l passion:

"Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem."

["She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill."
--Ovid, Amor., ii. 19, 33]

"Contemnite, amantes:
Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri."

["Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you
yesterday.--"Propertius, ii. 14, 19.]

Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face,
but to enhance it to her lovers? Why have they veiled, even below the
heels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every one
desires to see? Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one over
another, the parts where our desires and their own have their principal
seat? And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which our
ladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to draw us
on by removing them farther from us?

"Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri."

["She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going."
--Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.]

"Interdum tunica duxit operta moram."

["The hidden robe has sometimes checked love."
--Propertius, ii. 15, 6.]

To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this grave
coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant of
things that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but to
increase in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot at
pleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is not
only pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that
soft sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce a cold and
matronlike gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: 'tis a glory,
say they, to triumph over modesty, chastity, and temperance; and whoever
dissuades ladies from those qualities, betrays both them and himself.
We are to believe that their hearts tremble with affright, that the very
sound of our words offends the purity of their ears, that they hate us
for talking so, and only yield to our importunity by a compulsive force.
Beauty, all powerful as it is, has not wherewithal to make itself
relished without the mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy,
where there is the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is
necessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to