Part 8

_Petrarch._ If my passion is for some low woman of ill fame, my love is the height of folly. But if, fascinated by one who is the image of virtue, I devote myself to love and honour her, what have you to say to that? Do you put no difference between things so entirely opposed? Do you wish to banish all remains of honour from the case? To tell you my real feeling, just as I regard the first kind of love as a heavy and ill-starred burden on the soul, so of the second I think there is hardly any greater blessing to it; if it so happen that you hold an opposite view, let each one follow his own feeling, for, as you are well aware, truth is a large field and every man should have freedom to judge for himself.

_S. Augustine_. In matters directly contradictory opinions also may be diverse. But truth itself is one and always the same.

_Petrarch_. I admit that is so. But what makes us go wrong is that we bind ourselves obstinately to old opinions, and will not easily part from them.

_S. Augustine._ Heaven grant you may think as wisely on the whole matter of love as you do on this point.

_Petrarch_. To speak briefly, I think I am so certainly right that those who think the opposite I believe to be quite out of their senses.

_S. Augustine_. I should certainly maintain that to take for truth some ancient falsehood, and to take as falsehood some newly-discovered truth, as though all authority for truth were a matter of time, is the very climax of madness.

_Petrarch._ You are wasting your labour. Whoever asserts that view of love I shall never believe him. And I will rest on Cicero's saying, "If I err here I err willingly, and I shall never consent to part with this error as long as I live."[1]

_S. Augustine._ When Cicero uses those words he is speaking of the immortality of the soul, and referring to it as the noblest of conceptions, and declaring his own belief in it to be so firm that he would not endure to listen to any one who maintained the contrary. You, however, to urge the ignoblest and most false of all opinions, make use of those same terms. Unquestionably, even if the soul were mortal, it would be better to think it immortal. For error though it were, yet would it inspire the love of virtue, and that is a thing to be desired for its own sake alone, even if all hope of future reward were taken away from us; and as to which the desire for it will certainly become weaker, as men come to think the soul a mortal thing; and, on the other hand, the promise of a life to come, even if it were to turn out a delusion, is none the less a powerful incentive to the soul, human nature being what it is.

But you see what will be the consequences of that error in which you stand; it will precipitate your soul into all manner of folly, when shame, and fear, even reason, that now acts as some check on passion, and the knowledge of truth itself shall all have disappeared.

_Petrarch._ I have already told you you were wasting your time. My own remembrance tells mo that I have never loved anything to be ashamed of, and, on the contrary, have ever loved what is most noble.

_S. Augustine._ Even noble things may be loved in a shameful way; it is beyond doubt.

_Petrarch._ Neither in the object of love nor in the manner of loving am I guilty. So you may as well give up tormenting me.

_S. Augustine._ Well, well! Do you wish, like those with fever on the brain, to die laughing and joking? Or will you rather take some remedy for your mind so pitiable and so far from its true health?

_Petrarch._ I will not refuse a remedy if you will prove to me that I am ill, but, when a man is quite well, to begin taking remedies is often fatal.

_S. Augustine._ As soon as you have reached the stage of convalescence you will perceive quickly enough, as men generally do, that you have been seriously ill.

_Petrarch._ After all, I cannot but show deference to one who often in the past, and especially in these last two days, has given me proof how good were his counsels. So please go on.

_S. Augustine._ In the first place I ask you to forgive me if, compelled by the subject, I have to deal severely with what has been so delightful to you. For I cannot but foresee that the truth will sound bitterly in your ears.

_Petrarch_. Just one word before you begin. Do you thoroughly know the matter you are to touch upon?

_S. Augustine._ I have gone into it all carefully beforehand. It is about a mortal woman, in admiring and celebrating whom you have, alas! spent a large part of your life. That a mind like yours should have felt such an insensate passion and for so long a time does greatly astonish me.

