The great offence of the Celestina, however, is, that large portions of it are foul with a shameless libertinism of thought and language. Why the authority of church and state did not at once interfere to prevent its circulation seems now hardly intelligible. Probably it was, in part, because the Celestina claimed to be written for the purpose of warning the young against the seductions and crimes it so loosely unveils; or, in other words, because it claimed to be a book whose tendency was good. Certainly, strange as the fact may now seem to us, many so received it. It was dedicated to reverend ecclesiastics, and to ladies of rank and modesty in Spain and out of it, and seems to have been read generally, and perhaps by the wise, the gentle, and the good, without a blush. When, therefore, those who had the power were called to exercise it, they shrank from the task; only slight changes were required; and the Celestina was then left to run its course of popular favor unchecked.[425] In the century that followed its first appearance from the press in 1499, a century in which the number of readers was comparatively very small, it is easy to enumerate above thirty editions of the original. Probably there were more. At that time, too, or soon afterwards, it was made known in English, in German, and in Dutch; and, that none of the learned at least might be beyond its reach, it appeared in the universal Latin. Thrice it was translated into Italian, and thrice into French. The cautious and severe author of the “Dialogue on Languages,” the Protestant Valdés, gave it the highest praise.[426] So did Cervantes.[427] The very name of Celestina became a proverb, like the thousand bywords and adages she herself pours out, with such wit and fluency;[428] and it is not too much to add, that, down to the days of the Don Quixote, no Spanish book was so much known and read at home and abroad.