“For ages,” said he, “fools have been lavishing poetic praise and amorous compliment on mortal women, mere creatures of earth, smacking palpably of their origin; Sirens at the windows, where our Roman women in particular have by lifelong study learned the wily art to show their one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and hide all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' i giardini, Angeli in Strada, Sante in chiesa, Diavoli in casa. Then come I and ransack the minstrels' lines for amorous turns, not forgetting those which Petrarch wasted on that French jilt Laura, the sliest of them all; and I lay you the whole bundle of spice at the feet of the only females worthy amorous incense; to wit, the Nine Muses.”
“By which goodly stratagem,” said Jerome, who had been turning the pages all this time, “you, a friar of St. Dominic, have produced an obscene book.” And he dashed Polifilo on the table.
“Obscene? thou discourteous monk!” And the author ran round the table, snatched Polifilo away, locked him up, and trembling with mortification, said, “My Gerard, pshaw! Brother What's-his-name had not found Polifilo obscene. Puris omnia pura.”
“Such as read your Polifilo—Heaven grant they may be few—will find him what I find him.”
Poor Colonna gulped down this bitter pill as he might; and had he not been in his own lodgings, and a high-born gentleman as well as a scholar, there might have been a vulgar quarrel.
As it was, he made a great effort, and turned the conversation to a beautiful chrysolite the Cardinal Colonna had lent him; and while Clement handled it, enlarged on its moral virtues: for he went the whole length of his age as a worshipper of jewels.
But Jerome did not, and expostulated with him for believing that one dead stone could confer valour on its wearer, another chastity, another safety from poison, another temperance.
“The experience of ages proves they do,” said Colonna. “As to the last virtue you have named, there sits a living proof. This Gerard—I beg pardon, Brother Thingemy—comes from the north, where men drink like fishes; yet was he ever most abstemious. And why? Carried an amethyst, the clearest and fullest coloured e'er I saw on any but noble finger. Where, in Heaven's name, is thine amethyst? Show it this unbeliever!”
“And 'twas that amethyst made the boy temperate?” asked Jerome ironically.
“Certainly. Why, what is the derivation and meaning of amethyst? {a} negative, and {methua} to tipple. Go to, names are but the signs of things. A stone is not called {amethustos} for two thousand years out of mere sport, and abuse of language.”