_Petrarch_. Spare your reproaches, I pray. Thais and Livia were both mortal women; but you should be aware that she of whom you have set out to speak is a mind that has no care for things of earth, and burns only with the love of what is heavenly. In whose face, unless truth is an empty word, a certain divine loveliness shines out; whose character is the image and picture of perfect honour; whose voice and the living expression of whose eyes has nothing mortal in it; whose very form and motion is not as that of others. Consider this again and again, I entreat you, and I trust you may have understanding in what words to speak.

_S. Augustine._ Ah! out of all reason have you grown! Have you then for sixteen long years been feeding: with false joys this flame of your heart? Of a truth not longer did Italy once suffer the assaults of her most famous enemy, the great Hannibal; nor did she then endure more frequent onsets of her would-be lover, nor was consumed with more furious fires. You to-day carry within you as hot a flame of passion, you endure as fierce stings. Yet was there found one who forced him to retreat and, though late, to take his leave! But who shall expel this invader from your soul if you yourself forbid him to depart; if you of your own will invite him to stay long with you; if you, unhappy as you are, delight in your own calamity? Far other will be your thoughts when the fatal day shall come that will close for ever those eyes that are now so pleasing to you to look upon; when you shall see that face and those pale limbs changed by death; then you will be filled with shame to have so knit your mortal affections to a perishing body such as this, and what now you so obstinately maintain you will then blush to remember.

_Petrarch_. Heaven forbid any such misery. I shall not see your threats fulfilled.

_S. Augustine_. They will inevitably come to pass.

_Petrarch_. I know it. But the stars in their courses will not so fight against me as to prevent the order of Nature by hastening her death like that. First came I into this world and I shall be first to depart.

_S. Augustine._ I think you will not have forgotten that time when you feared the contrary event, and made a song of your beloved as if she were presently to die, a song full of moving sorrow.

_Petrarch._ Certainly I remember very well, but the thought that filled me then with grief, and the memory of which makes me shiver, was a jealous indignation at the bare possibility of my outliving her who is the best part of my life and whose presence makes all its sweetness. For that is the motive of that song; I remember it well, and how I was overcome with tears. Its spirit is still with me, if with you perchance are the words.

_S. Augustine._ I was not complaining how many tears the fear of her death made you shed, nor of how much grief you felt. I was only concerned that you should realise how this fear of yours in the past may certainly return; and more easily, in that every day is a step nearer to death, and that that fair form, worn by sicknesses and the bearing of many children, has already lost much of its first strength.

_Petrarch._ I also am borne down with cares and am worn with age, and in that onward path towards death I have outrun her whom I love.

_S. Augustine._ What folly it is to calculate the order of death by that of birth! For what are those sad lamentations of the old but because of the early deaths of their young children? What is it that yonder aged nurse is grieving over but that she sees the loss of her little nursling--

"Whom some dark day Has stripped of his sweet life; and cruel fate Snatched from his mother's breast and covered him In a too early grave."[2]

In your own case the small number of years by which you have preceded her gives you a very uncertain hope that you will be gone before the fire of your passion shall be extinguished; and yet you indulge the fiction that this order of Nature is unchangeable.

_Petrarch_. Not exactly unchangeable, but I pray without ceasing that it may not be changed, and whenever I think of death I remember Ovid's line--

"Late may her time arrive, and after mine."[3]

_S. Augustine._ I can listen to these trifles no more; but since you now admit that she may possibly die before you, I ask what should you say if she really were dead?

_Petrarch_. What should I say but that such a calamity would be the climax of all my miseries? Yet I should try and comfort myself with what was past. But may the winds bear away the words from our lips and the hurricane scatter such an omen to the ends of the earth!

_S. Augustine._ Ah, blindfold one! you see not yet what foolishness it is so to subject your soul to things of earth, that kindle in it the flames of desire, that have no power to give it rest, that cannot endure; and, while promising to charm you with their sweetness, torment you with perpetual agitations.

