Then messer Federico rose to his feet and said:
“Hear me these few words, I pray.”
“The pain of my displeasure,” replied my lady Emilia, laughing, “be upon him who speaks more of this matter now, for I wish to postpone it to another evening. But do you, Count, go on with the discussion about the Courtier,—and show us what a fine memory you have, which I think you will do in no small measure, if you are able to take up the discussion where you left it.”
40.—“My Lady,” replied the Count, “I fear the thread is broken; yet if I am not wrong, methinks we were saying that the pest of affectation imparts extreme ungracefulness to everything, while on the other hand simplicity and nonchalance produce the height of grace: in praise of which, and in blame of affectation, we might cite many other arguments; but of these I wish to add only one, and no more. Women are always very eager to be—and when they cannot be, at least to seem—beautiful. So where nature is somewhat at fault in this regard, they try to piece it out by artifice; whence arise that painting of the face with so much care and sometimes pains, that plucking of the eyebrows and forehead, and the use of all those devices and the endurance of that trouble, which you ladies think to keep very secret from men, but which are all well known.”
Here madonna Costanza Fregosa laughed and said:
“It would be far more courteous for you to keep to your discussion, and tell us of what grace is born, and talk about Courtiership,—than to try to unveil the weaknesses of women, which are not to the purpose.”
“Nay, much to the purpose,” replied the Count: “for these weaknesses of yours I am speaking of, deprive you of grace because they spring from nothing but affectation, wherein you openly make known to everyone your over-eagerness to be beautiful.
“Do you not see how much more grace a lady has who paints (if at all) so sparingly and so little, that whoever sees her is in doubt whether she be painted or not; than another lady so plastered that she seems to have put a mask upon her face and dares not laugh for fear of cracking it, nor ever changes colour but when she dresses in the morning, and then stands motionless all the rest of the day like a wooden image, showing herself only by candle-light, like wily merchants who display their cloths in a dark place? Again, how much more pleasing than all others is one (I mean not ill-favoured) who is plainly seen to have nothing on her face, although it be neither very white nor very red, but by nature a little pale and sometimes tinged with an honest flush from shame or other accident,—with hair artlessly unadorned and hardly confined, her gestures simple and free, without showing care or wish to be beautiful! This is that nonchalant simplicity most pleasing to the eyes and minds of men, who are ever fearful of being deceived by art.
“Beautiful teeth are very charming in a woman, for since they are not so much in view as the face is, but lie hidden most of the time, we may believe that less care is taken to make them beautiful than with the face. Yet if one were to laugh without cause and solely to display the teeth, he would betray his art, and however beautiful they were, would seem most ungraceful to all, like Catullus’s Egnatius.[[110]] It is the same with the hands; which, if they are delicate and beautiful, and occasionally left bare when there is need to use them, and not in order to display their beauty, they leave a very great desire to see more of them, and especially if covered with gloves again; for whoever covers them seems to have little care or thought whether they be seen or not, and to have them thus beautiful more by nature than by any effort or pains.
“Have you ever noticed when a woman, in passing through the street to church or elsewhere, thoughtlessly happens (either in frolic or from other cause) to lift her dress high enough to show the foot and often a little of the leg? Does this not seem to you full of grace, when you see her tricked out with a touch of feminine daintiness in velvet shoes and neat stockings? I for one delight in it and believe you all do, for everyone is persuaded that elegance, in matters thus hidden and rarely seen, is natural and instinctive to the lady rather than forced, and that she does not think to win any praise by it.