Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/247

 speaker's words but not his sense. As was the case this year when a German at Rome, meeting one evening with our friend messer Filippo Beroaldo, whose pupil he was, said: Domine magister, Deus det vobis bonum sero; and Beroaldo at once replied: Tibi tnalunt cito

"Again, Diego de Chignones being at the Great Captain's table, another Spaniard, who was eating with them, said: Vino,' meaning to ask for drink; Diego replied: Y no lo conocistes,' meaning to taunt the man with being a heretic.

"Another time messer Giacomo Sadoleto" asked Beroaldo, who was saying how much he wished to go to Bologna: ' What is it that so presses you at this time to leave Rome, where there are so many pleasures, to go to Bologna, which is full of tur- moil?' Beroaldo replied : ' On three counts I am forced to go to Bologna,' and lifted three fingers of his left hand to enumerate three reasons for his going; when messer Giacomo quickly in- terrupted him and said : 'These three Counts that make you go to Bologna are: first. Count Ludovico da San Bonifacio; sec- ond. Count Ercole Rangone ; third, the Count of Pepoli,' Where- upon everyone laughed, because these three Counts had been pupils of Beroaldo, and were fine youths studying at Bologna. " Now we laugh heartily at this kind of witticism, because it carries with it a response different from the one we are expect- ing to hear, and in such matters we are naturally amused by our very mistake and laugh to find ourselves cheated of what we expect.

64.—" But the modes of speech and the figures that are grace- ful in grave and serious talk, are nearly always becoming in pleasantries and games as well. You see that words set in op- position produce much grace, when one contrasting clause is balanced by another. The same method is often very witty. Thus a Genoese, who was very prodigal in spending, was re- proached by a very miserly usurer, who said to him: ' When will you ever cease throwing away your riches?' And he re- plied: ' When you cease stealing other men's.'

"And since, as we have said, the same situations that give op- portunity for biting pleasantries may also give opportunity for serious words of praise, — it is a very graceful and becoming 139