Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/188

 "How 'in passing'?" replied messer Federico. "Perhaps you would have me tell the very words that you must use? Do you not think we have talked enough about this?"

"Enough I think," replied my lord Gaspar. "Yet I should like to hear a few more details about the manner of intercourse with men and women; for the thing seems to me of great importance, seeing that most of our time at courts is given to it; and if it were always the same, it would soon become tedious." "I think," replied messer Federico, "we have given the Courtier knowledge of so many things, that he can easily vary his conversation and adapt himself to the quality of the persons with whom he has to do, presupposing he has good sense and governs himself by it, and sometimes turns to grave matters and sometimes to festivals and games, according to the occasion." "And what games?" said my lord Gaspar. Then messer Federico replied, laughing:

"Let us ask advice of Fra Serafino, who invents new ones every day." "Jesting apart," answered my lord Gaspar, "do you think it would be a vice in the Courtier to play at cards and dice?" "Not I," said messer Federico, "unless he did so too constantly and neglected more important matters for them, or indeed unless he played for nothing else but to win money, and cheated the company, and showed such grief and vexation at losing as to argue himself a miser."

"And what," replied my lord Gaspar, "do you say of the game of chess?"

"It is certainly a pleasant and ingenious amusement," said messer Federico. " But I think there is one defect in it. And that is, there is too much to know, so that whoever would excel in the game of chess must spend much time on it, methinks, and give it as much study as if he would learn some noble science or do anything else of importance you please; and yet in the end with all his pains he has learned nothing but a game. Therefore I think a very unusual thing is true of it, namely that mediocrity is more praiseworthy than excellence."

My lord Gaspar replied: