True love, then, is a disinterested love inspired in man by woman. And therefore Bembo, who was the more knowing in these things because he had loved deeply, was still young, and had not yet heard his own clear call towards love divine, lifts up his voice in a passionate prayer: “O love, most good, most beautiful, most wise, thou that comest from divine goodness and wisdom, and returnest thither again, O thou cord binding us poor terrestrial and mortal folk one to another, thou bendest the higher virtues to dominate the lower! Thou dost unite the elements, thou dost perpetuate the life that perisheth, thou makest imperfection perfect, thou bringest discords into harmony, thou turnest foes into friends, thou givest fruit to the earth, peace to the waves, and to heaven its light of life! O father of true pleasures, of grace and peace, of lowliness and goodwill, O enemy of wildness and pride and slothfulness, thou art the alpha and omega of all good! “Thou dost reveal thyself in terrestrial beauty! Hear our prayers, lighten our darkness, guide us through the mazes of this world, rectify the falseness of our senses. Humbly we beg of thee balmy breath from the spiritual world, a touch of celestial harmony, an inexhaustible fount of true contentment! Purge our eyes of ignorance, and make us to see in its perfection the beauty of on high! Love is communion with the divine beauty, the banquet of the angels, immortal ambrosia!” It is now time to answer an objection which the reader has no doubt formulated long ago, and which Bembo very clearly perceived. Assuredly it is woman’s mission among us to represent beauty, and consequently love, and love is the inspiration of noble thoughts and great actions. But these are such old truths that to find them hardly needed so much intellectual and poetic effort, or the harking back to Plato. The learned book _On the Nature of Love_, in which Equicola essays simply an enumeration of the different species of love known since the thirteenth century, resembles a collection of butterflies. Every colour is there, brilliant or dull; the sentimental view is there represented in almost infinite shades, from the magnificent love of Boucicaut, who served all women for the love of one, the Holy Virgin, to the art of loving for love’s sake, always fashionable in the salons, and sedulously cultivated as an excellent prescription for innocuous emotions and a cheap renown. Men well knew how to love, to be sure! But love is rarely reciprocal; as someone has said, one loves and the other takes the kisses. So far, it was the woman who was recognised as the beauty, and consequently as the loved one, and who took the kisses.