CHAPTER IV

THE EMBROIDERY OF LIFE

Meanwhile, there is a life to live, there are things to do! A woman must get happiness from the exercise of all her activities, both spontaneous and enforced—even more than from her drawing-room or her jewels. We propose to pass in review as large a number of these occupations as possible, to show that, small or great, there is not one but appears to a woman a source of joy and glory if she mingles love with it. Everything she does, however infinitely humble, be it kneading bread for her husband or washing his feet, is vivified with a transfiguring radiance whenever the spirit of abnegation animates her toil, whenever she reflects that this husband is not the sole man existing in the world, nor a sort of domestic drill-sergeant, but represents the eternal idea sounding in every heart. We have already seen these noble women in days of trouble quivering with devotion at the bedside of their sick husbands; it is the same in days of happiness. They find strength in abstraction; the things that surround us so marvellously change their aspect, contract, expand, according as we take them for what they are or glorify them with thoughts of higher things—thoughts, not idle fancies, whether roseate or gloomy, whether too brilliant in prospect or too distressing in reality. It is chiefly in domestic life that abstraction is useful. The woman must steep her hands in beauty, fill her eyes with love, and then look at things courageously and truthfully. Everything, even vice itself, appears frigid, vulgar, and commonplace to materialists; women ought (yes, ought, not merely can) to render everything warm and gay—even virtue.

Let us take haphazard some of the doings which most strikingly exhibit them—their eating, walking, country habits, Sunday occupations. From each of these they are able to strike the sacred spark. We shall see how everything is transfigured in their hands.

First then, their eating. Nothing is more material in itself, and nothing better lends itself to spiritualisation.

A house was characterised by the way in which a formal dinner was managed; this was the touchstone of true style. On the table was placed the massive and weighty silver plate, the family treasure which the mistress of the house kept under lock and key, and which was worth a fortune. The plate of some families was valued at a million francs. On days of high festivity the table blazed with ponderous gold, but they were content with silver for private dinners.

The regulation of the menu was rightly regarded as a matter of such difficulty and importance that men of the highest merit made it their study to lay down fixed principles on the subject. Fulvio Orsini[195] has acquainted us with all the best traditions of ancient Rome. Platina,[196] the Raphael of the tribe, published under the auspices of Cardinal Roverella a treatise which may be cited as a perfect model.

In countries strange to the new ideas, men thought only of their palates, _os sublime_, in the ironical phrase of Brandt.[197] In Germany guzzling, at rare intervals but in enormous quantities, was the only joy. So late as the end of the century Montaigne asked a former ambassador in Germany how often he had been obliged to get drunk in the service of his sovereign, and the ambassador reckoned up with all gravity, and declared that he had got off with three occasions, all told.

The French traditional practice was the same. Fairs, markets, pilgrimages, weddings, baptisms, funerals, anniversaries, meetings of gilds or corporations all served as pretexts for village gourmandisings characterised by enthusiastic drunkenness, and often enlivened with brawls in which both sexes took part. At the end of one of these feasts we find the wife of the gild president dealing most energetically with a toper who had called her an “old witch.” The châteaux were no less fond of high feeding.[198] Historians ought to consult the kitchen account-books! Without them they will never succeed in arriving at well-founded judgments; we know no human document more convincing, none which enables us with more certainty to reconstruct a bygone mode of life. Unhappily the old kitchen books of France reveal a deplorable spectacle; it is one long procession of herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, innumerable poultry, rabbits and partridges by the dozen, small game in hundreds, and pigs in disgusting profusion. The whole of the delicacies consists, even in the most distinguished houses, of a few cloves or sticks of cinnamon to make hippocras of. As to the wine, it is wine of the current vintage drawn from the cask! Caesar Borgia must have been greatly surprised one Friday, in the winter of 1498, while staying with Madame de la Trémoille, to see filing in a course of two hundred and fifty fish. The next day, again a fast day, the avenues leading to the château were thronged with carts loaded with fish, in honour of the visit of King Louis XII.; in particular there arrived seven hundred and fifty eels. This was in Rabelais’ country. Further, in regard to tutelary geniuses of the table, they were acquainted with none but appalling spectres—Dame Gout,[199] Madam Gravel, or my Lady Apoplexy, to whom they gaily made their salutations.[200]

Then comes philosophy to preside at their feasts with salutary effect. It teaches men that dining is a spiritual function. The table becomes idealised. Much thought is devoted to its decorations, to regaling the eyes with the sight of beautiful birds in their charming many-hued plumage—peacocks, storks, or small and pretty birds strung on skewers. The mistress of the house shows her art in having the daintiest courses served on gold and crystal—things which while tickling the palate content the mind; first dessert, composed of fruits and sweetmeats, then compounds of eggs or fish, light dishes, in which pistachios, pepper, ginger, rosemary, thyme, peppermint—everything that has sweetness or aroma insinuates itself and figures in manifold combinations. Just as in Plato’s _Symposium_, people take their places at table not to eat but to talk, because conversation can have no warmer, more cheerful, more restful setting. Often in the platonist system some incomparable lady presided, and everything centred in her; from her eyes “rained love,” that is, in the words of the guests, “meat and drink, ambrosia and nectar.” She set the pitch; there was a cross-fire of witticisms flashing over the table like fireworks, or else wit fluttered lightly about amid a subdued hum of laughter. With one consent these were voted delightful hours. Men fuddled themselves with talk: “’Tis my greatest vice,” confesses Erasmus.

This art became so well acclimatised at the court of Francis I. that it soon became the joy of France. Margaret of France writes enthusiastically about those dinners at which they used to “fill themselves with words more than with meat.” French wit, which always owes a little to good cheer, sparkled quite naturally.

In Italy they were at fault in using aesthetic means too freely to support the dinner. They durst not trust simply to conversation, but employed music, a proceeding which appeared rank heresy in France. King Alfonso of Naples, indeed, long regarded as the pastmaster of good living, complicated his dinners with all sorts of refinements; after the first courses, the ears were enchanted with harmonies soft as the breeze of Capri blowing over the sparkling, rippling sea; or else there were mimes, the _pulcinella_,[201] and roars of laughter. Then his guests returned to the table and remained till the moment when, their heads swimming with the strong and generous fumes of Falernian, they removed the plate and withdrew.

In Germany the whole day was spent at the table, with a licence that was often gross, and with all that old mediaeval gaiety of which the _Table-talk_ of Luther has preserved an excellent specimen. Yet the Rhine is not so broad nor the Alps so high but that such customs soon appeared disgusting and lamentable when compared with the politer modes which were spreading through the world. Many writers endeavoured to polish these table manners by publishing manuals of etiquette and collections of _bons mots_. If they did not establish the complete art of conversation they indicated its rudiments, and indeed their success was sufficient to necessitate in 1549 a recasting of the fourth edition of the classical collection of Gastius,[202] and the suppression of a certain number of pleasantries which seemed out of place “in view of the distresses of the time.” Thus the art of table-talk became so popular that even in Germany people endeavoured to cultivate it; but sprightliness, which is its very salt, remained till further orders a distinctively French quality.

