Since the days of Helen, love had been ascending. Sometimes it fell.
Occasionally it lost its way. There were seasons when it passed from
sight. But always the ascent was resumed. With Michel Angelo and Vittoria
Colonna it reached a summit beyond which for centuries it could not go. In
the interim there were other seasons in which it passed from sight.
Meanwhile like Beauty in the mediaeval night it waited. From Marguerite of
France it had taken a device:--_Non inferiora secutus_.

VIII

LOVE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The modern history of love opens with laughter, the rich faunesque laugh
of Francois I{er}. In Italy he had lost, as he expressed it,
everything--fors l'honneur. For his consolation he found there gallantry,
which Montesquieu defined as love's light, delicate and perpetual lie.

Platonism is the melody of love; gallantry the parody. Platonism
beautifies virtue, gallantry embellishes vice. It makes it a marquis,
gives it brilliance and brio. However it omit to spiritualize it does not
degrade. Moreover it improves manners. Gallantry was the direct cause of
the French Revolution. The people bled to death to defray the amours of
the great sent in their bill. Love in whatever shape it may appear is
always educational.

Hugo said that the French Revolution poured on earth the floods of
civilization. Mignet said that it established a new conception of things.
Both remarks apply to love. But before it disappeared behind masks,
patches, falbalas and the guillotine, to reappear in the more or less
honest frankness which is its Anglo-Saxon garb to-day, there were several
costumes in its wardrobe.

In Germany, and in the North generally, the least becoming fashions of the
Middle Ages were still in vogue. In Spain was the constant mantilla.
Originally it was white. The smoke of the auto-da-fe had, in blackening
it, put a morbid touch of hysteria beneath. In France, a brief bucolic
skirt, that of Amaryllis, was succeeded by the pretentious robes of
Rambouillet. In England, the Elizabethan ruff, rigid and immaculate--when
seen from a distance--was followed by the yielding Stuart lace. Across the
sea fresher modes were developing in what is now the land of Mille Amours.

In Italy at the moment, gallantry was the fashion. Francois I{er} adopted
it, and with it splendor, the magnificence that goes to the making of a
monarch's pomp. In France hitherto every castle had been a court than
which that of the