Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/424

 THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER " How frightened and of what uneasy mind do you think was Clearchus, tyrant of Pontus,"' every time he went into the market- place or theatre, or to a banquet or other pubHc place? who, as it is written, was wont to sleep shut up in a chest. Or that other tyrant, Aristodemus the Argive?**" who made a kind of prison of his bed: for in his palace he had a little room hung in air, and so high that it could be reached only by a ladder; and here he slept with one of his women, whose mother took away the ladder at night and replaced it in the morning, " A wholly different life from this, then, ought that of the good prince to be, free and safe and as dear to his subjects as their very own, and so ordered as to partake both of the active and of the contemplative, as much as may comport with his people's weal." 25-— Then my lord Gaspar said: " And which of these two lives, my lord Ottaviano, seems to you more fitting for the prince?" My lord Ottaviano replied, laughing: "Perhaps you think I imagine myself to be that excellent Courtier who ought to know so many things and apply them to that good end which I have set forth; but remember that these gentlemen have described him with many accomplishments that are not in me. Therefore let us first take care to find him, for I leave to him both this and all things else that belong to a good prince." Then my lord Gaspar said: " I think that if any of the accomplishments ascribed to the Courtier are lacking in you, they are music and dancing and others of small importance, rather than those that belong to the moulding of the prince and to this end of Courtiership." My lord Ottaviano replied: "None of those are of small importance that help to win the prince's favour, which is necessary (as we have said) before the Courtier risks trying to teach him virtue; which I think I have proved can be learned, and in which there is as much profit as there is loss in ignorance, whence spring all sins, and especially that false esteem which men cherish of themselves. But methinks I have said enough, and perhaps more than I promised." 264