The ball and the dance, though much more aesthetic in themselves, were a great deal more difficult to idealise, because in them the sensuous element bulks more largely. Here, however, there was no need to exaggerate, and to proscribe dancing would have been absurd. What could be more ridiculous than the jealousy of certain husbands (husbands do not stand sufficiently in awe of ridicule!). And it was so useless, too. A woman who has her wits about her is never at a loss for a pretext for going to a rout; there is always a young girl at hand who needs chaperoning. Someone, indeed, mentions a young matron of Louise of Savoy’s own court, who, to save an old husband an apoplectic fit, had the heroism to immure herself at home; but this is dead against the spirit of sociability. Why forge useless chains? Vivès himself, who is not open to suspicion, agrees that “dancing is a very natural accompaniment to the pleasures of society and the table.” But there is dancing and dancing. The ideal of platonist joy and happiness would be a free and thoroughly intellectual dance with a calm and delicious rhythm, a dance that would add a pleasure to life, the dancer in light floating drapery, bare-footed, bare-headed, ungirt, in the sweet air of springtime, on a smooth, soft lawn among jasper and coral, under the long-leaved palms, amidst the scent of roses and pine-trees—an intoxicating dance the pure motion of which harmonises with the vast music of Nature, the cooing of doves, the mighty arpeggios of the sea. The woman who, alone or hand in hand with her companions, abandons herself to this exquisite charm, this magical sweetness, who associates herself with all things in this imponderable rhythm—does she not represent a goddess of happiness, and does she not come to incarnate for us the divine charm of Nature?

In practice the dance hardly attains this ideal; yet, even confined within the walls of a room and reduced to a social art, it can still meet the high demands of moral fellowship and become for women an instrument of the most legitimate charm. The Italians especially excelled in giving it a solemn air of sentimental gravity; some of their fêtes are remarkable in history—for example, the ball given at Milan by Francesco Bernardino Visconti on October 15, 1499, in honour of the conqueror, Louis XII., or, in point of magnificence, the subscription ball got up by the household servants of Venice in February, 1524. These were memorable triumphs of art. But this high significance of the ball was never understood in France. When people gave a ball they troubled themselves very little about posterity, but a great deal about a certain number of trifling present joys; and these made women descend a little from their pedestal.

There was in particular one peculiar custom, eminently pleasant in itself, but not very celestial, and lending itself to abuses. This was the custom of kissing.

Well-bred men in every country used respectfully to kiss a lady’s hand.[203] The Italians did so with fervour; if required they would have kissed the feet; and a man had to be a German to stigmatise as idolatry the kiss applied to the toes of the Pope! Italian women disported with this kissing with perfect grace and all sorts of little refinements. At a casual meeting they confined themselves to a pleasant handshake; but tête-à-tête with a man they wished to honour, they would be the first to kiss his hand, fondly, and without any of those affectations of bashfulness which sometimes inspire such bitter afterthoughts. It was a charming and very natural custom; but in France it took quite another complexion. Men, being the masters, knew nothing of fine shades and nice distinctions; the having to greet or take leave of an agreeable woman was sufficient pretext for kissing her lips, and the motive they alleged for this proceeding was that it struck them as being “amiable and sweet.” In the ballroom it was another story; every dance-figure ended in a kiss, and if we must add that it was complicated with wild and giddy horse-play, it must be remembered that a French ball was racy of the soil. Like a genuine Frenchman, Louis XII. felt it his duty at Bernardino Visconti’s ball to kiss one after another all the ladies presented to him, in other words, every woman in Lombardy.

Ah! if the platonists and the true friends of women had been heeded, things would have been different! They were scandalised at such spectacles, which poisoned their intellectual joys. Years before, Petrarch had risen against customs that much less affected their position: what would he have said if he had come to life again! The worst of it was that these French manners were like the little leaven, and Castiglione notes that the leaven was creeping into Italy—Castiglione, who had seen the time when a man durst not even take the hand of his partner! As to Vivès, he dashes off a picture of dances and kisses with his Spanish impetuosity: “What is the meaning of so many kisses? Of old time it was lawful to give a kiss only to one’s relatives; now ’tis a general custom, in Burgundy and in England, to kiss whomsoever a man pleases.... As for me, I would fain know what means so much osculation.... What is the use of these many leaps that girls make, held by their companions under the arms so that they may kick the higher? What pleasure do these grasshoppers take in torturing themselves thus and remaining the greater part of the night without wearying of the dance body and soul?”

The question was more than once raised as to what extent good manners authorised, or rather obliged, well-born women to offer their lips to all and sundry, and to lend themselves to promiscuous capering.[204] This question was much debated: in general the most sensible folk considered that they could not absolutely avoid the custom, accepted as it was in good society, but that it was possible to practise some reserve; for example, to present the cheek instead of the mouth. Montaigne pities with all his heart the women “who have to lend their lips to any Jack with three lackeys in his suite”; but so trivial a subjection seemed to him, by its very triviality, to be of no consequence: “A high price adds a flavour to meat!” He holds rather with those who saw in it a simple act of courtesy, to which an honest woman could have no possible objection, or at most so insignificant a favour that there was nothing to make a fuss about. We are bound to add, however, that this was not everyone’s opinion; and there were not wanting dilettantes who by no means regarded this favour as so unimportant; Ronsard in all frankness considered it delightful and took infinite pleasure in it.[205] As to Melin de Saint-Gelais, on one occasion when he had won a dozen kisses at forfeits, he swore that it was not half enough: “Twelve is too few, compared with the infinite.”

Here again fashion was more than a match for philosophy; and, barring a few isolated exceptions, kissing and dancing carried all before them. Examples come from all sides: from the court with its licentious masked balls, and from the heart of the provinces; witness that singular strike of the ladies of Aix in Provence. The courts having interdicted, on the score of modesty, the dance known as the _volta_ (a sort of cancan), these ladies at once threatened to betake themselves _en masse_ to the pope at Avignon, and their affrighted husbands had to obtain the annulment of the decree.

The platonists and their friends knew the world too well deliberately to open a campaign against abuses they could not destroy. They confined themselves to bewailing them. It struck them as deplorable to see men amusing themselves hour after hour in cutting their clownish capers at the expense of honest women. They considered it absolutely ridiculous to pretend to forbid men in the ordinary intercourse of life to smirch by word, look or gesture a lady who pleased them, while at a ball everything was permissible.

The remedy, they thought, would be found in giving women more serious and more elevated tastes; they believed that a woman habituated to really noble ideas would know how to set herself high enough to win love without yielding to the caprice of the first comer.

