Free The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene

whole affair.
    —TIRSO DE MOLINA, THE
    PLAYBOY OF SEVILLE,
    What could she do? She decided to go to her room and talk the young TRANSLATED BY ADRIENNE M.
    duke out of his ridiculously dangerous maneuver. She said good night to her

SCHIZZANO AND OSCAR
    chaperone, but once she was in her bedroom, the words she had planned

M A N D E L
    were useless. When she tried to reason with Richelieu, he responded with that look in his eye, and then with his arms around her. She could not yell, but now she was unsure what to do. His impetuous words, his caresses, the Pleased with my first
    danger of it all—her head was whirling, she was lost. What was virtue and success, I determined to
    her prior boredom compared to an evening with the court's most notorious profit by this happy
    reconciliation. I called them
    rake? So while the chaperone knitted away, the duke initiated her into the my dear wives, my faithful
    rituals of libertinage.
    companions, the two beings
    Months later, de Valois's father had reason to suspect that Richelieu had chosen to make me happy.
    broken through his lines of defense. The chaperone was fired, the precau I sought to turn their heads, and to rouse in
    tions were doubled. D'Orléans did not realize that to Richelieu such mea them desires the strength of sures were a challenge, and he lived for challenges. He bought the house which I knew and which
    next door under an assumed name and secretly tunneled a trapdoor through would drive away any
    reflections contrary to my
    the wall adjoining the duke's kitchen cupboard. In this cupboard, over the plans. The skillful man
    next few months—until the novelty wore off—de Valois and Richelieu en who knows how to joyed endless trysts. communicate gradually the
    heat of love to the senses of
    Everyone in Paris knew of Richelieu's exploits, for he made it a point the most virtuous woman
    to publicize them as loudly as possible. Every week a new story would cir is quite certain of soon culate through the court. A husband had locked his wife in an upstairs being absolute master of
    her mind and her person;
    room at night, worried the duke was after her; to reach her the duke had you cannot reflect when
    crawled in darkness along a thin wooden plank suspended between two you have lost your head;
    upper-floor windows. Two women who lived in the same house, one a
    and, moreover, principles of widow, the other married and quite religious, had discovered to their mu wisdom, however deeply engraved they may be on
    tual horror that the duke was having an affair with both of them at the the mind, are effaced in
    same time, leaving one in the middle of the night to be with the other. that moment when the When they confronted him, the duke, always on the prowl for something heart yearns only for
    pleasure: pleasure alone novel, and a devilish talker, had neither apologized nor backed down, but then commands and is proceeded to talk them into a menage a trois, playing on the wounded obeyed. The man who has vanity of each woman, who could not stand the thought of him preferring had experience of conquests
    nearly always succeeds
    the other. Year after year, the stories of his remarkable seductions spread. where he who is only timid
    One woman admired his audacity and bravery, another his gallantry in and in love fails. . . . • thwarting a husband. Women competed for his attention: if he did not When I had brought my want to seduce you, there had to be something wrong with you. To be the two belles to the state of
    abandonment in which I
    target of his attentions became a great fantasy. At one point two ladies The Rake • 21
    fought a pistol duel over the duke, and one of them was seriously wanted them, I expressed a wounded. The Duchess d'Orléans, Richelieu's most bitter enemy, once more eager desire; their eyes lit up; my caresses
    wrote, "If I believed in sorcery I should think that the Duke possessed were returned; and it was some supernatural secret, for I have never known