Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/289

 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE COURTIER the more so as the good man spoke his native Bergamasque dialect all the while.'™ But the gentlemen who played the trick had told these ladies in the beginning that he was among other things a great joker, and spoke all languages admirably and especially rustic Lombard. Thus they continually imagined that he was pretending, and they often turned to each other with an air of surprise, and said : ' Listen to this prodigy, how well he counterfeits the language ! ' In short, the conversation lasted so long that everyone's sides ached from laughing; and he himself could not help giving so many tokens of his gentility that even these ladies were at last convinced, albeit with great difficulty, that he was what he was. 86.— "We meet practical jokes of this kind every day; but among the rest those are amusing which at first excite alarm and turn out well in the end; for even the victim laughs at himself when he sees that his fears were groundless. " For instance, I was staying at Paglia ™ one night, and in the same inn w^here I was there happened to be three companions besides myself (two from Pistoia and the other from Prato), who sat down to play after supper, as men often do. They had not been playing long before one of the two Pistoians lost all he had and was left without a farthing, so that he began to lament and to curse and swear roundly; and he retired to sleep blas- pheming thus. After gaming awhile, the other two resolved to play a trick upon the one who had gone to bed. So, mak- ing sure that he was really asleep, they put out all the lights and covered the fire ; then they began to talk loud and to make as much noise as they could, pretending to quarrel over their play, and one of them said: 'You've drawn the under card;' and the other denied it, saying : ' And you have wagered on four of a suit; let us deal again;'"" and the like, with such an uproar that the sleeper awoke. And perceiving that his friends were playing and talking as if they saw the cards, he rubbed his eyes a little, and seeing no light in the room, he said: 'What the devil do you mean by shouting all night?' Then he lay back again as if to go to sleep. " His two friends made no reply, but went on as before; whereat the man began to wonder (now that he was more 157