Verdespina: I may tell you, you suffer this love of yours to be so little understood that it is no wonder if she whom you love and call your other half know not of it, and so show you not such honest favor as a gentle lady should show to so ingenious a gentleman and nevertheless there is no one in Prato but believes that you are in love; and a few days since I heard one enquiring of it with great insistence, and all said that they believed it but knew not with whom. And when I ponder those words you sometimes wont to speak: “she who hath me knows it not, and she who knows she hath me, hath me not” I am confirmed in my first thought that she whom you love knows it not and she whom you love not believes that you love her. Notwithstanding, you do all so secretly that it is not easy to tell which is she to whom you are feigning, and to which you do true duty.
Celso: Gentle Verdespina, can you believe that I am so base of a soul and so forgetful of myself as to have locked up my heart safe from all Love’s darts? I too am a man, I seek my other half, I too crave to rejoice in the beauty of her who hath been set before me as a radiant sight for my adventurous eyes and for the consolation of my intellect, but I enjoy it in silence and in my soul; inasmuch as that the end of my love, which is pure and chaste, having its roots in the well-tilled soil of virtue, is contentment in itself with the sight of that lady, of which it cannot be deprived by any accident; since, when she is hidden from my bodily eyes she is visible to the eye of the spirit. Therefore let my mistress hide herself as she will. I behold her ever; I ever contemplate her and rejoice in her, and am happy and when I complain of her it is sport, seeing that in truth I have no cause at all for complaint, not desiring of her aught that I cannot have, much less in her despite; and perchance we may be united on a day which she who hath me knows, and she who hath me not shall know.
- On the Beauty of Women, Agnolo Firenzuola
Photography, A.M Lorek
