More evidence, however, in favour of
the Germanic peoples lies in the fact of the social freedom enjoyed
among them by girls and women, which impressed Italian travellers so
pleasantly in England and in the Netherlands. And yet we must not
attach too much importance to this fact. Unfaithfulness was doubtless
very frequent, and in certain cases led to a sanguinary vengeance. We
have only to remember how the northern princes of that time dealt with
their wives on the first suspicion of infidelity.
But it was not merely the sensual desire, not merely the vulgar
appetite of the ordinary man, which trespassed upon forbidden ground
among the Italians of that day, but also the passion of the best and
noblest; and this, not only because the unmarried girl did not appear
in society, but also because the man, in proportion to the completeness
of his own nature, felt himself most strongly attracted by the woman
whom marriage had developed. These are the men who struck the loftiest
notes of lyrical poetry, and who have attempted in their treatises and
dialogues to give us an idealized image of the devouring passion--
'l'amor divino.' When they complain of the cruelty of the winged god,
they are not only thinking of the coyness or hard-heartedness of the
beloved one, but also of the unlawfulness of the passion itself.
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