Author's Note 11
Brantome tells us that is the time of Francis I a young person who had a talkative lover imposed on him an absolute and unlimited silence that was kept so faithfully for two whole years that he was believed to have become mute from illness. One day in front of a crowd of courtiers his mistress, who in those times when people made love in secret was not known as such, boasted that she could cure him and did so with one word -"Speak."
Isn't there something grand and heroic in this kind of love? What more could the philosophy of Pitagore have done even with all of its pretensions? What woman today could count on such silence for a single day, even were she to offer any price she could pay for it?