While I was thus busy in viewing every thing, you, Acontius, by chance espied me; and my simplicity made me seem fit to be ensnared. I returned to the temple of Diana, placed high on rising steps. What place should yield a surer defence from harm than this?
The apple, with the insidious lines, is thrown at my feet. Ah me! I had almost sworn to you a second time. My nurse first took it up; and wondering what it might be, desired me to read it. I read, too successful poet, your ensnaring words. At the name of wedlock, overwhelmed with shame, I felt a blush spread over all my face: my eyes remained fixed upon my bosom, those eyes which had been so subservient to your deceitful aims. Traitor, why do you triumph? What glory will this add to your name? Or where can be the praise, to have deluded an unsuspecting maid? I did not stand fenced with a buckler, and armed with an Amazonian axe, like Penthesilea when she traversed the Ilian plains. No girdle adorned with studs of gold, as that gained from Hippolyte, remains the prize of your victory. What cause of boasting that I was deceived by your well-framed words, or that an unthinking imprudent girl should fall into the cunning snare? Cydippe was deceived by an apple; it was an apple that deceived also Atalanta. You are now be-
come a second Hippomenes. Doubtless it had been better (if urged by the little boy, who, you say, wounds with I know not what dangerous arrows), according to the rule inviolable with men of honor, not to debase your hope by fraud. I ought to have been openly solicited, not artfully circumvented. Why did you not think of asking me in marriage, and urging those considerations that might have made you appear worthy of being solicited by me? Why did you prefer deceit to persuasion, if the knowlege of your rank was sufficient to have gained me? What advantage can you expect from the form of the oath you tendered, or my tongue's invoking the present Goddess? It is the mind that swears; but no oath binds me there. It is that only can give authority to what we say. Design, and a soul conscious of its own views, can alone give validity to an oath; nor can any chains bind us, but those of the judgment. If my consent accompanied the promise I made to be joined to you in wedlock, you are at liberty to insist upon the rights of a nuptial bed: but if all amounted only to a few sounds, without will or meaning, it is in vain to depend upon words destitute of validity. I took no oath, I barely read a form; nor was that a
decent way of choosing a husband. Endeavour by the same artifice to deceive others; let the apple be followed by an epistle; if a promise thus made binds, make over to yourself the large possessions of the rich. Make kings swear that they will resign to you their dominions, and artfully secure whatever on earth is to your liking. Believe me, this would make you more considerable than even Diana herself, if every letter you write commands the care of so powerful a Goddess.
