“Then,” said my lady Duchess, laughing, “if all men go about like that, we must not cast it at them as a fault, since this attire is as fitting and proper to them as it is for the Venetians to wear puffed sleeves,[[169]] or for the Florentines to wear the hood.”
“I am not speaking,” said messer Federico, “more of Lombardy than of other places, for both the foolish and the wise are to be found in every nation. But to say what I think is important in attire, I wish that our Courtier may be neat and dainty throughout his dress, and have a certain air of modest elegance, yet not of a womanish or vain style. Nor would I have him more careful of one thing than of another, like many we see who take such pains with their hair that they forget the rest; others devote themselves to their teeth, others to their beard, others to their boots, others to their bonnets, others to their coifs;[[170]] and the result is that these few details of elegance seem borrowed by them, while all the rest, being very tasteless, is recognized as their own. And this kind of dress I would have our Courtier shun, by my advice; adding also that he ought to consider how he wishes to seem and of what sort he wishes to be esteemed, and to dress accordingly and contrive that his attire shall aid him to be so regarded even by those who neither hear him speak nor witness any act of his.”
28.—Then my lord Gaspar Pallavicino said:
“Methinks it is not fitting, or even customary among persons of worth, to judge men’s quality by their dress rather than by their words and acts; for many would make mistakes, nor is it without reason that we have the proverb, ‘dress makes not the monk.’”
“I do not say,” replied messer Federico, “that fixed opinions of men’s worth are to be formed only in this way, or that they are not better known by their words and acts than by their dress: but I do say that dress is no bad index of the wearer’s fancy, although it may be sometimes wrong; and not only this, but all ways and manners, as well as acts and words, are an indication of the qualities of the man in whom they are seen.”
“And what things do you find,” replied my lord Gaspar, “from which we may form an opinion, that are neither words nor acts?”
Then messer Federico said:
“You are too subtle a logician. But to tell you what I mean, there are some acts that still endure after they are performed, such as building, writing, and the like; others do not endure, such as those I have now in mind. In this sense, therefore, I do not say that walking, laughing, looking, and the like, are acts,—and yet all these outward things often give knowledge of those within. Tell me, did you not judge that friend of ours, of whom we were speaking only this morning, to be a light and frivolous man as soon as you saw him walking with that twist of his head, wriggling about, and with affable demeanour inviting the by-standers to doff their caps to him? So, too, when you see anyone gazing too intently with dull eyes after the manner of an idiot, or laughing as stupidly as those goitrous mutes in the mountains of Bergamo,[[171]]—do you not set him down a very simpleton, although he neither speak nor do aught else? Thus you see that these ways and manners (which I do not for the present regard as acts) in great measure make men known to us.
29.—“But another thing seems to me to give and to take away from reputation greatly, and this is our choice of the friends with whom we are to live in intimate relations; for doubtless reason requires that they who are joined in close amity and fast companionship, shall have their desires, souls, judgments and minds also in accord. Thus, he who consorts with the ignorant or wicked, is deemed ignorant or wicked; and on the contrary, he who consorts with the good, the wise, and the discreet, is himself deemed to be the like. Because by nature everything seems to join willingly with its like. Therefore I think we ought to use great care in beginning these friendships, for he who knows one of two close friends, at once imagines the other to be of the same quality.”
Then messer Pietro Bembo replied: