Note 318 — Chapter II · MORAL INFLUENCE

Here are specimens of Phausina’s talk, that Nifo found so delightful. “Phausina,” said he, “since it befell me to love you, you have become an Aurora, superb, resplendent! How happy it makes me!”—“Near such a sun as you,” she replies, “ought I not to become the finest dawn ever seen?”

“One day I asked her how it was that with her sixteen years and her charm she could love an old fellow like me, reciprocity of love resulting philosophically from a certain similarity.”—“True, we are different,” she replied prettily, “yet we are wholly at one in the basis of our mutual love” (she meant beauty of soul).

“Who is the true lover?” he said. “The idolater,” she replied, “is he who adores the image and not the divinity; the false lover, he who loves the face of a girl, but does not respect her modesty.”

“Phausina, how can you love a man with one foot in the grave?” “’Tis not the dotard I love so warmly, but he whom neither age nor anything can affect; he who, after his death, will come to life again.”

“One day I was teasing Phausina: to provoke her I said, ‘Come now. Phausina, when you are quite old, do you think I shall still love you?’: ‘Why, of course,’ she said: ‘what you love in me will not grow old. Petrarch loved Laura ardently, young, mature, living, dead: he saw no mark of age, which nevertheless he might have earnestly desired, so that he might enjoy her beauty without any suspicion.’ And I then asked Phausina what would be the reward for such a love. ‘That you will not be a liar when you shower your praises on me.’”