Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/476

 THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER " I am very willing that this lady should be much more cour- teous to my unyouthful Courtier, than my lord Magnifico's is to the youthful Courtier; and with reason, for my Courtier will desire only seemly things, and therefore the lady can grant him all of them without blame; while my lord Magnifico's lady, who is not so sure of the youthful Courtier's modesty, ought to grant him only seemly things, and to refuse him the unseemly. Hence my Courtier, to whom is granted what he asks, is more happy than the other, to whom part is granted and part refused. " And to the end that you may still better understand that rational love is happier than sensual, I say that the same things ought sometimes to be refused in sensual love and granted in rational love, because they are unseemly in the one and seemly in the other. Thus, to please her worthy lover, besides granting him pleasant smiles, familiar and secret discourse, and leave to joke and jest with her and to touch her hand, the lady may in reason even go so far as kissing without blame, w^hich is not permitted in sensual love according to my lord Magnifico's rules. For since the kiss is the union of body and soul, there is danger lest the sensual lover incline more in the direction of the body than in that of the soul; while the rational lover perceives that although the mouth is part of the body, yet it gives issue to words, which are interpreters of the soul, and to that inward breath which is itself even called soul. Hence a man delights to join his mouth to that of his beloved in a kiss, not in order to arouse any unseemly desire in him, but because he feels that bond to be the opening of a passage between their souls, which, being each drawn by desire for the other, pour themselves each into the other's body by turn, and so commingle that each has two souls, and a single soul (thus composed of these two) rules as it were over two bodies. Hence the kiss may be oftener said to be a joining of soul than of body, because it has such power over the soul that it draws her to itself and separates her jrom the body. On this account all chaste lovers desire to^:kiss as a joining of the soul; and thus the divinely enamoured #lato says that in kissing the soul came to his lips to escape his body. And since the separation of the soul from things material7 and its complete union with things spiritual, may be denoted by the kiss, 300