_Petrarch_. If you have any more effectual remedy, I beg you will point it out. You will never frighten me with talk like this; for I am not, as you suppose, infatuated with any creature that is mortal. You might have known that I have loved her physical charm loss than her soul, that what has captivated me has been a life above that of ordinary lives, the witnessing of which has shown me how the blessed live above.

Therefore, since you inquire of me (and the mere question is a torture to listen to) what I should do supposing she were to leave me and be the first to die--well, I should try and console myself in sorrow with Lælius, the wisest of the Romans. With him I should say, "It is her goodness that I loved and that is not dead;" and I would say to myself those other words that he pronounced after the death of him for whom he had conceived an affection surpassing all common affection.[4]

_S. Augustine._ You retire to Error's inaccessible fastness, and it will not be easy to dislodge you. But as I notice you are inclined to listen much more patiently to the truth about yourself and her, sing the praises of your darling lady as much as you will, and I will gainsay nothing. Were she a queen, a saint--

"A very goddess, or to Apollo's self Own sister, or a mother of the nymphs,"[5]

yet all her excellence will in nowise excuse your error.

_Petrarch_. Let us see what fresh quarrel you seek with me?

_S. Augustine._ It is unquestionably true that oftentimes the loveliest things are loved in a shameful way.

_Petrarch._ I have already met that insinuation on a previous occasion. If any one could see the image of the love that reigns in my heart, he would recognise that there is no difference between it and that face that I have praised indeed much, but less by far than it deserves to be praised. I call to witness the spirit of Truth in whose presence we are speaking when I assert that in my love there has never been anything dishonourable, never anything of the flesh, never anything that any man could blame unless it were its mere intensity. And if you add that even so it never passed the line of right, I think a fairer thing could never be conceived.

_S. Augustine._ I might reply to you with a word of Cicero and tell you, "You are talking of putting boundary lines in vice itself."[6]

_Petrarch_. Not in vice, but in love.

_S. Augustine_. But in that very passage he was speaking of love. Do you remember where it occurs?

_Petrarch._ Do I remember indeed? Of course I have read it in the _Tusculans_. But he was speaking of men's common love; mine is one by itself.

_S. Augustine._ Other people, I fancy, might say the same of theirs; for true it is that in all the passions, and most of all in this, every man interprets his own case favourably, and there is point in the verse though from a common poet--

"To every man his lady, Then one to me assign; To every man his love affairs, And so let me have mine!"[7]

_Petrarch._ Would you like, if you have time, to hear me tell you a few of those many charms of hers that would strike you with astonishment and admiration?

_S. Augustine._ Do you think I am ignorant of all

"Those pleasant dreams that lovers use to weave"?

Every schoolboy knows the line, but I confess I am ashamed to hear such silliness from the lips of one whose words and thoughts should seek a higher range.

_Petrarch._ One thing I will not keep silence on,--call it silliness, call it gratitude, as you please,--namely, that to her I owe whatever I am, and I should never have attained such little renown and glory as I have unless she by the power of this love had quickened into life the feeble germ of virtue that Nature had sown in my heart. It was she who turned my youthful soul away from all that was base, who drew me as it were by a grappling chain, and forced me to look upwards. Why should you not believe it? It is a sure truth that by love we grow like what we love. Now there is no backbiter alive, let his tongue be as sharp as it may, that has ventured to touch her good name, or dared to say he had seen a single fault, I will not say in her conduct, but even in any one of her gestures or words. Moreover, those whisperers who leave no one's reputation untouched if they can help it, have been obliged in her, case to utter only reverence and respect.

It is no wonder, then, if such a glory as hers should have fostered in my heart the longing for more conspicuous glory, and should have sweetened those hard toils which I had to endure if I would attain that which I desired. What were all the wishes of my youth but solely to please her who above all others had pleased me? And you are not ignorant that to gain my end I scorned delights a thousand times, I gave myself before my time to labour and to cares without number; and now you bid me forget or diminish somewhat of my love for her who first taught me how to escape the vulgar crowd, who guided all my steps, spurred on my lagging mind, and wakened into life my drowsy spirit.

