CHAPITRE VII - Of the opportunity to resume a former ( ancient ? ) lover.

When a woman parts from a lover whom she ruined, she can think of resuming a former ( ancient ? ) lover who will have remained rich or who will have become again him.

Vatsyayana indicates the party which a courtesan has to take in this respect in each of the cases which can appear and which he details ( retails ? ) for a long time. Among the determining motives, he ( it ? ) mentions the desire to take revenge for a rival.

Acharias ( former ( ancient ? ) wise men) advise to a courtesan to retie, if she can, with a former ( ancient ? ) lover because her character is known to him ( her ? ). Vatsyayana comes out in favour that she makes better take a new, he will always be richer and more liberal, because the former ( ancient ? ) is impoverished, either he learnt by his experience ( experiment ? ) not to be allowed skin ( sift ? ). However this author puts there only a rule ( ruler ? ), a general subject in many exceptions motivated by circumstances.

Here are some aphorisms in verse on this delicate subject:

« A courtesan can show her intention to resume a former ( ancient ? ) lover, either to blur him ( it ? ) with the woman with whom he lives in the moment, or to produce a wanted effect on the lover whom herself ( itself ? ) has at present ».

« The man chained to a woman has big fear that it becomes attached to the other one; he ( it ? ) suffers everything of her and swamps her ( it ? ) with generosities ».

« If, while a courtesan lives with a lover, a messenger of love comes to find her ( it ? ) on behalf of another man, she has to or send back ( dismiss ? ) him ( it ? ) without listening to him ( it ? ), either fixing one hour to receive the visit of the one who looks for her ( it ? ), but she never has to abandon the lover who is attached to him ( her ? ) [90].

A careful woman takes up with a former ( ancient ? ) lover only if she has any luck ( chance ? ) to find, clans this return, happy lot ( fate ? ), profit, love and friendship [ 91 ].

[ Note 90: Tibulle, book ( pound ? ) I, elegy VI. « the One who was faithful to no lover, reduced to the beggary in his ( her;its ? ) old days, has the other resource than to turn a reel of a trembling hand, to darken the sons ( threads ? ) of a weft for a tiny salary and to comb a white fleece; young people laugh at his ( her;its ? ) misery and say to themselves that she ( it ? ) deserved her ( its ? ) sad lot ( fate ? ). »]

[ Note 91: see the appendix.]