Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/138

 you will say the truth, the first time you saw that woman you did not feel a thousandth part of the pleasure that you did afterwards, although her beauty was the same. Thus you may see how much more affection had to do with your pleasure, than beauty had."

"I do not deny this," said messer Cesare; "but just as my pleasure is born of affection, so is affection born of beauty. Thus it may still be said that beauty is the cause of my pleasure." The Count replied:

"Many other causes also inflame our minds, besides beauty: such as manners, knowledge, speech, gesture, and a thousand other things which in a way perhaps might also be called beauties; but above all, the consciousness of being loved. So it is possible to love very ardently even without that beauty you speak of; but the love that springs from the outward bodily beauty which we see, will doubtless give far greater pleasure to him who appreciates it more than to him who appreciates it less. Therefore, to return to our subject, I think that Apelles enjoyed the contemplation of Campaspe's beauty far more than Alexander did:139 for we may easily believe that both men's love sprang only from her beauty; and perhaps it was partly on this account that Alexander resolved to give her to him who seemed fitted to appreciate her most perfectly.

"Have you not read that those five maidens of Crotona, whom the painter Zeuxis chose above the others of that city for the purpose of forming from them all a single type of surpassing beauty, were celebrated by many poets as having been adjudged beautiful by one who must have been a consummate judge of beauty?"140

54.— Messer Cesare here seemed ill satisfied and unwilling to admit for a moment that anyone but himself could taste that pleasure which he felt in contemplating a woman's beauty, and he began to speak. But just then a great tramping of feet was heard, and the sound of loud talking; whereupon everyone turned, and a glare of torches was seen at the door of the room, and soon there arrived, with a numerous and noble company, my lord Prefect,3 who returned from attending the pope part