_S. Augustine._ Poor man! you would have done better to be silent than to speak, although even if you had been silent I should have discerned what you are within. But such stout words as these stir my indignation and anger.

_Petrarch._ I wonder why?

_S. Augustine._ To have a false opinion shows ignorance, but to keep on boldly proclaiming it shows pride as well as ignorance.

_Petrarch_. Suppose you try and prove that what I think and say is false.

_S. Augustine._ It is all false; and, first, what you say as to owing all you are to her. If you mean that she has made you what you are, there you certainly lie; but if you were to say that it is she. who has prevented you being any more than you are, you would speak the truth. O what long contention would you have been spared if by the charm of her beauty she had not held you back. What you are you owe to the bounty of Nature; what you might have been she has quite cut off, or rather let me say you yourself have cut it off, for she indeed is innocent. That beauty which seemed so charming and so sweet, through the burning flame of your desire, through the continual rain of your tears, has done away all that harvest that should have grown from the seeds of virtue in your soul. It is a false boast of yours that she has held you back from base things; from some perhaps she may, but only to plunge you into evils worse still. For if one leads you from some miry path to bring you to a precipice, or in lancing some small abscess cuts your throat, he deserves not the name of deliverer but assassin. Likewise she whom you hold up as your guide, though she drew you away from some base courses, has none the less overwhelmed you in a deep gulf of splendid ruin. As for her having taught you to look upwards and separate yourself from the vulgar crowd, what else is it than to say by sitting at her feet you became so infatuated with the charm of her above as to studiously neglect everything else?

And in the common intercourse of human life what can be more injurious than that? when you say she has involved you in toils without number, there indeed you speak truth. But what great gain is there in that? When there are such varied labours that a man is perforce obliged to engage in, what madness is it of one's own accord to go after fresh ones! As for your boasting that it is she who has made you thirst for glory, I pity your delusion, for I will prove to you that of all the burdens of your soul there is none more fatal than this. But the time for this is not yet come.

_Petrarch_. I believe the readiest of warriors first threatens and then strikes. I seem, however, to find threat and wound together. And already I begin to stagger.

_S. Augustine_. How much more will you stagger when I deliver my sharpest thrust of all? Forsooth that woman to whom you profess you owe everything, she, even she, has been your ruin.

_Petrarch._ Good Heavens! How do you think you will persuade me of that?

_S. Augustine._ She has detached your mind from the love of heavenly things and has inclined your heart to love the creature more than the Creator: and that one path alone leads, sooner than any other, to death.

_Petrarch._ I pray you make no rash judgment. The love which I feel for her has most certainly led me to love God.

_S. Augustine._ But it has inverted the true order.

_Petrarch._ How so?

_S. Augustine._ Because 'every creature' should be dear to us because of our love for the Creator. But in your case, on the contrary, held captive by the charm of the creature, you have not loved the Creator as you ought. You have admired the Divine Artificer as though in all His works He had made nothing fairer than the object of your love, although in truth the beauty of the body should be reckoned last of all.

_Petrarch._ I call Truth to witness as she stands here between us, and I take my conscience to witness also, as I said before, that the body. of my lady has been less dear to me than her soul. The proof of it is here, that the further she has advanced in age (which for the beauty of the body is a fatal thunderstroke) the more firm has been my admiration; for albeit the flower of her youth has withered visibly with time, the beauty of her soul has grown with the years, and as it was the beginning of my love for her, even so has it been its sustainer. Otherwise if it had been her bodily form which attracted me, it was, ere this, time to make a change.

_S. Augustine._ Are you mocking me? Do you mean to assert that if the same soul had been lodged in a body ill-formed and poor to look upon, you would have taken equal delight therein?

