The Way of a Virgin/The Skirmish

THE SKIRMISH.^[1]

Tullia.

SWEET it is to me, dearest cousin, that thy marriage with Cavicea is finally concluded: for, the night which will make thee a wife in his embraces will, I assure thee, afford thee by far the greatest of all pleasures; provided Venus befriend thee, as this thy heavenly shape deserveth.

Ottavia.

My mother told me this morning that I am to be wedded to-morrow to Caviceo. And I see that the requisites for the pomp of this event are being prepared at home with great care: the bed, bed-room, and so forth. But, of course, these things cause less joy than fear in my soul; for, whatever in fine may be that pleasure of which thou, my dearest cousin, speakest, I neither know nor even imagine.

Tullia.

It should seem nowise strange that thou at this age and so soft (for thou hast barely attained thy fifteenth year), dost not know what I, though older when I married, wholly ignored; that delight which Pomponia used to promise and so loudly extol, having been tasting it herself since three years.

Ottavia.

But what greatly surpriseth me is that thou shouldst wholly ignore it. Allow me to speak more openly now that I am on the eve of complete freedom. For if the practice were lacking, which thou certainly hadst not, yet thy great learning must have disclosed these secrets to thee. I often hear thee extolled to the clouds in the most flattering terms, because thou art so skilled in Latin and Greek literature as in nearly all the liberal arts that there seemth to be naught which thou dost not know.

Tullia.

My father had so much to do in this, that, with the same zeal as most other girls are seeking after the reputation or being handsome and elegant, I was entirely bent on acquiring the honour of being a learned maid. And they that prefer to flatter than speak the truth, say: she hath not quite lost her time.

Ottavia.

They who will not flatter say also: scarcely have esteem of virtue, good morals remained with those of our sex who were considered learned, even when they obtained this honour.

Tullia.

Would they deny I am chaste, while owning I am learned?

Ottavia.

Ay, they would; but thou hast won the admiration of all while taking care that thy learning did not interfere with thy good and chaste morals; it hath produced an extraordinary prodigy. But how could it be possible that the Muses, who are styled virgins, should be deemed hostile to the honour of virgins? Why are they said to corrupt our minds, they who are as the ardour of our souls, stimulating us all, men and women alike, to grand and praiseworthy actions? Undoubtedly because men, from a certain haughty and silly malignity, envy us these resources of which they themselves are proud, by making us the victims of their jealousy. Men shun every poison and venom just as we do, whom they call the weaker sex, because the same pest which may take our lives away, may take theirs away too. If learning be a venom and a pest for us, as they assert, how is it that so dangerous a thing, in order to be useful to men, (for they do not deny but that it is useful to them), should change its nature all on a sudden? If learning is, of its very essence, a certain source of every evil and crime for us, how shall they drink out of the same source the nectaren waters of immortal glory: whilst we unhappy and wretched women shall drink a sort of sulphureous Stygian water which will excite us to those debaucheries, to which they drive us by their sway or lead us by their example? For, I remember that thou spokest thus on this subject a few days ago in thy conversation with Caviceo. It is exceedingly nice of thee to have conserved until now that beauty which inflameth even the coldest, with that learning which doth captivate those insensible of beauty.

Tullia.

Thou who speakest thus, thou who knowest that love inflameth men's hearts, art not so simple as I thought.

Ottavia.

Am I totally ignorant of what Caviceo's eyes, brow, in a word, his whole countenance so often told me, even though he were silent? I was indeed truly surprised at the unwonted fire of his kisses, when he made free with me eight days ago; I know but too well what that ardour and fire meant.

Tullia.

Thy mother was absent? thou wast alone? thou wast not at all afraid of him?

Ottavia.

My mother was gone out; but what was to be feared from him? Of course I feared naught.

Tullia.

All he asked was kisses?

Ottavia.

On the contrary, the fool took them against my will, brandishing his glowing tongue between my lips.

Tullia.

What sensation came over thee, then?

Ottavia.

I shall acknowledge it: some heat or other hitherto unfelt passed through my veins; my whole frame was inflamed. He thought that a maiden blush bepainted my cheek; for a little while he forebore his folly and busy hand……I shall ever hate those roguish hands, from the very fact that they with their fire impregnated me, tortured and wearied!

Tullia.

A nice affair!

Ottavia.

Why? having stuck his hand in my breast, he seized one of my paps, then the other; and while he was handling each of them rather hard, lo! he tossed me over on my back in spite of me.

Tullia.

Thou art blushing; the deed was accomplished.

Ottavia.

His left hand was laid on my bosom (I am stating how the thing was done), he easily overcame all my efforts: he next slipped his right hand under my petticoat. I blush, I blush to tell it.

Tullia.

Lay aside that ridiculous modesty; fancy thou art relating to thyself what thou art telling me.

Ottavia.

Having speedily lifted my petticoat above my knees, he handled my thighs. Oh! hadst thou beheld his sparkling eyes!

Tullia.

So thou wast happy then!

Ottavia.

Having carried his hand higher, he invaded that place which, they say, distinguisheth us from the other sex; ay, it is now a year ago, and ever since a lot of blood doth run from me every month during several days.

Tullia.

Bravo, Caviceo! ah! ah! ah!

