METRE V.

Pax odio, fraudique fides, spes juncla timori.

Love is peace joined with hatred, faith with fraud, hope with fear, and fury mixed with reason, pleasant shipwreck, light heaviness,, welcome Charybdis, healthy sickness, satisfied [1] hunger, famished satiety, s drunken thirst, deceptive delight, glad sorrow, joy full of pains, sweet evil, evil sweetness, pleasure bitter to itself, whose scent is savory, whose savor is taste

1. Reading et satiata, with Migne.

less, grateful tempest, clear night, shadowy day, living death, dying life, agreeable misfortune, sinful forgiveness, pardonable sin, laughable punishment, holy iniquity, nay, even delightful crime, unstable play, fixed delusion, [1] weak vigor, changeable firmness, mover of things established, undiscerning reason, mad prudence, sad prosperity, tearful laughter, sick repose, soothing hell, sorrowful paradise, pleasant prison, vernal winter, wintry spring, calamity, bold moth of the mind, which the purple of the king feels, and which does not pass by the toga of a beggar. Does not Cupid, working many miracles by changing things into their opposites, transform the whole race of men? When the monk and the adulterer have both been foreign to a man, he yet compels these [2]' two to possess and dwell in him at the same time. While his madness rages, Scylla lays aside her fur , the good Eneas begins to be a Nero, Paris lightens with his sword, Tydeus -s is gentle in love, Nestor becomes young and Melicerta old, Thersites begs Paris for his beauty, Davus begs Adonis and into Davus goes all of Adonis, rich Crassus is in want and Codrus has abundance in poverty, Bavius produces poetry, the muse of Maro is dull, Ennius is eloquent, Marcus is silent, Ulysses becomes foolish, Ajax in his folly is wise. He who in time past saw through the stratagem of Antaeus and vanquished him, is vanquished by this prodigy, which subdues all others. If this madness infect a woman's mind, she runs into any conceivable crime, and beyond; the daughter treacherously kills her father, the sister her brother, the wife her husband, anticipating the hand of fate. And thus in the evil progression she hews her husband's body, and with stealthy sword

1 Alain plays on the words - instabilis ludus, stabilis delusio.

2.Reading haec, with B.

severs his head. Even the mother is forced not to know the name of parent, and, while she is giving birth, gives birth also to lies. The son is horrorstricken to find in his mother a stepmother, in faith deceit, in piety guile. Thus in Medea two names fight equally, for at one time she desires to be both mother and stepmother. The sister knows not her station or how to keep herself a sister, when Byblis has become too far a friend of Caunus. So also Myrrha, too subject to her sire, was a parent with her progenitor, and a mother with her father. But why should I tell more ? Under the spear of Cupid must each lover go, and pay him his dues. He wages war against all; his rule excepts hardly a one; he smites all things with the anger of his lightning, and against him neither probity nor prudence will be of effect, nor beauty of form, nor abundance of riches, nor the height of nobility. Thefts, lies, fear,[1] anger, fury, deceit, violence, error, sadness poetry is strange dominions. Here a on, moderation to be unrestrained, faith to have no faith. Displaying the sweet, he adds the bitter, instils poison, and finishes best things with an evil end. Attracting he seduces, laughing he jeers, with smarting ointment he anoints, laying hold he corrupts, loving he hates. Yet thou canst thyself bridle that madness, if thou fleest-no stronger medicine is given. If thou wouldst escape Love, shun his places, his times; both place and time give him nourishment. If thou followest him, he attends ; by fleeing, he is put to flight; if thou retreatest, he retires; if thou fleest, he flies.

1. Reading metus, with B.