Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/149

 to gaze upon the lady of his love; and in the same way to look at a ring, a letter, a garden or other place, or what you will, which seems to him a conscious witness of his joys. And on the contrary, a gorgeous and beautiful room will often be irksome to a man who has been prisoner or has suffered some other sorrow there. And I once knew some who would not drink from a cup like that from which in illness they had taken medicine. For just as to the one the window or ring or letter recalls the sweet memory that gives him such delight and seems part of his bygone joy,— so to the other, the room or cup brings his illness or imprisonment to mind. I believe that the same cause leads old people to praise bygone times and to censure the present.

2.— Therefore as they speak of other things, so do they also of courts, affirming those which they remember, to have been far more excellent and full of eminent men than those which we see to-day. And as soon as such discussions are started, they begin to extol with boundless praise the courtiers of Duke Filippo or Duke Borso;149 and they narrate the sayings of Niccolo Piccinino;150 and they remind us that there were no murders in those days (or very few at most), no brawls, no ambushes, no deceits, but a certain frank and kindly good will among all men, a loyal confidence; and that in the courts of that time such good behaviour and decorum prevailed, that courtiers were all like monks, and woe to him who should have spoken insultingly to another, or so much as made a less than decorous gesture to a woman. And on the other hand they say everything is the reverse in these days, and that not only have courtiers lost their fraternal love and gentle mode of life, but that nothing prevails in courts but envy, malice, immorality and very dissolute living, with every sort of vice,— the women lascivious without shame, the men effeminate. They condemn our dress also as indecorous and too womanish. In short they censure an infinity of things, among which many indeed merit censure, for it cannot be denied that there are many bad and wicked men among us, or that this age of ours is much fuller of vice than that which they praise.151 Yet it seems to me that they ill discern the cause of this difference, and that they are