Page:The Kiss and its History.djvu/54

40 Man is the slave of the kiss; by a kiss woman tames the fiercest man; by means of a kiss man's will becomes as wax. Our peasant girls in Denmark know this, too, right well. When they want one of the lads to do them a service they promise him "seven sweet kisses and a bit of white sugar on Whitsunday morning.""But he will get neither," they say to themselves.

Now, as we have discussed the kiss and its importance as the direct expression of love and erotic emotions, we will pass over to certain more special aspects of its nature.

In the very first place, then, we have the quantitative conditions.

It is a matter of common knowledge that lovers are liberal in the extreme in the question of kisses, which are given and taken to infinity, and these have likewise continually the same intoxicating freshness as at the first meeting. Everything in love is, you know, a reiteration, and yet love is a perpetual renewing. How inspiriting are the words of Tove to King Waldemar, as J. P. Jacobsen gives them:

And now I say for the first time:

"King Volmer, I love thee,"