THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER 43.— Here my lord Ottaviano, turning to my lady Duchess with an air of having finished his discourse, said : " There, my Lady, is what occurs to me to say about the aim of the Courtier; wherein, if I shall not have wholly given satis- faction, it will at least be enough for me to have shown that some further perfection could be given him in addition to the things mentioned by these gentlemen; who, methinks, omitted both this and all that I might say, not because they did not know it better than I, but in order to save themselves trouble; there- fore I will leave them to continue, if they have anything left to say." Then my lady Duchess said: " Not only is the hour so late that it will soon be time to stop for the evening, but it seems to me that we ought not to mingle any other discourse with this; wherein you have gathered so many different and beautiful things, that we may say (touching the aim of Courtiership) not only that you are the perfect Courtier whom we seek, and competent to instruct your prince rightly, but if" fortune shall be favourable to you, that you ought also to be an admirable prince, which would be of great advantage to your country.'"" My lord Ottaviano laughed, and said: " If I held such rank, my Lady, perhaps it would be with me as it is wont to be with many others, who know better how to speak than to act." 44-— Here the matter having been debated back and forth awhile among the whole company, with some little contradiction albeit in praise of what had been said, and it being suggested that it was not yet time to go to rest, the Magnifico Giuliano said, laughing : " My Lady, I am so great an enemy to guile, that I am forced to contradict my lord Ottaviano, who, from having (as I fear) conspired secretly with my lord Gaspar against women, has fallen into two errours to my thinking very grave : one of which is, that in order to set this Courtier above the Court Lady and make him transcend the bounds that she can reach, my lord Ottaviano has set the Courtier also above the prince, which is most unseemly; the other is in setting him such a goal that it is always difficult, 280
