The second epigram goes through a similar string of comparisons, and arrives at the same result: “What is better than sugar?—Honey-cake. Than honey-cake?—The flavour of honey-combs. Than this flavour?—Dewy kisses”—
Saccharo quid superat? Libum. Quid libo? Favorum Gustus. At hunc gustum? Basia roscidula.
Kisses are sweet as woman’s gentle breath, which, according to a Roumanian folk-song, smells of “delicate young wine,” or, as the French poets say, of “thousands of flowers.”—
Laughing mouth, mouth to caress,
Kissing ere its lips you press;
Sweet for kissing, balmy breath
Like the perfume of fresh heath.
W. F. H.
A woman’s breath, which intoxicates man, is, as it were, the ethereal expression of her whole being. In the description of the youthful Blancheflor we are told that her breath is so delicious and refreshing that he who experiences it knows not pain, and needs no food for a whole week.
De sa bouche ist si douce haleine,
Vivre en peut-on une semaine;
Qui au lundi le sentiroit
En la semaine mal n’avroit.
Moreover, as the flavour of a kiss depends on the woman’s mouth, let us, therefore, investigate how a woman’s mouth ought to be fashioned in order to fulfil its purpose from a philematological point of view. When the mediæval French poets describe a beautiful and desirable woman they say of her mouth that it must be “well-formed and sweet to kiss” (bien faite et douce pour baiser). The troubadours likewise in their love poems praise the mouth that is ben faita ad obs de baisar.
If more detailed explanations are wanted they can easily be given. The lips must, in the first place, be bewitchingly soft; next, they must be as red as coral:
Los labios de la su boca
Como un fino coral,
or else red as roses: