He presented me with a copy, which he sent to my inn, with an immense folio volume entitled “Marmora Pisaurentia,” which I had no time to examine.
I was much pleased with the marchioness, who had three daughters and two sons, all good-looking and well bred.
The marchioness was a woman of the world, while her husband’s interests were confined to his books. This difference in disposition sometimes gave rise to a slight element of discord, but a stranger would never have noticed it if he had not been told.
Fifty years ago a wise man said to me: “Every family is troubled by some small tragedy, which should be kept private with the greatest care. In fine, people should learn to wash their dirty linen in private.”
The marchioness paid me great attention during the five days I spent at Pesaro. In the day she drove me from one country house to another, and at night she introduced me to all the nobility of the town.
The marquis might have been fifty then. He was cold by temperament, had no other passion but that of study, and his morals were pure. He had founded an academy of which he was the president. Its design was a fly, in allusion to his name Mosca, with the words ‘de me ce’, that is to say, take away ‘c’ from ‘musca’ and you have ‘musa’.
His only failing was that which the monks regard as his finest quality, he was religious to excess, and this excess of religion went beyond the bounds where ‘nequit consistere rectum’.
But which is the better, to go beyond these bounds, or not to come up to them? I cannot venture to decide the question. Horace says,—
“Nulla est mihi religio!”
and it is the beginning of an ode in which he condemns philosophy for estranging him from religion.