The Huguenots pursued a different policy, and did not shrink from attacking with all their force every kind of dancing: it would seem that they did not dance at all. They spoke of animals coupling, of disastrous confidences: “Look,” cries the good Daneau[206] with horror, “look at this lady with her head high, vaulting, whirling, swinging herself about, making a clatter with her feet.” That was what you saw at the ball: could anything be more ridiculous? But what most strikes him is that she leaves her modesty and her mantle together in the-hands of the lackeys in the cloak-room. “There any man may run his eye over the ladies as they stand, even with their husbands or mothers, and may choose any woman he pleases, in other words, the woman who excites his lust: those whom the eyes have chosen the hands clasp, and the men, as though already in the thrill and enjoyment of their desires, kiss them, hug them, lead them through the room; the young fellows exert themselves to appear lively and gay, so as to entertain and caress with a thousand tricks and approaches the girls they hold, and the girls show no reluctance to respond in kind. In the _volta_ there are regular tricks for making one’s partner bound and rise so high that the calves, even the thighs are shamelessly exposed and prostituted to the eyes of the throng. The dancers go up and down, lose sight of each other, then find themselves close together again; and when they meet there are oglings and caperings, redoubled gaieties, all showing how their hearts are bounding with joy at seeing themselves once more so near the accomplishment of their desires. Every kind of dance gives opportunity for discovering ways of pleasing, seeing, touching one another more familiarly; and all this goes on to the strains of all sorts of instruments.”

The Huguenots, it will be seen, did not mince their words. But dancing was never a whit the worse. According to the feminists it was in itself neither evil nor ridiculous; the art consisted in idealising the play of the limbs, as the work of the digestion had been idealised; and they were agreed that, the brain being in this case farther away, the task was obviously more difficult.

On the other hand, women readily gave up anything that was not congenial to sensibility: gaming, for instance. With their husbands gaming was a frenzy; mature men, boys, busy men, idle men, everybody gambled. At the gaming table all distinctions of rank disappeared; a great lord would borrow a hundred crowns from his barber. What was a gaming-hall? A place where not a word was uttered save as an exclamation or an oath. The ladies permitted a game of draughts, chess or trictrac, but would hear of nothing else. They preferred the embraces of which Daneau, Vivès and the husbands complained.

For ladies of middle station a usual means of exercising their charm to the best advantage was to go to mass, especially on a Sunday, to the “church parade”; that served them instead of a drawing-room.

We have nothing to do here, of course, with their religious sentiments, but only with their visible devices for captivating men. They went to church as to a common haunt or a family reunion. God is the good Father who collects His children about Him once a week. Sunday is the day consecrated to lofty impressions, to the enjoyment in common of the things that constitute life—the day of beauty, the day of music, lovely frescoes, and displays of the latest fashion. The sanctuary was treated with an affectionate familiarity, against which the preachers had long been protesting in vain.

In the northern parts indeed this familiarity was accompanied with very objectionable scenes, and the clergy were at great pains to restrain its abuses. At Tournay, for example, it appeared very disagreeable to the cathedral clergy to serve every year as lay figures in the grotesque procession of the Holy Innocents, and afterward to be abbots of misrule in taverns; they obtained the suppression of the festival in 1489. But the coarse merriment was not scotched; everybody, the principal personages of the town included, made common cause with the children dispossessed of so venerable a privilege; and in 1498 the agitation took the shape of a nocturnal kettle-drumming which gave great concern to the Parliament of Paris.

In the south there was no need to fear such eccentricities; the church was the temple of the Beautiful because it belonged to the women. The congregation gathers in a motley, swaying, chattering crowd; it takes some time for every lady to succeed in settling her finery on her cushion, in a convenient place for seeing and hearing well. Then there arises a confused hum of gossip more or less discreet, a sound of stifled laughter, a rustling of cushions: “There is no better place for a chat than church”; it is for all the world like a concert of “magpies caught in a snare.” Ladies call each other by name, “Jeanne, Catherine, Françoise.” A lady who comes late tries to skip in before another who arrived early. The orchestra can barely drown all these noises; the opening prayer is delayed. Many men standing in the aisles fancy they are on ’change, and talk over their affairs; at one time dandies used to come hawk on fist or dog at heel: others, motionless like machines, are meditating—who knows what? Nothing at all, probably. Some are watching the many-coloured undulations in the nave—the crimped hair, the dainty hats. They quiz a handsome blue bodice with yellow strings and green sleeves, cut very low. The ladies have a wonderful talent for sitting stiffly erect, posing in such a way that they show their profile or half-profile to the best advantage, their eyes sparkling, and sometimes stealing a wicked little side-glance. That is what they call high mass; those are the accessories of a fashionable confessional.

In this way a fine philosophic equality establishes itself with the utmost perfection at the steps of the altar, far more successfully than in any palace; all cliquishness even disappears; a woman who has toiled all the week at her spinning-wheel displays her charms by the side of the lady of rank, moved by the same sentiment of elegance, idleness, and art. For anyone with the least spark of sensibility or love of the beautiful, church becomes the land of dreams, the starting-point for every elevating influence. The Gothic church, with its lofty, light, graceful columns, lifts the soul into a sort of mystic accord; there is something warmer, more human, more genuinely intimate about the Italian church; women high or humble experience there a sensation of unmixed delight. They contemplate with tender trustfulness the imperturbable Madonna who has already seen the passage of many generations, and who continues to regard them from her nook in the wall with her woman’s smile—that smile of infinite sweetness, of lingering and universal pity, directed towards the children and the dead, towards all who suffer and love, weep and laugh, a smile like a sweet-savoured incense of purification and grace. The Italians loved the magnificence of their temples—the marbles bathed in sunlight, the shadowy arches where the soul could unbosom itself without blasphemy, and all those little secluded chapels in which every man found his own saint, and came to offer up his poor, trembling, fainting heart as the whole _ex-voto_ of life. In these hidden splendours, in the charm of mystic music soaring amidst paintings and sculptures, gilded ornaments and exquisite perfumes, midway between the past and the future, there is a wonderfully soft and voluptuous pleasure. It is with profound philosophy that Caviceo lays the scene of the first interview between his hero and heroine in the shade of an altar; assuredly, in wrapping itself with this veil of refinement and modesty, love puts on a sacred character. So the church becomes, in its wealth of compassion, the haven of refuge for pure and sensitive souls, and even for some others. Anne of Rohan gave tryst to her lover in the chapel of Amboise;[207] a young girl of Orleans with Machiavelian cunning made a Franciscan friar her catspaw to attract the student she loved.[208] Pontanus depicts the prolonged meditations of the Neapolitan ladies, long after the last of the candles had been extinguished in the dusky nave.[209] A thousand incidents of this sort might be cited: Francis I. in the church of Amboise pursuing a charming girl with his devotion;[210] Panurge, whom Rabelais sets to dog the footsteps of a noble lady, piously offering her holy water, slipping inflammatory love-letters into her hand during mass, and playing the most impudent tricks to attract her attention; the poet Crétin, furious because at Lyons the church services are turned to account almost exclusively by young fops and paunchy bankers.

