Chapter 55

We beg, if maybe it’s not too much trouble, you’ll show us where your haunt may be. We looked for you in the smaller Campus, for you in the Circus, for you in every bookshop, for you in Jupiter’s holy temple. My friend, on Magnus’ promenade I grabbed every girl I saw whose looks were unruffled, and at the same time I demanded loudly,

Give me back Camerius, you wretched girls. One of them, drawing back her naked Look! he’s hiding here between my rosey-red nipples! But bearing with you is a labor of Hercules now.

Not if I were molded into the Cretan guard, not if I were born with Pegasean wing, or I Ladas, or Perseus with winged foot, or Rhesus’ swift and snowy team: add to these the feathery-footed and winged ones, ask at the same time the course of the winds: which bound up, Camerius, you name as mine;

yet exhausted in my every marrow and with many a faintness consumed, I would be in my quest for you, my friend.

Do you deny that you bear yourself in such great arrogance, my friend?

Tell us where you will be, declare it boldly, give up the secret, trust it to the light. What, do the milk-white maidens detain you? If you hold your tongue closed up in your mouth, you squander Love’s every fruit:

for Venus joys in words and talk. Yet if you wish, you may bar your palate, as long as you are a partner of true love.