‘I think, Madame, you would have used that excellent device of the Muse Galante which I will call that of Eros Masqué.’
‘Eros Masqué? Is he unseen then as well as unseeing?’
‘On his first visit, frequently, Madame. And this droll fact—that lovers pierced by as many of his arrows as Saint Sebastian by those of the Jews are wont to ignore the instrument by which they have got their wounds—has been put to pretty use by many poètes galants. For example, an amorous maiden or swain doth describe divers well-known effects of the tender passion, and then asks with a delicious naïveté, “Can it be Love?” And this simple little question, if inserted between each of the symptoms enumerated by Sappho, would go far to giving her poem the esprit it so sadly lacks. But, Madame, far the most ravishing of all the poems of Eros Masqué are your own incomparable verses in the sixth volume of “Cyrus”:—
‘Ma peine est grande, et mon plaisir extrême,
Je ne dors point la nuit, je rêve tout le jour;
Je ne sais pas encore si j’aime,
Mais cela ressemble a l’amour.
‘Voyant Phaon mon âme est satisfaite,
Et ne le voyant point, la peine est dans mon cœur
J’ignore encore ma defaite