Very rarely there is a strong desire expressed for fidelity, as in a beautiful lyric of absence, which I hope to give translated in full in my 17th Section.
But the end to be attained is always such as is summed up in these brief words placed upon a girl's lips:[24]—
"Dulcissime,
Totam tibi subdo me."
And the motto of both sexes is this:[25]—
"Quicquid agant alii,
Juvenes amemus."
It may be added, in conclusion, that the sweethearts of our students seem to have been mostly girls of the working and rustic classes, sometimes women of bad fame, rarely married women. In no case that has come beneath my notice is there any hint that one of them aspired to such amours with noble ladies as distinguished the Troubadours. A democratic tone, a tone of the proletariate, is rather strangely blent with the display of learning, and with the more than common literary skill apparent in their work.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Carm. Bur., p. 174.
[16] Ibid., p. 149, translated below in Section[ xvii.]
[17] Ibid., p. 130.