Belisa's Love for Both Arsenio and Arsileo

Belisa's love for Arsenio and Arsileo is a divided attachment with two different origins: she returns Arsenio's affection out of gratitude, but falls for Arsileo through a growing passion she says she cannot command. Their father-and-son relationship becomes part of the courtship itself when Arsenio uses Arsileo's musical gifts to try to win Belisa, prompting her to recognize that the performance may bind her more strongly to the son than to the father.

How the Affection Begins

Belisa recounts that the letter which first altered her feelings had been presented as Arsenio's, but she came to understand that its ideas came more from Arsileo's intelligence than from his father's affection. As she read it, she became less resistant; love, in her account, took possession of her freedom. The change was not a simple decision to accept one suitor. She describes herself as beginning to love both men, but for distinct reasons.

Two Different Attachments

Belisa explains that she loved Arsenio to repay the love he showed her, and Arsileo because she had surrendered her freedom to him. Her affection for the father is framed as a response to his devotion and as a refusal to be ungrateful; her love for the son feels involuntary, beyond her control. The distinction lets her acknowledge Arsenio's attentions without mistaking them for the source of the passion increasingly occupying her thoughts.

Arsenio's courtship was materially and verbally expressive: he sent Belisa numerous presents and jewels, each accompanied by an ardent message. Belisa replied without showing signs of great love, though she was no longer as inwardly resistant as before. At the same time, her love for Arsileo took deeper root and absorbed her attention. The outward restraint of her replies therefore contrasts with the inward change she describes.

Arsileo's Music and Arsenio's Strategy

One summer night, Arsenio and Arsileo sat with neighbors beneath a large ash tree in a small square opposite Belisa's lodging. Arsenio praised his son's singing and playing in a way designed to prompt those present to ask for the harp. Once it was brought from the house, Arsileo played and sang where Belisa could not help but hear him. The music was thus both a display of the son's skill and an instrument of the father's courtship.

Belisa understood the arrangement: Arsenio hoped that his son's grace would help make her fall in love with him. But the performance sharpened the division already forming in her heart. She recognized that a woman might become more attached to the person whose talent she experienced directly than to the suitor who made use of it. The episode makes the father's strategy self-defeating in Belisa's account: by placing Arsileo's gifts before her, Arsenio gives the son's appeal greater force.

Meaning and Limits of the State

The attachment is not presented as an equal triangle of competing courtships. Belisa distinguishes reciprocal affection for Arsenio from the love for Arsileo that has taken hold of her, while her conduct toward the father remains measured. Her account emphasizes the difference between gratitude, which answers another person's devotion, and passion, which she experiences as an invasion of her freedom.

This evidence captures the formation and intensification of Belisa's double love, not its final resolution. The letter, the gifts, and the harp performance mark successive stages in a shift from guardedness toward inward attachment, while leaving the eventual consequences to the larger story.