Lay aside your fears! here you will give no second oath to your lover; that you have pledged yourself to me once is enough. Read to the end, and so may the languor leave that body of yours; that it feel pain in any part is pain to me!
Why do your blushes rise before you read?—for I suspect that, just as in the temple of Diana, your modest cheeks have reddened. It is wedlock with you that I ask, and the faith you pledged me, not a crime; as your destined husband, not as a deceiver, do I love. You may recall the words which the fruit I plucked from the tree and threw to you brought to your chaste hands; you will find that in them you promise me what I pray that you, maiden, rather than the goddess, will remember. I am still as fearful as ever, but my fear has grown keener than it was; for the flame of my love has waxed with being delayed, and taken on strength, and the passion that was never slight has now grown great, fed by long time and the hope that you had given. Hope you had given; my ardent heart put trust in you. You cannot deny that this was so—the goddess is my witness. She was there, and, present as she was, marked your words, and seemed, by the shaking of her locks, to have accepted them.
I will give you leave to say you were deceived, and by wiles of mine, if only of those wiles my love be counted cause. What was the object of my wiles but the one thing—to be united with you? The thing you complain of has power to join you to me. Neither by nature nor by practice am I so cunning; believe me, maid, it is you who make me skilful. It was ingenious Love who bound you to me, with words—if I, indeed, have gained aught—that I myself drew up. In words dictated by him I made our betrothal bond; Love was the lawyer that taught me knavery. Let wiles be the name you give my deed, and let me be called crafty—if only the wish to possess what one loves be craft!
Look, a second time I write, inditing words of entreaty! A second stratagem is this, and you have good ground for complaint. If I wrong you by loving, I confess I shall wrong you for ever, and strive to win you; though you shun my suit, I shall ever strive. With the sword have others stolen away the maids they loved; shall this letter, discreetly written, be called a crime? May the gods give me power to lay more bonds on you, so that your pledge may nowhere leave you free! A thousand wiles remain—I am only perspiring at the foot of the steep; my ardour will leave nothing unessayed. Grant ’tis doubtful whether you can be taken; the taking shall at le; ist he tried. The issue rests with the gods, but you will be taken none the less. You may evade a part, but you will not escape all the nets which Love, in greater number than you think, has stretched for you. If art will not serve, I shall resort to arms, and you will be seized and borne away in the embrace that longs for you.
I am not the one to chide Paris for what he did, nor any one who, to become a husband, has been a man. I, too—-but I say nothing! Allow that death is fit punishment for this theft of you, it will be less than not to have possessed you. Or you should have been less beautiful, would you be wooed by modest means; ’tis by your charms I am driven to be bold. This is your work—your work, and that of your eyes, brighter than the fiery stars, and the cause of my burning love; this is the work of your golden tresses and that ivory throat, and the hands which I pray to have clasp my neck, and your comely features, modest yet not rustic, and feet which Thetis’ own methinks could scarcely equal. If I could praise the rest of your charms, I should be happier; yet I doubt not that the work is like in all its parts. Compelled by beauty such as this, it is no cause for marvel if I wished the pledge of your word.
In fine, so only you are forced to confess yourself caught, be, if you will, a maid caught by my treachery. The reproach I will endure—only let him who endures have his just reward. Why should so great a charge lack its due profit? Telamon won Hesione, Briseis was taken by Achilles; each of a surety followed the victor as her lord. You may chide and be angry as much as you will, if only you let me enjoy you while you are angry. I who cause it will likewise assuage the wrath I stirred, let me but have a slight chance of appeasing you. Let me have leave to stand weeping before your face, and my tears have leave to add their own speech; and let me, like a slave in fear of bitter stripes, stretch out submissive hands to touch your feet! You know not your own right; call me! Why am I accused in absence? Bid me come, forthwith, after the manner of a mistress. With your own imperious hand you may tear my hair, and make my face livid with your fingers. I will endure all; my only fear perhaps will be lest that hand of yours be bruised on me.
But bind me not with shackles nor with chains—I shall be kept in bonds by unyielding love for you. When your anger shall have had full course, and is sated well, you will say to yourself: “How enduring is his love!” You will say to yourself, when you have seen me bearing all: “He who is a slave so well, let him be slave to me!” Now, unhappy, I am arraigned in my absence, and my cause, though excellent, is lost because no one appears for me.
This further—however much that writing of mine was a wrong to you, it is not I alone, you must know, of whom you have cause to complain. She of Delos was not deserving of betrayal with me; if faith with me you cannot keep, keep faith with the goddess. She was present and saw when you blushed at being ensnared, and stored away your word in a remembering ear. May your omens be groundless! Nothing is more violent than she when she sees—what I hope will not be!—her godhead wronged. The boar of Calydon will be my witness—fierce, yet so that a mother was found to be fiercer than he against her own son. Actaeon, too, will witness, once on a time thought a wild beast by those with whom himself had given wild beasts to death; and the arrogant mother, her body turned to rock, who still sits weeping on Mygdonian soil.
Alas me! Cydippe, I fear to tell you the truth, lest I seem to warn you falsely, for the sake of my plea; yet tell it I must. This is the reason, believe me, why you oft lie ill on the eve of marriage. It is the goddess herself, looking to your good, and striving to keep you from a false oath; she wishes you kept whole by the keeping whole of your faith. This is the reason why, as oft as you attempt to break your oath, she corrects your sin. Cease to invite forth the cruel bow of the spirited virgin; she still may be appeased, if only you allow. Cease, I entreat, to waste with fevers your tender limbs; preserve those charms of yours for me to enjoy. Preserve those features that were born to kindle my love, and the gentle blush that rises to grace your snowy cheek. May my enemies, and any who would keep you from my arms, so fare as I when you are ill! I am alike in torment whether you wed, or whether you are ill, nor can I say which I should wish the less; at times I waste with grief at thought that I may be cause of pain to you, and my wiles the cause of your wounds. May the false swearing of my lady come upon my head, I pray; mine be the penalty, and she thus be safe!