Pilgrimages also were capable of becoming a source of exquisite emotions for artists in happiness. The author of the _Imitation_ has said that to be often on pilgrimage is seldom to be a saint. Indeed, at the moment when the indulgences were pronounced, the church porches were quite invisible behind the smoke from the cookshops or the booths in the fair, and an old author complains that you could not even catch sight of your friends. But how these gross indulgences were transfigured by the aesthetic spirit! What ravishing effects it derived from them!

It was no longer paintings or sculptures that troubled hearts and pure hearts gazed upon: they penetrated the clear heavens above. Blessed are the pure!

The sweet, tender Isabella d’Este set out thus to transport her soul across the plains of Umbria, towards the calm and glorious homes of peace and art, Loretto and Assisi. It was early spring, when the days were clear and sunny; every morning after mass the little caravan resumed its march with its picturesque escort, piously, tranquilly, ideally. During the Easter festival it made a halt with the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the delightful palace of Gubbio, smiling down from amongst its gardens and fountains.

The woman who has been able to live these hours of pure enthusiasm is conscious of accomplishing a large part of her dream. She is within sight of reconciling two opposing forces, the forces of Nature and the forces of the human heart, and forming out of them a love in harmony with Plato’s thought and Raphael’s brush.

In their dealings with Nature, the platonists sought above all to elevate and sentimentalise it; they did not care for it masculine and stern, but wished it feminine.

They did not ask it to express itself in vast horizons, in a display of wild vigour. Untamed Nature displeased them; it struck them as a tyrannical mechanism which would keep moving and straining itself without definite purpose, whilst it should be influenced and controlled by human thought. On the contrary, the more supple Nature became,—the more docile, urbane, almost affectionate—the better she answered their expectations. They did not appreciate the _objects_ of Nature; but they valued a beautiful sunny day, a beautiful horizon, the flowers which scent the air, the glistening, rippling, soothing sea, the buds bursting with sap and life, because this life is one with man’s. Plato has indicated the need he felt of such a setting in the celebrated prologue of the _Phaedrus_, where Socrates and his friend, strolling along the bank of the Ilissus, seat themselves near a temple of the Muses, in the shade of a lofty plane-tree, on one of those velvet swards in which every footstep leaves its trace. Stirred by the fierce heat of the glowing sun, life buzzes and sings on all sides; the murmur of water mingles with the chirp of grasshoppers and innumerable confused dronings; odours of all kinds fill the air, and life is quaffed in deep draughts; but amid all these myriad voices blending into one grand symphony the mind of the philosopher reigns supreme.

Man, then, must in no way be considered the enemy of Nature; he is her friend and master. Nature speaks to us, and we speak to her, and are subject to her influence in the highest degree. Not merely do climate, temperature, the beauties of the scenery exercise a paramount influence upon us, as the monks so well understood who loved extensive horizons and noble summits, but it may be said that there is not a tree or a plant but influences us by its vicinage. The love of Nature emits a radiance like the love of a woman, like all love, though in a less degree. It is good then and right not to neglect so important a source of emotion. Nature herself delights us because she smiles on us and we feel she loves us,—because a higher power settles her proud rocks and governs her volcanic fires. How pleasant it is (especially in warm countries) to shape for ourselves in the broad world, too vast for us, a private and particular nook: to send our very selves, as it were, out through the woods by straight paths which make our will felt far away; to give the flowers what forms and tints we please; to impress our character upon everything; thus we banish all savour of imperfection and ugliness and allow nothing to be seen but uniformity and affection; for, in the words of a man of that time, if you go into the country, it is not to “descend from light into the gloom.”

Salut! palais, jardins, paradis de délices, Dont les beaultez font ignorer les vices.[211]

Under these circumstances, ladies, philosophers, and prelates considered the country a perfect setting for the intellectual life. They there got deeper, intenser spiritual enjoyment than in the city (though city life in those days was not such a rush and bustle as it is to-day). The dread hours of solitude will themselves contribute to this pleasure if you know how to bring a delightful egotism unobtrusively into play; they will enable you to recall many fleeting thoughts, to ruminate on them, feast on them for your sole pleasure, in the spirit of the sublime preoccupation of Lucullus when he chanced one day to be dining alone: “Is not Lucullus entertaining Lucullus to-day?” We find, then, in the country the same _mise-en-scène_ as in the town—the same furniture, the same plate, but ranged under the luminous ceiling of a summer sky; the same dances, but by the light of torches and the stars.[212] All Nature breathes and thinks: the trees, artistically shaped, hang their sombre drapery behind statues; charming walks wind or disappear among labyrinths of laurel, thyme, and rosemary; a cascade leaps lightly and with musical bickering from a tiny artificial rock, and speeds away swiftly but noiselessly into the miniature presentment of a well-mown meadow. Or if the owner’s wealth is equal to measuring itself royally against Nature, he adorns the landscape with splendid villas, the glory of Rome, like the Este villa at Tivoli, a sort of proof before letters of Versailles, so moving still in the spectral life of its deserted groves, its silent fountains, its shattered marbles.

We must note, too, the singular phenomenon that the urbanity and bountifulness of Nature appeared to these lovers of beauty a thing of course. Nature is loved for herself only in countries where she plays the step-dame. Lombards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, on leaving the smoky scenes of their daily toil, did not shrink from a life in the depths of a dull place in the country, or from intercourse with the rustics; they might be seen any day chatting and whiling away an idle hour with the farmers on the village green. At Paris people were passionately fond of natural flowers, the annual consumption of which was valued by statisticians at fifteen thousand golden crowns; even the University preferred them to paper garlands.[213] The people of the south, on the contrary, spoilt children of a soil which yields fruit of itself, trampled roses and violets beneath their feet with never a thought of gathering them. The Italian painters used to adorn manuscripts with elaborate golden scrolls; the ladies framed their faces in gold and pearls, and valued flowers only for the delicate softness of their perfume; many of them strewed lilies and roses and violets about their bowers, as the quintessence of sweetness. But everyone abhorred a country life. Castiglione has only one word for the existence of gentlemen-farmers: “It is indecent.” As for Margaret of France, she could find no stronger abuse, no more expressive appellation for a froward heart than: “O rough heart, rural and bucolic.”

Nor would one expect to find a liking for animals among the platonists. Ladies valued only the boudoir pet, the little affectionate, obedient animal, their very own, which meekly took their kisses and upon which they lavished without misgiving a portion of their tenderness: a bird for instance, or a pug. I say _a_ pug, for there was seldom more than one. What was the good of a troop of shaggy animals however graceful, like those which fill the canvases of Veronese? A lady much preferred her one little lapdog, which she carried on her arm against her heart, took to bed with her, and had painted in her own portrait. “Love me, love my dog.” Titian’s Venus of the Prado is nude, but she keeps the indispensable ornaments—a pearl necklace, a musical instrument, and a little dog. Margaret in writing to M. de Montmorency[214] tells him gaily that she is looking after her niece’s “belongings,” that is, “her parrot and her daughters.” The death of the darling bird or the little pug was a cruel event. What tears were shed! So faithful a little dog! How many men might have learned a lesson from him! Friends could hardly venture to speak of the fleas of the demised, or the hair that he dropped all around, or the other objects which his mistress might perhaps find for her affection.

