"A very goddess, or to Apollo's self
Own sister, or a mother of the nymphs,"[5]
yet all her excellence will in nowise excuse your error.
Petrarch. Let us see what fresh quarrel you seek with me?
S. Augustine. It is unquestionably true that oftentimes the loveliest things are loved in a shameful way.
Petrarch. I have already met that insinuation on a previous occasion. If any one could see the image of the love that reigns in my heart, he would recognise that there is no difference between it and that face that I have praised indeed much, but less by far than it deserves to be praised. I call to witness the spirit of Truth in whose presence we are speaking when I assert that in my love there has never been anything dishonourable, never anything of the flesh, never anything that any man could blame unless it were its mere intensity. And if you add that even so it never passed the line of right, I think a fairer thing could never be conceived.
S. Augustine. I might reply to you with a word of Cicero and tell you, "You are talking of putting boundary lines in vice itself."[6]
Petrarch. Not in vice, but in love.
S. Augustine. But in that very passage he was speaking of love. Do you remember where it occurs?
Petrarch. Do I remember indeed? Of course I have read it in the Tusculans. But he was speaking of men's common love; mine is one by itself.
S. Augustine. Other people, I fancy, might say the same of theirs; for true it is that in all the passions, and most of all in this, every man interprets his own case favourably, and there is point in the verse though from a common poet—