THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER they often not only offend the lady, but are the cause that leads her to love the man: because the fear that lovers sometimes display lest their lady forsake them for another, shows that they are conscious of being inferior to him in merits and worth, and with this idea the lady is moved to love him, and perceiving that evil is said of him to put him out of favour, she believes it not although it be true, and loves him all the more." 70 — Then messer Cesare said, laughing: " I own I am not so wise that I could abstain from speaking evil of my rival, except you were to teach me some other better means of ruining him." My lord Magnifico replied, laughing: " There is a proverb which says that when our enemy is in the water up to the belt, we must offer him our hand and lift him out of peril; but when he is in up to the chin, we must set our foot on his head and drown him outright. Thus there are some who do this with their rival, and as long as they have no safe way of ruining him, go about dissimulating and pretend to be rather his friend than otherwise; then if an opportunity offers — such that they know they can overwhelm him with certain ruin by saying all manner of evil of him (whether it be true or false), — they do it without mercy, with craft, deception and all the means they know how to invent. " But since it would never please me to have our Courtier use any deceit, I would have him deprive his rival of the lady's favour by no other craft than by loving and serving her, and by being worthy, valiant, discreet and modest; in short, by deserv- ing her better than his rival, and by being in all things wary and prudent, abstaining from all stupid follies, wherein many dunces fall and in diverse ways. For in the past I have known some who use Poliphilian words in writing and speaking to women,*'" and so insist upon the niceties of rhetoric, that the women are diffident of themselves and account themselves very ignorant, and think each hour of such discourse a thousand years, and rise before the end. Others are immoderately boastful. Others often say things that redound to their own discredit and damage, like some I am wont to laugh at, who profess to be in love and some- times say in the presence of women : ' I have never found a 235
