without a doubt is the harshness and rigour with which it treats the soul of the hapless absent one. But as it has the remedy so near, which consists in return, its torment can be borne with some ease; and if it should happen that the absence should be such that it is impossible to return to the desired presence, that impossibility comes to be the remedy, as in the case of death. As for the sorrow of which Marsilio complains, though it is, as it were, the same that I suffer, and on this account must needs have seemed to me greater than any other, I will not therefore fail to say what reason shows me, rather than that to which passion urges me. I confess that it is a terrible sorrow to love and not be loved; but 'twould be a greater to love and be loathed. And if we new lovers guided ourselves by what reason and experience teach us, we would see that every beginning in anything is difficult, and that this rule suffers no exception in the affairs of love, but rather in them is confirmed and strengthened the more; so that for the new lover to complain of the hardness of his lady's rebellious breast, goes beyond all bounds of reason. For as love is, and has to be, voluntary, and not constrained, I ought not to complain of not being loved by anyone I love, nor ought I to attach importance to the burden I impose on her, telling her that she is obliged to love me since I love her; seeing that, though the beloved person ought, in accordance with the law of nature and with fair courtesy, not to show herself ungrateful toward him who loves her well, it must not for this reason be a matter of constraint and obligation that she should respond, all in all, to her lover's desires. For if this were so, there would be a thousand importunate lovers who would gain by their solicitude what would perhaps not be due to them of right; and as love has the understanding for father, it may be that she who is well loved by me does not find in me qualities so good as to move her and incline her to love me. And so she is not obliged, as I have already said, to love me, in the same way that I shall be obliged to adore her, for I found in her what is lacking in me; and for this reason he who is disdained ought not to complain of his beloved, but of his fortune, which denied him the graces that might move his lady's understanding to love him well. And so he ought to seek, with constant services, with loving words, with not unseasonable presence, and with practised virtues, to improve and amend in himself the fault that nature caused; for this is so essential a remedy that I am ready to affirm that it will be impossible for him to fail to be loved, who, by means so fitting, shall seek to win his lady's good-will. And since this evil of disdain has with it the good of this cure, let Marsilio console himself, and pity the hapless and jealous Orfenio, in whose misfortune is enclosed the greatest that can be imagined in those of love. Oh jealousy, disturber