“I accept with great pleasure, Signore, the handkerchief; just as the women in Turkey do when it is thrown to them. And you know the proverb:
“‘La donna chi prende
Tosto si rende
E poi si vende.’”“She who will take will give herself away,
And she who gives will sell herself, they say.”
“Even so will I sell mine for thine; but you must take the bargain on the nail, and the ball on the bound in the game of love.”
“Yes,” replied the young man; “I do so with all my heart. But as for our handkerchiefs, I now see that it is true that the peasant does not always know what it is that he carries home in his bag from the mill. Thanks be to Avesta that we found such good flour in our sacks!”
“To Vesta and to Virgil be all praise!” replied the lady. “But I think that while we continue our daily worship in the temple, we will go there no longer by night. Vi sono troppo donne devote nel buio”—There are too many lady devotees there in the darkness.
As a mere story this legend were as well left out, but it is one of a hundred as regards curious relics of mythologic and other lore. Firstly, be it observed that a secret doctrine, or esoteric as opposed to exoteric teaching, was taught in all the mysteries of the gods. Diana, who is identical with Vesta, Avesta, or Hestia, as a goddess of light by night and also of chastity, had her lovers in secret. What further identifies the two is that in this tale girls who have got into trouble through love, pray to Vesta, even as Roman maids did under similar circumstances specially to Diana.
There is no historical proof whatever that the Baptistery was ever a temple of Vesta, but there is very remarkable circumstantial evidence to that effect which I have indicated in detail in an article in the Architectural Review. Both Vesta and Saint John were each in her or his religion the special deities or incarnations of Light or Fire, and Purity or Chastity. The temples of Vesta were like those of Mars, and Mars alone, either round, hexagonal, or square, to indicate the form attributed with variations to the world. The early tradition of all writers on Florence speaks of the Baptistery of Saint John as having been a temple of Mars, which legend the priests naturally endeavoured to deny, thinking it more devout and “genteel” to attribute its erection to a Christian Empress.
The binding and rendering impotent by means of a padlock, and forty other devices, to render married folk miserable, or lovers languid, was so common two centuries ago, that there is almost a literature, occult, theological, and legal, on the subject. The Rabbis say it was invented by Ham, the son of Noah. The superstition was generally spread in Greece and Rome. It is still very commonly believed in and practised by witches all over Europe, and especially by gipsies and the Italian strege.
What is above all to be remarked in this tale is that it recognises a double nature in Vesta—one as a chaste goddess of fire, the other of a voluptuous or generative deity, signified by extinguishing the lights. And this is precisely what the oldest writers declared, though it was quite forgotten in later times. As Natalis Comes declares, “There were two Vestas, one by the first wife of Saturn, another by the younger one, meaning the earth, the other fire,” as Ovid witnesses, “Fastorum,” lib. 6. In fact, there was a double or second to every one of the Greek or Etruscan gods. And this belief which was forgotten by the higher classes remained among the people. And it may be specially noted that the second Vesta was called the mother of the gods, as Strabo declares, and she was in fact the Venus of the primitive or Saturnian mythology.