Nevertheless, that I may not be ignorant of how you fare, now here, now there, I oft walk anxiously in secret before your door; I follow stealthily the maid-slave and the lackey, asking what change for good your sleep has brought, or what your food. Ah me, wretched, that I may not be the one to carry out the bidding of your doctors, and may not stroke your hands and sit at the side of your bed! and again wretched, because when I am far removed from you, perhaps that other, he whom I least could wish, is with you! He is the one to stroke those dear hands, and to sit by you while ill, hated by me and by the gods above—and while he feels with his thumb your throbbing artery, he oft makes this the excuse for holding your fair, white arm, and touches your bosom, and, it may be, kisses you. A hire like this is too great for the service given!
Who gave you leave to reap my harvests before me? Who laid open the road for you to enter upon another’s hopes? That bosom is mine! mine are the kisses you take! Away with your hands from the body pledged to me! Scoundrel, away with your hands! She whom you touch is to be mine; henceforth, if you do that, you will be adulterous. Choose from those who are free one whom another does not claim; if you do not know, those goods have a master of their own. Nor need you take my word—let the formula of our pact be recited; and, lest you say ’tis false, have her read it herself! Out with you from another’s chamber, out with you, I say! What are you doing thei’e? Out! That couch is not free! Because- you, too, have the words of a second pact, the twin of mine, your case will not on that account be equal with mine. She promised herself to me, her father her to you; he is first after her, but surely she is nearer to herself than her father is. Her father but gave promise of her, while she, too, made oath—to her lover; he called men to witness, she a goddess. He fears to be called false, she to be called forsworn also; do you doubt which—this or that—is the greater fear? In a word, even grant you could compare their hazards, regard the issue—for she lies ill, and he is strong. You and I, too, are entering upon a contest with different minds; our hopes are not equal, nor are our fears the same. Your suit is without risk; for me, repulse is heavier than death, and I already love her whom you, perhaps, will come to love. If you had cared for justice, or cared for what was right, you yourself should have given my passion the way.
Now, since his hard heart persists in its unjust course, Cydippe, to what conclusion does my letter come? It is he who is the cause of your lying ill and under suspicion of Diana; he is the one you would forbid your doors, if you were wise. It is his doing that you are facing such dire hazards of life—and would that he who causes them might perish in your place! If you shall have repulsed him and refused to love one the goddess damns, then straightway you—and I assuredly—will be whole. Stay your fears, maiden! You will possess abiding health, if only you honour the shrine that is witness of your pledge; not by slain oxen are the spirits of heaven made glad, but by good faith, which should be kept even though without witness. To win their health, some maids submit to steel and fire; to others, bitter juices bring their gloomy aid. There is no need of these; only shun false oaths, preserve the pledg’e you have given—and so yourself, and me! Excuse for past offence your ignorance will supply—the agreement you read had fallen from your mind. You have but now been admonished not only by word of mine, but as well by those mishaps of health you are wont to suffer as oft as you try to evade your promise. Even if you escape these ills, in child-birth will you dare pray for aid from her light-bringing hands? She will hear these words—and then, recalling what she has heard, will ask of you from what husband come those pangs. You will promise a votive gift—she knows your promises are false; you will make oath—she knows you can deceive the gods!
’Tis not a matter of myself; the care I labour with is greater. It is concern for your life that fills my heart. Why, but now when your life was in doubt, did your frightened parents weep with fear, whom you keep ignorant of your crime? And why should they be ignorant?—you could tell your mother all. What you have done, Cydippe, needs no blush. See you relate in order how you first became known to me, while she was herself making sacrifice to the goddess of the quiver; how at sight of you, if perchance you noticed, I straight stood still with eyes fixed on your charms; and how, while I gazed on you too eagerly—sure mark of love’s madness—my cloak slipped from my shoulder and fell; how, after that, in some way came the rolling apple, with its treacherous words in clever character; and how, because they were read in holy Diana’s presence, you were bound by a pledge with deity to witness. For fear that after all she may not know the import of the writing, repeat now again to her the words once read by you. “Wed, I pray,” she will say, “him to whom the good gods join you; the one you swore should be, let be my son-in-law. Whoever he is, let him be our choice, since he was Diana’s choice before!” Such will be your mother’s word, if only she is a mother.
And yet, see that she seeks out who I am, and of what ways. She will find that the goddess had you and yours at heart. An isle once thronged by the Corycian nymphs is girdled by the Aegean sea; its name is Cea. That is the land of my fathers; nor, if you look with favour on high-born names, am I to be charged with birth from grandsires of no repute. We have wealth, too, and we have a name above reproach; and, though there were nothing else, I am bound to you by Love. You would aspire to such a husband even though you had not sworn; now that you have sworn, even though lie were not such, you should accept him.
These words Phoebe, she of the darts, bade me in my dreams to write you; these words in my waking hours Love bade me write. The arrows of the one of them have already wounded me; that the darts of the other wound not you, take heed! Your safety is joined with mine—have compassion on me and on yourself; why hesitate to aid us both at once? If you shall do this, in the day when the sounding signals will be given and Delos be stained with votive blood, a golden image of the blessed apple shall be offered up, and the cause of its offering shall be set forth in verses twain:
BY THIS IMAGE OF THE APPLE DOTH ACONTIUS DECLARE THAT WHAT ONCE WAS WRITTEN ON IT NOW HATH HAD FULFILMENT FAIR.
That too long a letter may not weary your weakened frame, and that it may close with the accustomed end: fare well!
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