Ottavia.

Oh, the rascal! "This part," he saith, "will soon rejoice me exceedingly. Do consent, my Ottavia." A little more and I had fainted at these words.

Tullia.

What did he then do?

Ottavia.

That part of me, thou wouldst scarcely believe, hath a very small slit……

Tullia.

But inflamed, but glowing.

Ottavia.

He thrust his finger into it, and, as the place could barely contain it, I felt a sharp pain throughout all my senses. But he: "I have a virgin," said he, and no sooner said than forcibly my thighs which I kept as tight as ever I could, he threw himself upon me.

Tullia.

Thou art silent? he put naught but his finger in?

Ottavia.

I felt……but what effrontery is mine to speak so much about it!

Tullia.

And I too, whom thou makest so much of, have undergone it, as thou. Naught is more daring than a bridegroom, whom every delay doth exasperate exceedingly, until he gathereth that flower of his bride.

Ottavia.

I soon felt some hard and warm mass between my thighs. He forced me to open; with a robust effort he directed that thing against my body and that slit. But I, having mustered up strength, threw myself to the other side, and slipping my left hand between us both, I laid it on that place where the fray was so furiously raging.

Tullia.

Thou couldst with one hand ward off so powerful a catapult?

Ottavia.

Yea. "O naughty man," would I say, "why dost thou annoy me thus? Let me go, if thou lovest me: by what crime have I deserved this torture?" And tears flowed from my eyes: but such was the state of my mind, that I did not even dare open my mouth or utter a cry to call for help.

Tullia.

Withal Caviceo did not even pierce thee with his lance^[2]? it did not enter into thy trench^[2]?

Ottavia.

I seized it and held it aside, but unlucky event! I felt myself completely drenched with a shower like fire, and, naked as I was, wet up to the navel. I put my hand to it again; but when falling on that sort of slimy fluid with which the mad fellow had flooded me, my hand recoiled from fright and horror.

Tullia.

Therefore neither was he vanquished nor thou victorious, since he was very near carrying off a real victory.

Ottavia.

Caviceo was far more agreable to me since that day. Nor do I know the powerful desire that doth agitate my soul. I ignore what I long for, and cannot mention it. All I know is that Caviceo pleaseth me far more than all mortals; I expect from him alone the supreme pleasure which I do not understand, as I ignore what it may be like. I desire naught and yet desire……

Here we end our extract from Luisa's Dialogues. We shall have occasion to quote from them again in subsequent volumes of Anthologia Rarissima.

 

EXCURSUS TO THE SKIRMISH.

Nicolas Chorier, the author of the Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (the book is commonly called the Aloisia or the Meursius, after the name of the supposed author or translator) was born at Vienne, Dauphiny, in 1612; he received a law-doctor's degree in 1639, and practised the profession of lawyer at the Court of Aids in his native town.^[3] A man of cultivated mind, a passionate lover of letters, a first-rate Latinist, he devoted only a very limited part of his time to causes of the bar.

While passing out of the Jesuit Academy, and during the course of his law studies, he tried his hand at a variety of works both in French and Latin.……The composition of the Aloisia, or at least the first draft, for he must often have retouched this chief work, may be traced back to that time. "I wrote then," he tells us in his Memoirs, "Epistles, Speeches, a Political Dissertation on the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire, and two Satires, the one Menippean, the other Sotadical."^[4]……It was about the year 1660 that he had, according to all probability, the first edition of the Aloisia secretly printed in Lyons. The work was supposed to have been written in Spanish, in the 16th century, by an erudite young girl, Luisa Sigea, whose father, Jacques Sigée, a native of France, had quitted his country to settle down at Toledo. (Luisa Sigea, who was born at Toledo about the year 1530 and died in 1560, says the English translator in a note, knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic. She was styled the Minerva of her time.) The Spanish work was lost; but there remained a Latin manuscript translation of it, which Chorier, in order to secure himself, attributed to the learned Dutchman Joannes Meursius, dead twenty years before……Chorier died in 1692; he left several manuscript works behind him, some of which have since been printed.

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1. The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea: Translated from the Latin of Nicolas Chorier: Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1890. Our extract is from the opening lines of the first dialogue; the phraseology, at times, is our own.
2. Erotic terms in English, French and Latin slang, respectively, for the penis and female pudendum. (C.f. Farmer, op. cit.).
3. We are quoting from the English translator's "Notice of Nicolas Chorier" in the Liseux edition already mentioned.
4. The Sotadical Satire is so-called after Sotades, who lived three centuries before Christ, and whose erotic poems are unfortunately lost.—English Translator's note. According to a note in Priapeia (Cosmopoli, 1890, Privately Printed), Sotades, the Mantinean poet, was the first to treat of Greek love, or dishonest and unnatural love. He wrote in the Ionian dialect, and according to Suidas he was the author of a poem entitled CinKdica (Martial, 2. 86). The title would leave us in no doubt as to the trend of the work. (Cinædus:=he who indulges in unnatural lust; Cinædicus=pertaining to one who is unchaste. Smith's Latin English Dictionary.) C.f. also Sir Richard Burton's "Sotadic Zone" in the Terminal Essay to The Thousand Nights and a Night (op. cit. sup.).