1. Marriage is no legitimate excuse against love. 2. Whoever cannot conceal cannot love. 3. No one must have two lovers at the same time. 4. Love must always be increasing or diminishing. 5. Favours unwillingly granted have no charm. 6. No male must love until of full age. 7. Whoever of two lovers survives the other must observe a widowhood of two years. 8. None should be deprived of love except they lose their reason. 9. None can love except when compelled by the stress of love. 10. Love is an exile from the homes of avarice. 11. She who is scrupulous of the marriage tie should not love. 12. A true lover desires no embraces save those of his lady-love. 13. Love divulged rarely lasts. 14. Easy winning makes love contemptible; difficulty renders it dear. 15. Every lover grows pale at the sight of his lady-love. 16. The heart of a lover trembles at the sudden sight of his lady-love. 17. A new love makes an old one depart. 18. Probity alone makes a man worthy to be loved. 19. If love diminishes it soon fails, and rarely recovers its strength. 20. The lover is always timid. 21. From true jealousy love always increases. 22. When suspicion is aroused about a lover, jealousy and love increase. 23. Filled with thoughts of love, the lover eats and drinks less [than usual]. 24. Every act of a lover is determined by thoughts of the beloved. 25. A true lover thinks naught happy save what would please his beloved. 26. Love can deny nothing to love. 27. A lover cannot be satiated with the charms of the beloved. 28. A slight prejudice makes a lover think ill of the beloved. 29. He is not wont to love who is oppressed by too great abundance of pleasure. 30. A true lover is always without intermission filled with the image of his lady-love. 31. Nothing hinders one woman being loved by two men, or one man by two women. On these rules--some nonsensical, many contradictory, and all abominable--the following decisions, among many others, were based. The first is that of the Countess of Champagne already quoted, with its approval by Queen Eleanor. In its original verbiage it runs thus: * * * * * _Question._ Can true love exist between married persons? _Judgment_, by the Countess of Champagne: “We say and establish, by the tenor of these presents, that love cannot extend its rights to married persons. In fact, lovers accord everything to each other mutually and gratuitously, without being constrained by motives of necessity; while married people are bound by the duty of mutually sacrificing their wills and refusing nothing the one to the other.