Le jeu d’amours, où jeunesse s’esbat, A un tablier se peut accomparer. Sur un tablier les dames on abat; Puis il convient le trictrac préparer, Et en celui ne faut que se parer. Plusieurs font Jean. N’est-ce pas jeu honneste, Qui par nature un joueur admoneste Passer le temps de cœur joyeusement? Mais en défaut de trouver la raye nette, Il s’en ensuit un grand jeu de torment. (The game of love, whereat youth takes its delight, may be likened to a chess-board. On a chess-board we lay down the pieces,—_dames_, ladies; then ’tis the time to marshal our men, and herein we have but to make the best game we can. Many play the masterful king; and is it not merely fair play, and an abomination of dame Nature, that a man should make his game in hearty, joyous wise? But should he fail to find a sound queen (quean), why! his game is like to end in woeful pain and sorrow.[110]) [Illustration: Decorative scrollwork above chapter start] SECOND DISCOURSE On the question which doth give the more content in love, whether touching, seeing or speaking. INTRODUCTION This is a question as concerning love that might well deserve a more profound and deeper writer to solve than I, to wit: which doth afford the more contentment in the fruition of love, whether contact or attouchment, speech, or sight. Mr. Pasquier,[111] a great authority of a surety in jurisprudence the which is his especial profession, as well as in the polite and humane sciences, doth give a disquisition thereon in his letters, the which he hath left us in writing. Yet hath he been by far too brief, and seeing how distinguished a man he is, he should not in this matter have shown himself so niggard of his wise words as he hath been. For if only he had seen good to enlarge somewhat thereon, and frankly to declare what he might well have told us, his letter which he hath indited on this point had been an hundred times more delightsome and agreeable.