Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 1Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
History
Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 1
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
Erotic literature
In likewise do I remember me how once, in a gallery of the Comte de
Chasteau-Villain, known as the Seigneur Adjacet,[32*] a company of
ladies with their lovers having come to visit the said fair mansion,
they did fall to contemplating sundry rare and beautiful pictures in
the Gallery thereof. Among these they beheld a very beautiful picture,
wherein were portrayed a number of fair ladies naked and at the bath,
which did touch, and feel, and handle, and stroke, one the other, and
intertwine and fondle with each other, and so enticingly and prettily
and featly did show all their hidden beauties that the coldest recluse
or hermit had been warmed and stirred thereat. Wherefore did a certain
great lady, as I have heard it told, and indeed I do know her well,
losing all restraint of herself before this picture, say to her lover,
turning toward him maddened as it were at the madness of love she
beheld painted; “Too long have we tarried here. Let us now straightway
take coach and so to my lodging; for that no more can I hold in the
ardour that is in me. Needs must away and quench it; too sore do I
burn.” And so she did haste away to enjoy her faithful lover.
Suchlike pictures and portrayals do bring more hurt to a weak soul
than men think for. Another of the same sort there, was a Venus naked,
lying on a couch and eyed by her son Cupid; another, Mars a-bed with
Venus, another, a Leda with her swan. Many other there be, both there
and elsewhere, that are somedel more modestly painted and better veiled
than the figures of Aretino; but all do come pretty much to one and
the same, and are of the like nature with our cup whereof I have been
speaking. This last had, as it were, a sort of likeness in unlikeness
to the cup which Renault de Montauban found in the Castle Ariosto doth
tell of, the which did openly discover unhappy husbands that were
cuckolds, whereas this one was more likely to make them so. But while
the one did cause somewhat too great scandal to cuckolds and their
faithless wives, the other had no such effect. Nowadays is no need of
these books or these pictures, for that husbands teach their wives
themselves enough and to spare without them. And now for the results of
suchlike husbands’ schooling!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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