The Book of the Courtier
dogs, birds, and often to chests, stools, carts, candle-sticks; which is
sometimes good and sometimes very flat. Therefore in this it is needful
to consider time, place, persons, and the other things that we have
mentioned so many times.”
Then my lord Gaspar Pallavicino said:
“An amusing comparison was the one that our friend my lord Giovanni
Gonzaga[256] made between Alexander the Great and his own son
Alessandro.”[257]
“I do not know it,” replied messer Bernardo.
My lord Gaspar said:
“My lord Giovanni was playing with three dice, and as was his wont had
lost many ducats and was still losing; and his son my lord Alessandro
(who, although only a lad, is as fond of play as the father is) stood
looking at him with great attention and seemed very sad. Count
Pianella,[258] who was present with many other gentlemen, said: ‘You
see, my Lord, that my lord Alessandro is little pleased at your losing,
and is waiting anxiously for you to win so that he may have some of your
winnings. Therefore put him out of his misery, and before you lose
everything give him at least a ducat, in order that he too may go and
play with his fellows.’ Then my lord Giovanni said: ‘You are wrong, for
Alessandro is not thinking of any such trifle. But as it is written that
when he was a boy, Alexander the Great began to weep on hearing that his
father Philip[259] had won a great battle and subdued some kingdom, and
when he was asked why he wept, he replied that it was because he feared
his father would subdue so many lands as to leave nothing for him to
subdue; in the same way my son Alessandro is now grieving and about to
weep, seeing that I his father am losing, because he fears I am losing
so much that I shall leave nothing for him to lose.’”
68.—After some laughter at this, messer Bernardo continued:
“Moreover we must avoid impiety in our witticism, (because from this it
is only a step to try to be jocular by blaspheming and to invent new
forms of blasphemy); otherwise we seem to seek applause by that for
which we deserve not only blame but heavy punishment, which is an
abominable thing. And therefore those of us who like to show their
pleasantry by little reverence to God, deserve to be chased from the
society of every gentleman.
“And they, no less, who are indecent and foul of speech, and show no
respect for ladies’ presence and seem to have no other pleasure than to
make them blush with shame, and who to that end are continually seeking
witticisms and _arguzie_. As in Ferrara this year at a banquet attended
by many ladies, there were a Florentine and a Sienese, who are usually
hostile, as you know. To taunt the Florentine, the Sienese said: ‘We
have married Siena to the Emperor and have given him Florence for
dowry.’ He said this because it was reported at the time that the
Sienese had given the Emperor a certain sum of money and that he had
taken their city under his protection. The Florentine quickly retorted:
‘Siena will first be possessed’ (he used the Italian word, but with the
French meaning); ‘then the dowry will be disputed at leisure.’[260] You
see that the retort was clever, but, being made in the presence of
ladies, it became indecent and unseemly.”
69.—Then my lord Gaspar Pallavicino said:
“Women delight to hear nothing else; and you would deprive them of it.
Moreover for my part I have found myself blushing with shame at words
uttered by women far oftener than by men.”
“Of such women I was not speaking,” said messer Bernardo; “but of
virtuous ladies, who deserve reverence and honour from every gentleman.”
My lord Gaspar said:
“We should have to invent a subtle rule by which to distinguish them,
for most often those who are seemingly the best, in fact are quite the
contrary.”
Then messer Bernardo said, laughing:
“If we had not present here my lord Magnifico, who is everywhere
accounted the champion of women, I should undertake to answer you; but I
am unwilling to do him wrong.”
Here my lady Emilia said, also laughing:
“Women have need of no champion against an accuser of so little weight.
So leave my lord Gaspar in his perverse opinion,—which arises from his
never having found a lady to look at him, rather than from any fault on
their part,—and go on with your talk about pleasantries.”
70.—Then messer Bernardo said:
“In truth, my Lady, methinks I have told of many situations from which
we can derive sharp witticisms, which then have the more grace the more
they are accompanied by fine narrative. Still many others might be
mentioned. As when, by overstatement or understatement, we say things
that outrageously exceed the probable; and of this sort was what Mario
da Volterra[261] said of a prelate, that he held himself so great a man
that when he entered St. Peter’s, he stooped in order not to strike his
head against the architrave of the portal. Again, our friend here the
Magnifico said that his servant Galpino was so lean and light that in
blowing the fire to kindle it one morning, the fellow had been carried
by the smoke all the way up the chimney to the very top; but happening
to be brought crosswise against one of the openings, he had the good
luck not to be blown away with the smoke.
“Another time messer Agostino Bevazzano[262] said that a miser, who had
been unwilling to sell his grain while it was dear, afterwards hanged
himself in despair from a rafter of his bedroom when he found that the
price had greatly fallen; and one of his servants ran in on hearing the
noise, saw the miser hanging, and quickly cut the rope and thus rescued
him from death. Then, having come to himself, the miser insisted that
his servant should pay him for the rope that had been cut.
Reduced from Braun’s photograph (no. 43.161) of a part of the double
portrait once owned by Bembo and now in the Doria Gallery at Rome.
