[De duobus amantibus Euryalo et Lucretia]

you offer yourself willingly, I will not fear being deceived by you any further. You know how much I burn; I cannot bear this flame for a long time. Aid me so that we can be secret. Eurialus languishes with love and I am dying. Nothing is more urgent than to resist our lust. If we meet together even once, we will give ourselves to temperance and our love will be covered. Go, therefore, and tell Eurialus the only way to approach me. If from here, within four days, while the rustics bring in the grain, he assumes the role of a porter and, covered with a sack of grain, carries it up through the stairs to the granary; you know well that my chamber has doors to the stairs. Therefore, tell all to Eurialus. I will stay for the day until it is time; I will be alone in the room. He should push the door of the enemies while he is alone and come to me."

It is a great crime; fearing greater evils, he undertakes the deed and announces the words to Eurialus in order, which he, judging them lenient, happily embraces and prepares himself for the command, nor does he seek anything but the removal of delay. O senseless heart of the lover, O blind mind, O bold soul and intrepid heart. What is so difficult that it does not seem easy to you? What so harsh that you do not consider it smooth? What so closed that it is not open to you? You think little of every danger, you consider nothing difficult. All guarding of husbands is empty to you. No laws hold you, no fears. You are subject to no modesty. Properly said Labor is a game to you, O tamer of all things, Love. You scarcely lead Caesar, most acceptable, abounding in riches, mature in age, imbued with letters, clear in prudence, to such a point that, having put aside his purple, he puts on a sack, covers his face with paint, that the master becomes a servant, and he who had been nourished in delicacies now adapts his shoulders to carrying burdens and hires himself as a public porter for pay. O wonderful thing, almost incredible. To be the author of such a counsel for a man otherwise wise, and to have a woman in that filth. Who could endure such a formation? This is what Ovid wants in his Metamorphoses, while he writes that men turn into beasts or stones or plants. This the excellent poet Maro Virgil also felt, while he sang that the lovers of Circe were turned into beasts. For it is so; the flame of love so alienates the mind of a man that it differs little from beasts. And now the dawn, the messenger of the sun, was bringing back the wished-for day, and soon, returning its own color to things, it refreshes the expectant Eurialus, who considered himself fortunate and blessed when he saw himself mixed with his cheap things to be known. He proceeds, therefore, and entering the house of Lucretia, he burdens himself with grain, and having placed the sack in the granary, he finally pushes the door of the husband's chamber, which that is to say he pushes in the middle of the stairs