Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/236

 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE COURTIER ' And where do you hang your spectacles ? ' '" or ' With what do you smell the roses in their season?' 60 " But among other witticisms those have very good grace that are made by taking the very words and sense from another man's taunt and turning them against him and striking him with his own weapons; as where a litigant — whose adversary had said to him in the judge's presence: ' Why do you bark so?' — at once replied: ' Because I see a thief.' "And another instance of this was when Galeotto da Narni,'" on his way through Siena, stopped in the street to ask for the inn; and a Sienese, seeing how fat he was, said, laughing: ' Other men carry their wallets behind, but this one carries his in front.' Galeotto at once replied: 'That is the way we do in a land of thieves.' 61.— "There is still another kind, which we call playing on words,'" and this consists in changing a word by either adding or omitting a letter or a syllable; as when someone said: 'You are better versed in the Latnn tongue than in the Greek,' And you, my Lady, had a letter addressed to you, 'To my lady Emilia Itn- pia.'^" " Moreover it is a pleasant thing to quote a verse or two, ap- plying it to a purpose different from that which the author intends, or some other familiar saw; sometimes to the same purpose, but changing some word. As when a gentleman, who had an ugly and disagreeable wife, was asked how he was, he replied : ' Judge yourself of my state, when Furiarum maxima juxta me cuhat.'^ And messer Geronimo Donato,'" while going the rounds of the Stasioni"^ at Rome in Lent with several other gentlemen, met a bevy of beautiful Roman ladies; and one of the gentlemen say- ing: ' Quot caelum stellas, tot habet tua Romapuellas,"^ he at once replied: Pascua quotque haedos, tot habet tua Roma cinaedos,"^ pointing to a company of young men who were coming from the other direction. "In like fashion messer Marcantonio della Torre"^ addressed the Bishop of Padua. There being a nunnery at Padua in charge of a friar reputed to be of very pure life and learned as well, it came to pass that, as the friar frequented the convent familiarly and often confessed the nuns, five of them (more than 136