[5474]  ------“Felices mater, &c. felix nutrix.--
Sed longe cunctis, longeque beatior ille,
Quem fructu sponsi et socii dignabere lecti.”

The same passion made her break out in the comedy, [5475]_Nae illae fortunatae, sunt quae cum illo cubant_, “happy are his bedfellows;” and as she said of Cyprus, [5476]_Beata quae illi uxor futura esset_, blessed is that woman that shall be his wife, nay, thrice happy she that shall enjoy him but a night. [5477]_Una nox Jovis sceptro aequiparanda_, such a night’s lodging is worth Jupiter’s sceptre.

[5478] “Qualis nox erit illa, dii, deaeque,
        Quam mollis thorus?”

“O what a blissful night would it be, how soft, how sweet a bed!” She will adventure all her estate for such a night, for a nectarean, a balsam kiss alone.

[5479] “Qui te videt beatus est,
        Beatior qui te audiet,
        Qui te potitur est Deus.”

The sultan of Sana’s wife in Arabia, when she had seen Vertomannus, that comely traveller, lamented to herself in this manner, [5480]"O God, thou hast made this man whiter than the sun, but me, mine husband, and all my children black; I would to God he were my husband, or that I had such a son;” she fell a weeping, and so impatient for love at last, that (as Potiphar’s wife did by Joseph) she would have had him gone in with her, she sent away Gazella, Tegeia, Galzerana, her waiting-maids, loaded him with fair promises and gifts, and wooed him with all the rhetoric she could,—­ extremum hoc miserae da munus amanti, “grant this last request to a wretched lover.”  But when he gave not consent, she would have gone with him, and left all, to be his page, his servant, or his lackey, Certa sequi charum corpus ut umbra solet, so that she might enjoy him, threatening moreover to kill herself, &c.  Men will do as much and more for women, spend goods, lands, lives, fortunes; kings will leave their crowns, as King John for Matilda the nun at Dunmow.

[5481] “But kings in this yet privileg’d may be,
        I’ll be a monk so I may live with thee.”

The very Gods will endure any shame (atque aliquis de diis non tristibus inquit, &c.) be a spectacle as Mars and Venus were, to all the rest; so did Lucian’s Mercury wish, and peradventure so dost thou.  They will adventure their lives with alacrity —­[5482]_pro qua non metuam mori_—­nay more, pro qua non metuam bis mori, I will die twice, nay, twenty times for her.  If she die, there’s no remedy, they must die with her, they cannot help it.  A lover in Calcagninus, wrote this on his darling’s tomb,

       “Quincia obiit, sed non Quincia sola obiit,
        Quincia obiit, sed cum Quincia et ipse obii;
        Risus obit, obit gratia, lusus obit. 
        Nec mea nunc anima in pectore, at in tumulo est.”

       “Quincia my dear is dead, but not alone,
        For I am dead, and with her I am gone: 
        Sweet smiles, mirth, graces, all with her do rest,
        And my soul too, for ’tis not in my breast.”