People did not care for flocks and herds, except perhaps as a distant ornament of the landscape. The King of Naples and the Cardinal of Amboise kept peacocks and stags. Anne of France founded a sort of Zoological Garden in which she acclimatised turkeys and bred parrots. But that had nothing to do with aesthetics.

From country life we naturally proceed to the grave question of the utility of physical exercises for women—a question much more difficult to decide than appears at first sight. Suppose a number of old-style French châtelaines, sun-baked, inured to the inclemencies of the weather, dashing huntswomen, had been asked to relinquish violent exercises like hunting, fencing, boxing, tennis, on the ground that to indulge in them was to waste their charm? They would have ridiculed the idea. And yet, after mature deliberation, the Urbino coterie decided that these exercises were altogether incompatible with the feminine temperament.

One had to come to Lyons to find a pretty and clever woman like Louise Labé posing as Bradamante or Marphise, and boasting of her riding and her skill with the lance. Every well-born Italian woman detested such mannish ways. When Charles VIII. arrived at Naples, the princess of Melphi, to humour the barbarian’s tastes, presented to him her daughter on horseback, but mounted in such a manner “as not to do wrong to her sex.” Here there is a problem in pure aesthetics. Not that women like Isabella d’Este and others are deficient in energy; when need arises they will give proof of an extraordinary vigour; Margaret of France, in her passion for serving her brother, bestrode a horse and galloped to the Spanish frontier with a speed and endurance that the postal service has rarely attained. But if, impelled by strong feeling, they accomplished feats like this, they did not boast of them. What charm would Margaret with all her heroism have for us if we had to see her flying with loose rein astraddle on her nag? It is impossible to cite a military woman of a more energetic temperament than Catherine Sforza: when did she shrink from sleeping on the bare ground and passing her nights in the open air? Yet this was the lady who, when she had a minute’s peace, solemnly dispatched a Jewish old-clo’ man to her neighbours, to discover for her a certain down for bed-ticks which was reputed exceptionally soft.

The very decided disfavour in which physical exercises were held by women had its counterpart among the men, and very largely diminished their ardour for anything in the way of sport or athletics. Even at the court of Julius II. a young cardinal was mercilessly chaffed because, instead of showing his visitors his books, coins, or pictures, he hurried them off to a jumping-match in his garden! In France the taste for violent exploits utterly died out, at least in court circles. When ladies were by, there was much talk, in language borrowed from the romances, about the virtue of arms and the nobility of valour, and as they spoke the striplings brandished inoffensive swords. Tournaments were in favour as a show adapted to captivate ladies’ eyes, and purely decorative—barring accidents! Some in silver habits, others in red, green, and blue, the combatants would make a few passes, and when they had done, the victor, followed by his pages, galloped all round the fine-sanded lists, to receive his meed of applause. After all, the ladies had little appreciation for this relic of barbarism; they did not see the philosophic necessity of equipping oneself with lance and steed to run the _grand prix_ of life; in their view that prize was called “repose and sovereign joy”; and that is not won at a gallop.

The question of the chase gave rise to somewhat various opinions. Hunting, like war, gave man pleasure; to him it was a noble and sacred occupation, since its end was the shedding of blood,—a point in which it displeased the platonists. But, on the other hand, man is a born fighter, and he should only be encouraged to work off his combativeness against animals created precisely to be slaughtered by him. There is nothing criminal in the trade of butcher, and it is far better to kill an ox than a man, a boar than an ox. The chase was thus a valuable expedient.

But in an age of such exquisite refinement, when the infinite sweetness of the Beautiful came at length to penetrate men to the very marrow, people became more fastidious, and asked themselves if any brilliant idea could be derived from the chase, or if it was not a sufficient concession to the animal spirits to ramble about casually, to take the air without excuses, and to go out riding under the eyes of the ladies, even though too manifestly like a groom exercising his cob. Perhaps that would have been better.

But the chase was popular at Rome.

The hunts in the Roman Campagna were of old renown. The deer there was reputed very fleet, and the boar a particularly tough customer; the hounds belonged to those idolised and sagacious breeds which could not be bought at any price, and whose whelps were begged for by princesses and potentates with absolute servility.[215] Further, in default of military pomp, the glory of the chase, material as it was, seemed essential to the political interests of the papacy,—and consequently to the interests of religion,—with respect to certain eminent personages more accessible to such arguments than to those of theology; and it must not be forgotten that the Roman prelates, unfortunately for themselves, were politicians as well as devotees of art. While closely allying themselves with women, they had to reckon with men. The hunt organised by Paul II. for Borso d’Este in 1471 has remained justly celebrated in the annals of the church. It was therefore less a question of slaying animals than of saving souls, and it may be said that in this respect the chase conduced towards a spiritual end.

The great Popes of the Renaissance, however, were somewhat lukewarm in cultivating it. Alexander VI., though an excellent horseman, was but an infrequent and inexpert huntsman. Julius II. went out into the rich vinelands rarely, if at all; for, born of a sea-faring stock, he preferred to cast his nets into the deep like St. Peter. Leo X. rode more, owing to threatenings of obesity; he hunted with application and brilliance, and with his habitual love of perfection, but without that quality which makes hunting an art, that indefinable something which hunters call the “sacred fire” or the “devil may care” spirit, and the friends of the Beautiful call love. He was a Florentine, and manifestly did not regard the hunter’s rôle as a fine one; he could not imagine that to spur a horse was to stimulate one’s ideas. To men of his stamp Nature was, so to speak, truly feminine; they would have liked to put her under glass. On the other hand, a number of prelates revived the chase with their enthusiasm; they portrayed it in their poetry; they brought to it all their gravity, urbanity, and decorum. When the ancient walls of pagan Rome or the limestone benches of the Coliseum were blushing under the first rays of dawn, or when the old triumphal arches were looking young again under the smile of the Sabine mountains, a brilliant procession set the pontifical flagstones ringing under their horses’ hoofs. Look at these great figures who are passing. Here is the proud Catherine Sforza; Tebaldeo, the poet skilful in following the forest tracks; Pontanus, the methodical huntsman, the taciturn philosopher; the pride of Venice, the sprightly Bembo, somewhat excited, for he wishes to “stick” the boar and cut off its head, and therewith to do honour to the Virgin of the woods, “in verses which will go down to posterity.” Here is the fair Lucretia Borgia, “the glory of her race,” and, in close attendance, Ercole Strozzi, just writing for her his great poem called _The Chase_, a medley of venery and politics. Who next? Here is the omnipotent Ascanio Sforza, vice-chancellor of the Roman church, all impetuosity, full of the boyish animation which he will retain through the most cruel trials till that day when he goes to his long rest in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Behind him comes cardinal Adriano Castelli, the witty diplomatist who wins all hearts, the admirable humanist who is going to celebrate this chase. These ladies and prelates sing the praises of Diana; it seems to them that the noble goddess in person is guiding their long cavalcade among the tombs, in the impressive silence of this great Roman desert where long aqueducts (odd vegetation!) lend sombre decoration to the landscape.

