Part 1 — The Cumean Sybil’s Answer to the Duchess of Fontagne.

IS it possible that so charming a beauty should think of such an old decrepid creature as I am! I was desirous to talk with Mercury about you, but he flew away like a bird. It extremely troubles me, dear child, that I am oblig’d, in answer to your letter, to tell you there is no hopes of your returning to Versailles; for you must consider that when I conducted Æneas, I was then living, and that ’tis impossible for any under a Hercules to fetch you from whence you are; and where shall we find one now? The bravest Boufflers in France is but a link-boy in comparison to him. Your lover, fair lady, is so fast link’d to his old [47] Duegna’s tail, that he thinks no more of you and your complaints are insignificant.[48] She that hurried you out of the world in the flower of your youth, with a favourable dose of poison, is now neglected, and grown so monstrous fat and lecherous, by living lazily in a nunnery, that she’s not a fit companion for any creature that has but two legs to support it. You know not what you do, when you envy my destiny, for I’m sometimes so teiz’d and tir’d with answering the virtuosos and beaux, that it turns my very brain. I own, ’tis a sad thing to dye at eighteen, in the heighth of one’s greatness and pleasures, because nature always thinks she pays her tribute to death before-hand. I would willingly divert you a little, but I know not which way, unless this little history I send you, which a traveller gave me not long since, and which has novelty to recommend itself, will do it. Do not believe, good lady, the scandalous story some ignorant rhiming puppy has made of Æneas and me; he was not so brisk as that comes to; and I can assure you, never put the question to me. Ask Dido, she can tell you more of him than I can; and as modest as Virgil describes her, yet she was forc’d to take this Trojan prince by the throat to make him perform the duty of a gallant; by this you may judge of his constitution: besides, had he been never so amorously inclin’d, yet not knowing my inclinations, he might think his courtship would displease me, and so disoblige Apollo, for whose assistance he then had occasion. Therefore laugh at all those idle railleries of impertinent people, and turn your eyes and thoughts on the following dialogue.