Although by some critics regarded as an old copy, the picture is
affirmed by both Morelli and Berenson to be the work of Raphael
(1483-1520), probably painted in April 1516.
“Of the same sort also seems to be what Lorenzo de’ Medici said to a
dull buffoon: ‘You would not make me laugh if you tickled me.’ And in
like fashion he answered another simpleton who had found him abed very
late one morning, and who had reproved him for sleeping so late, saying:
‘I have already been at the New Market and the Old, then outside the San
Gallo gate and around the walls for exercise, and have done a thousand
things besides; and you are still asleep?’ Then Lorenzo said: ‘What I
dreamed in one hour is worth more than what you accomplished in four.’
71.—“It is also fine when in a retort we censure something without
apparently meaning to censure it. For instance, the Marquess Federico of
Mantua,[263] father to our lady Duchess, being at table with many
gentlemen, one of them said after eating an entire bowl of stew: ‘Pardon
me, my lord Marquess;’ and so saying he began to gulp down the broth
that remained. Then the Marquess said quickly: ‘Ask pardon rather of the
swine, for you do me no wrong at all.’
“Again, to censure a tyrant who was falsely reputed to be generous,
messer Niccolò Leonico[264] said: ‘Think what generosity rules him, for
he gives away not his own things only, but other men’s as well!’
72.—“Another very pretty form of pleasantry is that which consists in a
kind of innuendo, when we say one thing and tacitly imply another. Of
course I do not mean another thing of a completely different kind, like
calling a dwarf gigantic and a negro white or a very ugly man handsome,
for the difference is too obvious,—although even these sometimes cause
laughter; but I mean when with stern and serious air we humourously say
something in jest which is not our real thought. For instance, when a
gentleman told a palpable lie to messer Agostino Foglietta[265] and
affirmed it stoutly on seeing that he had much difficulty in believing
it, messer Agostino said at last: ‘Fair sir, if I may ever hope to
receive kindness from you, do me the favour to be content even if I do
not believe anything you say.’ But as the other repeated, and under
oath, that it was the truth, he finally said: ‘Since you will have it
so, I will believe it for your sake, for indeed I would do even a
greater thing than this for you.’
“Don Giovanni di Cardona[266] said something nearly of this sort about a
man who wished to leave Rome: ‘To my thinking the fellow is ill advised,
for he is so great a rascal that by staying on at Rome he might in time
become a cardinal.’ Of this sort also is what was said by Alfonso
Santacroce,[267] who had shortly before suffered some outrage from the
Cardinal of Pavia.[268] While strolling with several gentlemen near the
place of public execution outside Bologna, he saw a man who had recently
been hanged, and turning towards the body with a thoughtful air, he said
loud enough for everyone to hear him: ‘Happy thou, who hast naught to do
with the Cardinal of Pavia.’
73.—“And this sort of pleasantry which is tinged with irony seems very
becoming to great men, because it is dignified and sharp, and can be
used in jocose as well as in serious matters. Hence many ancients (and
those among the most esteemed) have used it, like Cato and Scipio
Africanus the Younger; but above all men, the philosopher Socrates is
said to have excelled in it. And in our own times King Alfonso I of
Aragon,[269] who, being about to eat one morning, took off the many
precious rings that he had on his fingers, in order not to wet them in
washing his hands, and so gave them to the first person he happened on,
almost without looking to see who it was. This servant supposed that the
king had taken no notice who received them, and by reason of weightier
cares would easily forget them altogether; and in this he was the more
confirmed, seeing that the king did not ask for them again; and as he
saw days, weeks and months pass without hearing a word about them, he
thought he was surely safe. Accordingly, nearly a year after this had
happened, he presented himself again one morning as the king was about
to eat, and held out his hand to receive the rings; whereupon the king
bent close to his ear and said to him: ‘Let the first ones suffice thee,
because these will do for someone else.’ You see how biting, clever and
dignified the sally was, and how truly worthy the exalted spirit of an
Alexander.
Enlarged from Braun’s photograph (no. 19.553) of the painting,
“Astronomy,” by Melozzo degli Ambrosi da Forli (1438-1494). The
picture, of which this head is a detail, was one of a series of
panels painted to decorate Duke Federico di Montefeltro’s library in
the palace of Urbino, but is now in the Royal Museum at Berlin. For
iconographical identification, see Schmarzow’s _Melozzo da Forli,
ein Beitrag zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Italiens im XV
Jahrhundert_ (Berlin: 1886), p. 84.
74.—“Similar to this manner (which savours of the ironical) is another
method, that of describing an evil thing in polite terms. As the Great
Captain said to one of his cavaliers, who, after the battle of
Cerignola,[270] when the danger was over, came forward in the richest
armour possible to describe, accoutered as if for battle. And then the
Great Captain turned to Don Ugo di Cardona[271] and said: ‘Have no more
fear of storm, for Saint Elmo has appeared;’ and with this polite speech
he stung the man to the quick, because you know that Saint Elmo[272]
always appears to mariners after the tempest and gives token of fair
weather; and thus the Great Captain meant that this cavalier’s
appearance was a token that the danger was quite passed.