_Petrarch._ I dare not say that. For the soul itself cannot be discerned, and the image of a body like that would have given no indication of such a soul. But were it possible for the soul to be visible to my gaze, I should most certainly have loved its beauty even though its dwelling-place were poor.

_S. Augustine._ You are relying on mere words; for if you are only able to love that which is visible to your gaze, then what you love is the bodily form. However, I deny not that her soul and her character have helped to feed your flame, for (as I will show you before long) her name alone has both little and much kindled your mad passion; for, as in all the affections of the soul, it happens most of all in this one that oftentimes a very little spark will light a great fire.

_Petrarch._ I see where you would drive me. You want to make me say with Ovid--

"I love at once her body and her soul."[8]

_S. Augustine._ Yes, and you ought to confess this also, that neither in one or the other case has your love been temperate or what it should be.

_Petrarch._ You will have to put me to the torture ere I will make any such confession.

_S. Augustine._ And you will allow that this love has also cast you into great miseries.

_Petrarch._ Though you place me on the block itself, I will not acknowledge any such thing.

_S. Augustine._ If you do not ignore my questions and conclusions, you will soon make both those confessions. Tell me, then, can you recall the years when you were a little child, or have the crowding cares of your present life blotted all that time out?

_Petrarch._ My childhood and youth are as vividly before my eyes as if they were yesterday.

_S. Augustine._ Do you remember, then, how in those times you had the fear of God, how you thought about Death, what love you had for Religion, how dear goodness and virtue were to you?

_Petrarch._ Yes, I remember it all, and I am sorry when I see that as my years increased these virtues grew less and less in me.

_S. Augustine._ For my part I have ever been afraid lest the wind of Spring should cut that early blossom off, which, if only it might be left whole and unhurt, would have produced a wondrous fruitage.

_Petrarch._ Pray do not wander from the subject; for what has this to do with the question we were discussing?

_S. Augustine._ I will tell you. Recall each step in your life, since your remembrance is so complete and fresh; recall all the course of your life, and recollect at what period this great change you speak of began.

_Petrarch._ I have run over in my mind all the course and number of my years.

_S. Augustine._ And what do you find?

_Petrarch._ I see that the doctrine in the treatise of Pythagoras, of which I have heard tell and have read, is by no means void of truth. For when travelling the right road, still temperate and modest, I had reached the parting of the ways and had been bidden to turn to the right hand, whether from carelessness or perversity I know not, behold I turned to the left; and what I had read in my boyhood was of no profit to me--

"Here the ways part: the right will thee conduct To the walled palace of the mighty King And to Elysium, but the left will lead Where sin is punished and the malefactor Goes to his dreaded doom."[9]

Although I had read of all this before, yet I understood it not until I found it by experience. Afterwards I went wrong, in this foul and crooked pathway, and often in mind went back with tears and sorrow, yet could not keep the right way; and it was when I left that way, yes, that was certainly the time when all this confusion in my life began.

_S. Augustine_. And in what period of your age did this take place?

_Petrarch._ About the middle of my growing youth. But if you give me a minute or two, I think I can recall the exact year when it took place.

_S. Augustine_. I do not ask for the precise date, but tell me about when was it that you saw the form and feature of this woman for the first time?

_Petrarch._ Never assuredly shall I forget that day.

_S. Augustine._ Well now, put two and two together; compare the two dates.

_Petrarch._ I must confess in truth they coincide. I first saw her and I turned from my right course at one and the same time.

_S. Augustine._ That is all I wanted. You became infatuated. The unwonted dazzle blinded your eyes, so I believe. For they say the first effect of love is blindness. So one reads in the poet most conversant with Nature--

"At the first sight was that Sidonian dame Blinded,"

and then he adds presently--

"With love was Dido burning."[10]

And though, as you well know, the story is but on ancient fable, yet did the Poet in making it follow the order of Nature.