and of tall stature, from underneath those scaffolds they erect for ladies to see the ceremony from, did fall so deep in love with her as that he grew well nigh desperate with passion. ”

“ Again when you reflect how a man doth brave, rumple, squeeze and make light of his lady’s finery, and how he doth work ruin and loss to the grand cloth of gold and web of silver, to tinsel and silken stuffs, pearls and precious stones, ’tis plain how his ardour and satisfaction be increased manifold,—far more than with some simple shepherdess or other woman of like quality, be she as fair as she may. ”

“ Besides, which is best, Summer or Winter, when one is in bed? ’Tis the greatest delight in all the world for lovers, man and maid, to cling together and kiss close, to entwine one with other, for fear of the nipping cold, and this not for a brief space but for a long while, and so right pleasantly warm each other,—all this without feeling aught at all of the excessive heat Summer doth provoke, and that extreme of sweating that doth sore hinder the carrying out of love. ”

“ But this Cleopatra was mistress of such happy phrases and such witty conversation, with such wanton ways and seductive graces, that Antony did forget all else for love of her.
Plutarch doth assure us, speaking of sundry quips and tricks of tongue she was used to make such pretty play withal, that Mark Antony, when he would fain imitate her, was in his bearing (albeit he was only too anxious to play the gallant lover) like naught so much as a common soldier or rough man-at-arms, as compared with her and her brilliant ways of talk. ”

“ This is why ’tis not becoming for a woman to dress as a boy for to display her charms to the more advantage,—unless indeed it be merely to don a dainty, gallant cap with the Guelf or Ghibelline feather stuck therein, or perched above the brow, in such wise to be distinctively neither male nor female, after the fashion our ladies have of late adopted. Yet even this doth not suit all women equally well; the face must be saucy and of just the right expression to carry it off, as we have seen in the case of our Queen Marguerite of Navarre. ”

“ I have heard speak of a lady of the great world, and of no mean lineage neither, who for some while did follow the same life, and went thus to the common brothels in disguise, to make trial of this way of existence, and get gratification of her passions,—so much so that one night the town-guard, while making their rounds, did actually arrest her unwittingly. ”

“ For truly in Summer time, instead of embracing tight and pressing together and squeezing close, a pair must needs hold loosely and much apart. Then Winter is best in this, say the ladies, according to the doctors: men are more meet for love, more ardent and devoted thereto, in Winter than in Summer.
I knew once in former days a very great Princess, who was possessed of much wit, and both spake and wrote better than most. One day she did set herself to compose verses in favour and praise of Winter, and the meetness of that season for love. ”

“ Let us discourse a while of kindly cuckolds, such as are good fellows, of placable humour, men easy to deal with and of a holy patience, well humoured and readily appeased, that shut the eyes and are—good-natured fools.
Now of these some are predestined of their very nature to be so, some know how it is before they marry, to wit, know that their ladies, widows or maids, have already gone astray; others again know naught of it at all, but marry them on trust, on the word of their fathers and mothers, their family and friends. ”

“ There is a question I have seen debated on the subject of women of years, to wit: which doth bring the greater glory, to love a woman of years and have the enjoyment of her, or to so do with a young one. Not a few have I heard pronounce for the older woman. For they would maintain that the foolishness and heat which be in youth are of themselves debauched enough already and right easy to undo; whereas the prudence and coldness that would seem natural to age cannot but with difficulty be led astray. And so they which do succeed in corrupting such win the higher repute. ”

“ While Montaigne tested the world and society by the light of his shrewd common sense, Brantôme accepted them without question or reflexion. Montaigne was essentially a thinker, Brantôme was merely a reporter; Montaigne was a moralist, for Brantôme the word morality had no meaning. Montaigne criticised his age, Brantôme reflected it. That indeed is Brantôme’s chief value, that he reflects his age like a mirror, but it must be added that he reflects chiefly its more trivial, not to say its more scandalous side. ”

“ And ambassadors from foreign lands, when they did return to their own country, would ever find more delight in tales of the beauty and wondrous excellence of the divine Flora than in describing the greatness of the Roman State. And above all would they extol her generosity, a thing contrary to the common bias of suchlike dames; but then she was out of the common altogether, seeing she was of noble origin.
Eventually she did die so rich and opulent that the worth of her money, furniture and jewels were enough to rebuild the walls of Rome, and furthermore to free the State of debt. ”

“ Tallemant tells a tale of gallantry between two daintily worded sentiments. Voltaire in this as in all departments shows an incontestable superiority of wit and verve. There is nothing new in La Fontaine; ’tis always the same wondrous charm, so simple in appearance, so deep in reality. As to Bussy, a man of the world and a gentleman, but vicious, spiteful and envious, his Histoire amoureuse is his revenge on mankind, a deliberate publication of extravagant personalities flavoured with wit. ”

“ So now, to draw to an end, I do maintain and declare: that all seasons be meet for love, when they be chosen suitably, and so as to accord with the caprice of the men and women which do adopt the same. For just as War, that is Mars’ pastime, is made at all seasons and times, and just as the God doth give his victories as it pleaseth him, and according as he doth find his fighting men well armed and of good spirit to offer battle, so doth Venus in like wise, according as she doth find her bands of lovers, men and maids, well disposed for the fray. ”