“Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.”

     ["He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her
     who flees from him.”—­Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.]

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to’t: 

                         “Nisi to servare puellam
               Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:” 

     ["Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin
     to be no longer mine.”—­Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.]

to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt.  Want and abundance fall into the same inconvenience: 

“Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet.”

          ["Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want
          troubles me.—­“Terence, Phoym., i. 3, 9.]

Desire and fruition equally afflict us.  The rigors of mistresses are troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired, heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; ’tis a blunt, dull, stupid, tired, and slothful passion: 

          “Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem.”

     ["She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill.” 
     —­Ovid, Amor., ii. 19, 33]

                              “Contemnite, amantes: 
               Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri.”

     ["Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you
     yesterday.—­“Propertius, ii. 14, 19.]

Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face, but to enhance it to her lovers?  Why have they veiled, even below the heels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every one desires to see?  Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one over another, the parts where our desires and their own have their principal seat?  And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which our ladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to draw us on by removing them farther from us?

          “Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.”

     ["She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going.” 
     —­Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.]

“Interdum tunica duxit operta moram.”

               ["The hidden robe has sometimes checked love.” 
               —­Propertius, ii. 15, 6.]

To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this grave coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant of things that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but to increase in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot at pleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles?  For there is not only pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that soft sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce