It took them out of the realm of the passions and “gave them wings for a sublime flight.” The mysticism of love is closely related to the mysticism of religion, and the faith that sees God in ecstatic visions is not far from the love that feeds itself from spiritual sources. These rambling talks, to which the young ladies listened curiously and with interest, though usually in discreet silence, proved so absorbing that on the last of a series of evenings devoted to the subject, the party forgot its usual gaieties, and did not disperse until the birds began to sing in the trees and the rosy dawn shone over the rugged heights of Monte Catri. III It was these conversations that set in motion the wave of Platonism which swept over the surface of society for two or three centuries, until it lost itself in the pale inanities and vapid phrases of the précieuses. We find it difficult now to conceive of a company of grave dignitaries old and young, statesmen, wits, men of letters, and clever women, chasing theories of love through an infinity of shades and gradations, as seriously as we talk of trusts, strikes, education, and the best means of making everybody happy. The subject had a perennial interest for them. They considered it mathematically as to quantity, spiritually as to quality. They quoted Plato on love and divine beauty, but no one would have been more surprised at the application than the philosopher himself. They proposed to do away with all the chagrins and disenchantments of love, by making it altogether a dream, beautiful, no doubt, but shadowy. As a last refuge, they put terrestrial love into celestial robes and drowned themselves in illusions. Bembo wished to serve Isabella d’Este “as if she were Pope,” but he sends her quite tenderly the kiss of his soul, which she, no doubt, took gracefully and at its value. She was not a sentimental woman; a clear, vigorous intellect is a very good antidote against false sensibility. But these other vigorous intellects were so busy weaving the tissue of their dreams that they did not trouble themselves much about possible applications.