empoisons
the pure air of Vaucluse, and will eventually compel me to quit my
retirement.

* * * * *

The verdict of humanity seems to be that Laura was the most consummate
coquette in history. She dressed to catch Petrarch's attention; wore the
flowers he liked best; accepted his amorous poems without protest;
placed herself in his way by running on the same schedule.

The "Standard Dictionary" makes some fine distinctions between
flirtation, coquetry and coyness. Flirtation means to fascinate and
leave the lover in doubt as to his fate--to lead him on and leave him in
a maze. It does not imply that he does not have reason for hope.
Flirtation is coyness refined to a system.

Coquetry is defined as an attempt to attract admiration and lead the
lover up to the point of a matrimonial proposal and then reject him--a
desire to gratify personal vanity. Coquettes are regarded as heartless,
while flirts are often sincere creatures who adopt certain tactics for
the sole purpose of bagging the game. That is, the flirt works to win,
the coquette to reject. Coquetry is attention without intention.
Flirtation is a race with the intention of being overtaken, and has in
it the rudiments of that old idea that a woman must be captured. So we
have a legend concerning those Sabine women, where one of them asks
impatiently, "How soon does this attack begin?"

Laura was not a flirt. She was an honest wife and became the mother of
ten children in her twenty years of married life. When Petrarch first
saw her she had a babe at home a year old. In another year, this first
babe became "the other baby," and was put on a bottle with its little
pug-nose out of joint. There was always one on bread and milk, one on
the bottle and one with nose under the shawl--and all the time the
sonnets came fluttering adown the summer winds.

Laura was a cool-headed woman, shrewd and astute, with heart under
perfect control, her feelings well upholstered by adipose. If she had
been more of the woman she would have been less. Like the genuine
coquette that she was, she received everything and gave nothing. She had
a good digestion and no nerves to speak of.

Petrarch describes her in a thousand ways, but the picture is so
retouched that the portrait is not clear or vivid. He dilates on her
mental, moral, spiritual and physical qualities, according to his mood,
and the flattery to her was never too fulsome. Possibly sh