I thank you, father. The tales sound in my ears, but my heart is elsewhere; for nothing can make me forget my love. Leave all else therefore, and let us return to our shrift.
Yes, my son, there is one point more, and this is the last. (5398-5438.)
Lib. VIII.
1-198. Laws of Marriage. God created Adam and Eve to repair the loss of Lucifer and his angels, and bade them increase and multiply. In the first generation by God’s law brother and sister were joined in marriage, then afterwards cousin wedded cousin, as in the time of Habraham and Jacob. At last under Christian law Marriage was forbidden also in the third degree. Yet some men take no heed to kinship or religion, but go as a cock among the hens and as a stallion among the mares. Such love may be sweet at first, but afterwards it is bitter.
199-2008. Examples of Incest. Caligula the Roman Emperor bereft his three sisters of their virginity: therefore God bereft him of his life and of his empire.
Amon lay with his sister Thamar, and Absolon his brother took vengeance upon him.
Lot lay with his daughters, and the stocks which came from them were not good.
Thus if a man so set his love, he will afterwards sorely repent it; and of this I think to tell a tale which is long to hear. (199-270.)
Apollonius of Tyre. In a Chronicle called Pantheon I read how king Antiochus ravished his daughter and lived with her in sin. To hinder her marriage, he proposed a problem to those who sought her love, and if a man failed to resolve it, he must lose his head. At length came the Prince Apollinus of Tyre, and the king proposed to him the question. He saw too clearly what the riddle meant, and Antiochus fearing shame put off the time of his reply for thirty days. (271-439.)
The Prince feared his vengeance and fled home to Tyre, and thence he departed secretly in a ship laden with wheat. Antiochus sent one Taliart in all haste to Tyre, with command to make away with the Prince by poison. Finding that Apollinus had fled, he returned.