Her broidered chlamys she has raised; Her golden locks float in the breeze, The purple buskins reach her knees; Her gilded quiver’s ringing sound Wakes echoes in the woods around. Ascanio, courteous, debonair, Rides close to show her every care; Collects the troop, on Lybian steeds, And harks them forth to doughty deeds.

View halloo! The boar is started at the foot of the hills, the hounds are off, the hunters scatter and gallop up hill and down dale, dogged and indefatigable. Presently, shouts, bayings, howls of wounded dogs! All is over. Cardinal Ascanio appears, with flaming eye and flaming cheeks, his coat red, his knife redder still, near the boar dripping red. This is the epical, the intoxicating moment. The hounds tumble over each other, the whippers-in bestir themselves, the hunters come panting up from all directions. Suddenly all is hushed; as if by magic an exquisite repast is served; the sweet measured tones of guitars, the voices of singers, the plaudits of the banqueters alone wake the languid echoes, while huge flagons of a generous wine go round. Then Cardinal Castelli rises, and in his elegant Latin recites a Pindaric ode in honour of the victorious huntsman, “the empurpled senate’s glory and grace.” Nothing could be more piously orthodox or more delightful than this hunting ode. The Cardinal recalls how the Redeemer, “true religion’s lord and emperor,” has put vain deities to flight and given solace to perishing humanity, bringing life and strength and joy. Ascanio responds with this invocation:

O Dian, virgin goddess of the woods and groves, Or whether it behoves To hail Proserpina, light of the glooming sky, Lucina, Hecate, or e’en Of the dim nether world the woful queen, Dictynna else, or Trivia—whosoe’er Dost to my swinking hours apply Thy constant care, Thee in my heart I hold eternally!

Evening creeps on, and the shadows extend. Soon the joyous clatter of hoofs is re-echoing along the Sacred Way; these are the masters of Rome, whom the shades of Tiberius and Constantine salute in the darkness.

While at Rome the chase was thus allying itself with poetry, in France, as may be surmised, it followed no such bent. The good Louis XII., ruling with circumspection, would not have been hard put to it to give his exploits a character of seriousness and tranquillity, for his health obliged him to hunt in a litter, and more often with hawks than with hounds; indeed, even at the kennels of Blois the spirit of poetry modestly crept in; the court poets, not having at their disposal the Roman mythology, or the shades of Tiberius and Constantine, extolled the royal hawks and hounds. They honoured with a charming epitaph the venerable Chailly, doyen of the pack, and a model of probity and honour, who, after having followed the king even to war, had peacefully finished his course at the feet of Queen Anne. They sang also of the famous falcon Muguet, the terror of herons, “little of body but wondrous full of courage”:

Trois passetemps parfaits a eu Louis douzième: Triboulet et Chailly, et je fus le troisième.[216]

But all this fine poetry only celebrated the mettlesomeness of the animals; it did not protect the game from slaughter; it left hunting with its primitive characteristics, which continued to wound the finer feelings, and snuffed out the faintest glimmer of the spiritual life.

One man was found, with the heroic determination to reform the French style of hunting in the Roman direction. This man was Guillaume Budé, generally known as the founder of the College of France, but as good a hunter as a Hellenist, and in this regard as worthy of renown.

Budé is a brilliant example of the intellectual development of many men of his generation. Come of a line of high officials, he went through the usual experiences: a tutor, fashionable masters, a special Greek tutor, one George Hermonymos, brought direct from Lacedaemonia to teach him to lisp the Greek alphabet at the remuneration of five hundred crowns monthly; but Lefèvre d’Etaples[217] did not succeed in making a philosopher of him, nor Fra Giocondo[218] a mathematician. Then, after lolling for a while on the long-suffering benches of the Orleans University of Law, Budé resigned himself to run in the paternal grooves; apart from hunting, he was not known to have any accomplishment or passion except fishing. So he went to Rome as secretary to an embassy at the time of the election of Julius II. This proved the turning-point of his life. The aesthetic splendour of Rome struck him and held him spellbound; he experienced the electric shock, the complete change of view which the sudden revelation of the spirit of beauty has from all time occasioned in choice minds. He came back a changed man. He became an apostle of beauty; he resigned his diplomatic appointments, and his office as secretary to the king; he even refused a comfortable retreat on the bench, in order to devote himself to that noble intellectual life, the radiance of which had filled his soul.

He gave up everything except hunting. And it was then that he had to face the trying problem that rose in his mind with peculiar intensity—how to spiritualise the chase.

The solution he arrived at was of the most original kind. He has communicated it to us in the form of a conversation, real or imaginary, between himself and King Francis I. This dialogue attained a measure of popularity; written in Latin (following the Roman fashion), it had the honour of being translated by the great court translator, Louis Le Roy, and in our time has been re-published by M. Chevreul.

Budé’s idea was wonderfully simple, and nicely calculated, he thought, to make an impression on Francis I. The king was not very clever, but he was very willing to learn, and had great confidence in the new ideas, particularly those of his friend.

Budé merely suggested the adoption of Latin as the language of venery. At first sight, Francis did not quite catch the piquancy of this proposal; however, he made no opposition; and discovered on reflection, indeed, that it hit the mark admirably. Certain persons were agitating for the suppression of Latin in law proceedings, with the professed object of rendering them more comprehensible: here was an excellent means of silencing the agitators, by showing them that Latin, if it can serve for the slang of the turf, can serve for anything.

History does not relate whether Francis halloed his hounds in Latin verse; but the seed dropped by Budé was not lost, and another scholar, Michelangelo Blando, the commentator on Aristotle and Hippocrates, took up the same subject as a second study. In a learned Latin treatise on hunting, Blando shows how important it is for the huntsmen to be men of literary culture; for their benefit he investigates every branch of canine lore from the earliest times: breeds, regimen, maladies, training—on all these points he admirably collects the various threads of tradition. Nor does he forget the lives of the most illustrious of hunters down to and including Francis I. Among these, naturally, he makes honourable mention of a number of noble ladies who were ardent devotees of the chase, and with whom the sport almost always meant a dedication of their virginity; for example, the fair Atalanta, who disdained marriage; Calixto, daughter of a king of Arcadia; Arethusa, daughter of the Centaur Hippochrome; Amimone, a Breton nymph, daughter of Danaus; and a thousand other vestals whom it is unnecessary to recall, says he, “being household words with all hunters worthy of the name.” After such an enumeration, one might indeed be tempted to believe that, for women at any rate, the chase elevates the soul and has platonic virtues.

