He seemed to catch a glance of tenderness from Lilia, and he continued: “Loving is like taking a moon bath. The rays coming from the moon are those of the sun reflected down to us. Concentrating the sun’s rays in a mirror, you strengthen the calefactory force. Concentrating the moon’s rays with a silver basin, you will see that its concave bottom reflects the refreshing rays through the gathering of dew they contain. It seems senseless to wash in an empty basin: and yet you find your hands moist, and it is an infallible remedy for warts.”
“Monsieur de la Grive,” someone said, “love is hardly a cure for warts!”
“No, certainly not,” Roberto resumed, by now beyond arresting, “but I have given examples that come from base things to remind you that love, too, depends on the powder of corpuscles alone. Which is a way of saying that love obeys the same laws that govern both sublunary and celestial bodies, save that, of these laws it is the most noble manifestation. Love is born of sight, for it is at first sight that love is kindled: what is love, then, if not an access of the light reflected by the body beheld? Beholding it, my body is penetrated by the best element of the beloved body, the aerial, which through the meatus of the eyes arrives directly at the heart.
And therefore to love at first sight is to drink the spirits of the beloved’s heart. The great Architect of nature, when He composed our body, set internal spirits in it, like sentinels, so that they could report their discoveries to their general, namely, the imagination, which is the master of the corporeal family. And if it is struck by some object, the result is the same as when we hear viols playing, and we carry their melody in our memory and continue to hear it even in sleep. Our imagination constructs a simulacrum of the object, which delights the lover, if it does not lacerate him because it is, in fact, no more than a simulacrum.
From this it follows that when a man is surprised by the sight of the lovable person, he changes color, flushes or pales according to whether those ministers, the internal spirits, proceed rapidly or slowly towards the object, to return thence to the imagination. These spirits do not travel only to the brain, but also straight to the heart along the great conduit that carries from it to the brain the vital spirits that there become animal spirits; and along this conduit the imagination also transmits to the heart some of the atomies it has received from the external object, and these atomies produce the ebullience of the vital spirits that sometimes expands the heart and sometimes brings it to syncope.”
“You tell us, sir, that love proceeds like a physical movement, not differently from the way wine flowers; but you do not tell us why love, unlike other phenomena of matter, is an elective virtue, which chooses. For what reason, then, does love make us slaves of one creature and not of another?”
“This is the very reason why I compared the qualities of love with the principle of the Powder of Sympathy, namely that atomies which are equal and of the same form attract equal atomies! If I were to dust the weapon that wounded Pylades with that powder, I would not heal the wound of Orestes. Thus love unites only two beings who in some way already possess the same nature, unites a noble spirit to a spirit equally noble, and a vulgar spirit to one equally vulgar—as it happens that villeins also love, as do shepherdesses, and we are so instructed by the admirable story of Monsieur d’Urfé. Love reveals a harmony between two creatures that was ordained since the beginning of time, as Destiny had always decided that Pyramus and Thisbe would be united in a single mulberry tree.”
“What of unhappy love?”
“I do not believe there is truly an unhappy love. There are only loves that have not yet arrived at perfect fruition, if for some reason the beloved has not received the message coming to her from the eyes of the lover. And yet the lover knows to such a degree which similarity of nature has been revealed to him that, because of this knowledge, he is able to wait, even all his life. He knows that the revelation to both, and their conjunction, can take place even after death, when, the atomies of the two bodies having evaporated as they dissolve in the earth, the lovers will be united in some heaven. And perhaps, as a wounded man, even unaware that someone is scattering the Powder on the weapon that struck him, enjoys a new health, so countless loving hearts may enjoy a sudden relief of the spirit, unaware that their happiness is the work of the beloved heart, which in its turn has become loving and has thus set in motion the unification of the twin atomies.”
I must say that all this complex allegory held only up to a certain point, and perhaps the Aristotelian Machine of Padre Emanuele would have demonstrated its instability. But that evening everyone became convinced of the kinship between the Powder, which heals a sickness, and love, which can heal but more often causes sickness.
The story of this speech on the Powder of Sympathy and the Sympathy of Love spread through all of Paris, for some months and perhaps longer, with results that we will narrate in due course.
And Lilia, at the end of the speech, smiled again at Roberto. It was a smile of congratulation, or at most of admiration, but nothing is more natural than to believe that one is loved. Roberto interpreted the smile as an acknowledgment of all the letters he had sent. Too accustomed to the torments of absence, he abandoned the gathering, content with that victory. It was an error, and we will see why later. From then on, to be sure, he dared speak to Lilia, but the replies he received were always contradictory. Sometimes she would murmur, “Just as we said a few days ago.” Sometimes, on the contrary, she murmured, “And yet you said something quite different.” Other times, leaving, she would promise, “But we will talk of it later. Keep your word.”
Roberto could not decide if she was absently attributing to him the words and deeds of another, or if she was coyly provoking him.
What later befell him drove him to compose those few episodes into a far more disturbing story.
CHAPTER 17, Longitudinum Optata Scientia
IT WAS—AT last a firm date—the evening of the 2nd of December, 1642. They were leaving a theater, where Roberto spent every evening in the role of an ardent wooer. Lilia, on coming outside, furtively pressed his hand, whispering, “Monsieur de la Grive, you were not shy that evening. Until tomorrow then, again, on the same stage.”
He left in mad turmoil, bidden to such a tryst at a place he could not know, urged to repeat what he had never dared say. And yet she could not have mistaken him for another, because she had called him by his name.
Oh—he writes of having said to himself—today the streams flow back to their source, white chargers scale the towers of Our Lady of Paris, a fire smiles glowing in the ice, for it has truly happened that she has invited me. Or perhaps not, today blood flows from the rock, a grass snake couples with a bear, the sun has turned black, because my beloved has offered me a cup that I will never be able to drain, for I do not know where we are to meet….
Just a step short of happiness, he ran home in despair. The one place where he was sure she could not be.
Lilia’s words can be interpreted in a far less mysterious fashion: she was simply reminding him of his remote discourse on the Powder of Sympathy, was urging him to say more, in that same salon of Arthénice where he had already spoken. Since then she had seen him silent and adoring, and this did not correspond to the rules of the game of seduction, so severely regulated. She was recalling him, we would say today, to his social duty. “Come,” she was saying to him. “That evening you were not shy, tread again that same stage, I am waiting to see you there.” Nor could we expect any other challenge from a précieuse.
But Roberto, on the contrary, had understood: “You are shy, and yet a few evenings ago you
