I have heard many fair ladies and cavaliers which have practised love declare how that, but for sight and speech, they had rather be like brute beasts, that following a mere natural appetite of the senses, have no thought of love or affection, but only to satisfy their sensual rage and animal heat.
Likewise have I heard many lords and gallants which have lain with high-born ladies say, that they have ever found these an hundred times more lascivious and outspoken in words than common women and the like. Herein do they show much art, seeing it is impossible for a man, be he as vigorous as he may, to be always hard at the collar and in full work. So when the lover cometh to lie still and relax his efforts, he doth find it so pleasant and so appetizing whenas his lady doth entertain him with naughty tales and words of wit and wantonness, that Venus, no matter how soundly put to sleep for the time being, is of a sudden waked up again. Nay! more, many ladies, conversing with their lovers in company, whether in the apartments of Queens and Princesses or elsewhere, will strangely lure them on, for that they will be saying such lascivious and enticing words to them that both men and women will be just as wanton as in a bed together. Yet all the while we that be onlookers will deem their conversation to be of quite other matters.
This again is the reason why Mark Antony did so love Cleopatra and preferred her before his own wife Octavia, who was an hundred times more beautiful and lovable than the Egyptian Queen. But this Cleopatra was mistress of such happy phrases and such witty conversation, with such wanton ways and seductive graces, that Antony did forget all else for love of her.
Plutarch doth assure us, speaking of sundry quips and tricks of tongue she was used to make such pretty play withal, that Mark Antony, when he would fain imitate her, was in his bearing (albeit he was only too anxious to play the gallant lover) like naught so much as a common soldier or rough man-at-arms, as compared with her and her brilliant ways of talk.[118*]
Pliny doth relate a story of her which I think excellent, and so I will repeat the same here in brief. One day, being in one of her wildest moods, she was attired most enticingly and to great advantage, and especially did wear on her head a garland of divers blossoms most suitable to provoke wanton imaginings. Well, as they sat at table, and Mark Antony was fain to drink, she did amuse him with pleasant discourse, and meanwhile all the time she spake, she kept plucking out one by one fair flowers from her garland (but they were really strewed over every one with poisonous essences), and tossing the same from time to time into the cup Antony held ready to drink from. Presently when she had ended her discourse and Mark Antony was on the point of lifting the goblet to his lips to drink, Cleopatra doth stay him suddenly with her hand, and having stationed some slave or condemned criminal ready to hand, she did call this fellow to her and made them give him the draught Mark Antony was about to swallow. On drinking this he fell down dead; and she turning to Antony, said, “And if I did not love you as I do, I should e’en now have been rid of you; yea! and would gladly have had it so, only that I see plainly I cannot live without you.” These words and this device were well fitted to confirm Mark Antony in his passion, and to make him even more submissive before his charmer’s feet.
In such ways did her cleverness of tongue serve Cleopatra, whom all the Historians do describe as having been exceedingly ready of speech. Mark Antony was used never to call her anything but “the Queen,” by way of greater distinction. So he did write to Octavius Cæsar, previous to the time when they were declared open enemies: “What hath changed you,” he writes, “concerning my loving the Queen? She is my wife. Is it but now I have begun the connection? You fondle Drusilla, Tortalé, Leontiphé and a dozen others; what reck you on whom you do bestow your favour, when the caprice seizeth you?”
In this letter Mark Antony was for extolling his own constancy, and reproaching the other’s changeableness, for loving so many women at once, while himself did love only the Queen. And I only wonder Octavius did not love her too after Antony’s death. It may well be he had his pleasure when he had her come alone to his chamber, and he there beheld her beauty and heard her address him; or mayhap he found her not so fair as he had thought, or scorned her for some other reason, and did wish to make his triumph of her at Rome and show her in his public procession. But this indignity she did forestall by her self-inflicted death.
There can be no doubt, to return to our first point, that when a woman is fain after love, or is once well engaged therein, no orator in all the world can talk better than she. Consider how Sophonisba hath been described to us by Livy, Appian and other writers, and how eloquent she did show herself in Massinissa’s case, when she did come to him for to win over and claim his love, and later again when it behooved to swallowed the fatal poison. In short, every woman, to be well loved, is bound to possess good powers of speech; and in very deed there be few known which cannot speak well and have not words enough to move heaven and earth, yea! though this were fast frozen in mid winter.
Above all must they have this gift which devote themselves to love. If they can say naught, why! they be so savourless, the morsel they give us hath neither taste nor flavour. Now when M. du Bellay, speaking of his mistress and declaring her ways, in the words,