But, all this notwithstanding, the lady artists in charm did not think it deserved either encouragement or sympathy on their part. In what respect had this sport any moral efficacy? It had, on the contrary, the disadvantage of giving a woman a somewhat masculine appearance, of diluting in her all that constitutes the essence of platonic sweetness.[219]

Riding to hounds was no longer indulged in, except by some few over-energetic and rather old-fashioned ladies like Margaret of Austria, who was so proud of her stuffed wolves’ heads; or Anne of France, a passionate and classical huntress, whom one of her faithful henchmen, the seneschal of Normandy, enthusiastically styles the “grand mistress” of this “glorious trade”; but whom he calls also its last representative. Anne hunted in the same way that she did everything; coldly and methodically she with her own eyes examined the trail, and gave the word to hark forward; then she set off with her dogs, and suddenly warming to the work, grew animated and vociferous, and smartly handled her hunting-spear. Such ways as these have caused her to be always wrongly judged, even by her closest friends, and have given her a reputation for mannishness, whereas in her heart of hearts she was infinitely feminine, and femininely philosophic.

The large majority of her contemporaries would have been careful not to imitate her, and if they resigned themselves to the chase, it was for some good reason. Personally they went in for little else than hawking. It was indifferent to them whether men rode out and effected more or less slaughter; but they loved the associations of the hunt—the delightful evenings, favourable to flirtation (when the hunters were not too hungry or sleepy); the succeeding days of tranquillity, when the unconstraint of country life allowed them to rise early and come down into the fresh air without stopping to do up their hair or their complexions, but with clear, rosy cheeks; to hurry through a hunter’s mass, and then start gossiping in the shade on the respective merits of dogs and birds until it was time for breakfast. In short, to platonist ladies, the less hunting there was, the more genuine and admirable the chase appeared. If men absolutely insisted on spilling blood, why not get it over quickly? Why not fill their parks with tame stags and one fine morning go out and massacre a few? But for pity’s sake let there be no more talk of their Red Indian stratagems, or of competing in instinct with the animals! “Tell me,” cries Margaret of France, “is the capture of a stag fit work for a prince?”—he might as well turn mason or hind!

They came to the conclusion that, if they did not wish to live in the kennel, there was nothing for it but to give up hunting, and this was more logical than Budé’s or Blando’s attempt to imbue huntsmen with lofty and fantastic ideas which would never make a good sportsman.

Like all human things, the charming theories we have just indicated had their dark side. The habit of suppressing nature, of making her all grace and attractiveness, of embellishing and transfiguring her, is pretty sure to lead to the loss of any real knowledge of nature. A landscape is transformed into a drawing-room. Lemaire de Belges and others discourse to us of nothing but branches gently swaying, rustling leaflets, the waning autumn, huts in which mock shepherds in sham goat-skins listen to the moaning of the winter wind with a ravishment which it is difficult not to fancy humbug too. If only this mawkish sentimentality always led to the ideal! But no; the coy Phillises sport their demure little tricks at all hours but the lover’s hour, when perhaps they would not be out of place.

The fleshly Venetian school, with its feeling for colour and its somewhat pagan naturalism, much more successfully expressed man’s relations with Nature. It opens for us not a mere garden bower, but a huge factory of sensuous pleasure, whence ascend a thousand high-soaring aspirations and a penetrating effluence. Giorgione and Titian have wonderfully rendered the poetry of these love-filled horizons. From the smooth sea, or the foaming billows, or the flowery meadows depicted by their pencils, loud voices speak to us; and nothing but the old, imaginative mythology is wanted to personify all the unknowable and unknown unions whence we feel that the physical world is every day drawing its life and its overmastering thirst for renewal. The epicureans let themselves drift along aimlessly, resting on their oars,[220] and do no more than sing their little part, hardly audible in this colossal orchestration. The platonists, on the other hand, will not allow themselves to be seduced, and combat nature even while caressing her, preferring to keep her too much in subjection rather than to yield her too much obedience. Nature untamed or sensual would slay man, they think. She is a slave, meant to be subject to us, meditating revenge, and eager to suck or shed our blood; and she is set among the slaves.

Finally, a word must be said about a life which held a place midway between country life and city life, namely, the life of the watering-places, both inland and by the sea. In France the fashion was difficult to introduce, good society preferring the large and comfortable existence of the country house; but to take the waters was all the rage in Italy.

Except at church, there was no scene where people could better meet together, or take one another more seriously without hypocrisy. A public bath represented the ideal of equality. You go in, cut a figure, and come out again, and Jack is as good as his master. It is an open drawing-room, in which people who elsewhere are strangers to one another, acquaintances, and bosom friends all have one idea—to distil their soul drop by drop into the ears of kindred spirits, like the neighbouring spring.

The difficulty with which the custom became acclimatised in France has been attributed to very various causes. Following an old tradition, many preachers so late as the 16th century inveighed against the habit of bathing. Out of thirty women who go bathing, says one, not one can call herself pure. “O fatal laving, prolific in elements of death!” exclaims another. “Ye women who stew yourselves,” says Oliver Maillard,[221] “I summon you all to the stewpots of Hell!” The Calvinists went to still greater lengths of indignation, and more than one physician, even, thought well to adopt a cautious attitude. At the end of a long treatise on hygiene, Gazius says: “I have still to speak about the baths, and I shall do so briefly, for the custom of bathing does not exist among us, and further, it is a pleasure which is not devoid of danger; perhaps it would be better not to speak of it, lest I should appear to recommend it. For myself, I have never taken a bath, and I am none the worse for it, thank God!” However, Gazius, not to come to logger-heads with the ancients, or the Arabs, or his colleagues, goes so far as to acknowledge that cold water is in use “in very distinguished countries”; for his part, he sees nothing objectionable in a douche followed by brisk friction or massage.

But we must get to the bottom of this matter, a question of morals rather than hygiene.

We have unexpectedly come upon principles which we recognise as old acquaintances. Neither preachers nor Calvinists were willing to admit that any consideration of utility could induce a self-respecting woman to strip herself of all, or nearly all, her clothes, either in the open air as in ancient times, or in one of those public bathing establishments which were cried every day in the market-places between the artichokes and the cheese,[222] and where the authorities winked at certain familiarities. Many historians have concluded outright that Calvinists and preachers had a horror of water; but this is not strictly accurate; they recommended baths at home. Thus the council of Basle passed a canon inviting persons to set bath-rooms in their houses. The platonists fell in the more heartily with the council’s recommendation in that they treated their bodies with sacerdotal attentions, so to speak, and that no refinement appeared to them unreasonable in forging the weapon of delightful love. Some discriminating women preferred dry methods to water—powders, pastes, scraping of the skin, which enabled them to say “that they did not wash their hands”; but the majority owed a great deal to water, and the room devoted to this work of regeneration was a sanctuary. The little bath-rooms of the 18th or the beginning of the 19th century, hung all round with mirrors, are familiar to us. The idolatry of the 16th century was less blatant but not less ardent; Raphael himself decorated Bibbiena’s bath-room, and, as we know, the subject chosen by the charming prelate for his frescoes was the story of Venus and Cupid.

In one of her most amusing letters Madame de Sévigné bewails the necessity of taking shower-baths at Vichy, which she regarded as a “humiliating” situation to be in. To give herself courage, she conceived the singular idea of keeping her two maids with her, so that she might “see familiar faces.” At the same time, she got her physician, a man of parts, to conceal himself behind a curtain, so that she might chat with him during the operation.

We do not know what the impressions of Madame de Sévigné’s descendants are, but we know that her ancestresses were on this point extremely fastidious. Margaret of France, not to lose sight of the story of the chaste Susanna, had it embroidered on a table-cover.

We get an idea, then, of the cautious attitude adopted in regard to hydrotherapeutics. But on the other hand the friends of antiquity restored water to a place of honour; scholars proved that the Romans had been devoted to it; the higher clergy became its apostles. George of Amboise and his brothers multiplied the spas at Rouen, Blois, Gaillon, Clermont, as the pope did at Rome.

In regard to mineral springs, there appeared, under the auspices of the pope and the Venetian senate, a large folio official guide,[223] which explained that there were waters for all sick bodies as there were saints for all sick souls,[224] but that no one should venture to them without seeking advice in the proper quarter.

A person wishing to go to the waters would consult a physician. If he was a specialist like Savonarola, he would look at everything with aquatic prepossessions, and commence his patient’s initiation at home with baths of various kinds—baths of oil, of wine, of milk, of fire, of compressed air. One fine morning he would announce that mineral waters were spoilt in transit, that he was tired of making the patient drink stale water, and he would then dispatch him to some natural spring.

Most of the Italian springs, at any rate such as were much frequented, had the good taste to flow in or near a city, and thus people were likely to meet familiar faces, if only among the regular visitors. Under Louis XII., the city of Genoa revolted because its French captain, the Sire de Roquebertin, instead of attending to business, tiresome certainly, passed his life at the waters of Acqui.

A lady of distinction, however, first of all secured a good escort to keep her company; Margaret of France, for instance, carried her whole party off to Cauterets. Then she had to listen to the parting exhortation of her doctor, a punctilious and intelligent man, who apparently had no excessive confidence in his colleagues or his fair client, and who catechised her and made her read the folio. He mentioned eight enemies lying in wait for her—headache, insomnia, and the rest;—he instructed her how, by watchfully studying her little secret vices and never for a moment forgetting her digestion, and so on, she would put them to rout. Then he carefully consulted the horoscope, the direction of the wind, the temperature, his chart of epidemics; he assured himself as to the character of the year (for there were some years in which the waters killed off the invalids or made them worse), and finally he pronounced the _exeat_.

Flinging off this wet blanket with his terrestrial visions, the patient sped away. Pity if it was towards Porretta, near Bologna, a very popular haunt but dreadfully purgative. However, the spirit of Beauty can idealise everything, and an agreeable poet, Battista of Mantua, undertook to show all the moral and aesthetic satisfaction to be got in drinking three glasses of a laxative water, and then leaving Nature to herself.

He describes this regimen in admirable verses:

“Far from the bed and all its joys, You go and come and eke advance In the slow measure of a stately dance,”

and so on.

In fact, the idea of becoming young again, the thought of gaining new freedom of mind, new warmth of heart, new suppleness of the bodily frame by sacrifices so slight, of seeing the wrinkles vanish of themselves, in short the pursuit of beauty as a bounden duty, threw the glamour of poetry over many things, and was well worth the self-imposition of twenty-one days of hardship. For all that, fashionable people preferred the bathing-places to the spas.

Life at such places presented the admirable advantage that people could there enjoy the most perfect liberty. Nowhere were there better opportunities for seeing one’s friends, for intimate conversation, for deriving real profit from companionship. It was that which made this life so precious. A man who had followed in the train of the princess he loved had absolutely nothing to do but to devote himself to her, for he put up with the rubbings and purgings only as a sop to his conscience. What delightful opportunities between two glasses of water to improve the mind or tell stories! Many collections of _Novelli_ originated near a spring. It was during a season at Lucca, in April 1538, that Vittoria Colonna made the acquaintance of Carnesecchi, the adventurous theologian, and launched out with him into the abstrusest religious speculations. Everyone followed his own bent, and the gentlemen who did not love husbands were less irked there than elsewhere.

We shall not go so far as to say that platonism exercised undivided sway over the bathers;[225] but to have a place at all was something gained. There is no indication that a much purer virtue reigned north of the Alps among the virtuous races. The goings-on at Baden in Aargau scandalised even Brantôme. A Florentine,[226] who thought life at Florence pleasant enough, has related his impressions at Baden with a naïve stupefaction; he was dumbfounded the very moment he arrived. The beautiful platonism of his own province, flanked always by jealous husbands and _impedimenta_ of all sorts, appeared to him mere food for babes, a phantom, a faded flower, an unsubstantial pageant, beside those Piccadilly manners. But they did not offend him: “Bravo!” he cries, “who wouldn’t be platonic, since Plato preaches the community of women? Here the husbands take everything, absolutely everything, in good part! How wonderfully sensible of them! These Germans don’t rack themselves for suspicions, they enjoy the present.” And then, Florentine as he is, he goes on to describe the charms of Baden with genuine enthusiasm: the handsome streets in which never a sign of infirmity is to be seen (Baden was recommended to childless women); exquisite fine ladies; men in cloth of gold and silver; somewhat exotic beauties sprung from God knows where, attended by a lackey and one or two waiting-maids; here and there a few noble abbesses of reasonable piety.... What a whirl! It is one mad race for pleasure!

Serious people who take care of themselves and desire a cure, have two or three baths a day, living like so many ducks. For ordinary folk there are common swimming-baths of wonderful picturesqueness, but every respectable hostel possesses one bath for men, and another for women, with a gallery to which men are admitted in their dressing-gowns. To describe the gaiety that reigns there is impossible. There is chatting and laughter, eating and drinking, dancing in a ring; the gentlemen fling down coins which the fair bathers catch with the tips of their fingers or in their linen chemisettes, with much contortioning and struggling. Sometimes, when the company are on intimate terms, they end by fraternising in a single tank, which is much more amusing, and pleases the physicians, because nothing ensures more conscientious bathing. _Honi soit qui mal y pense!_

In the evening a broad meadow serves as a casino; there is more dancing and singing: and these amusements are mingled with various pastimes such as the game of _balle à grelots_,[227] which leads to all sorts of horse-play.

That is Baden.

One singular fact is brought out. Platonism was regarded as nothing if not complex and elaborate, and indeed it believed itself to be such; antiplatonism, on the contrary, affected airs of the most complete simplicity: yet whenever the two are confronted, it is platonism that proves the more ingenuous.