’The more destructive is a man, the simpler is he. Now, my father, this destroying Duke covets nothing so much as the applause of the world for gifts with which, in truth, he is ill-endowed. He cannot sing, or rhyme, or improvise but with the worst, yet, thinks he, they shall call me poet and musician, or burn. Well, he might fiddle over the holocaust, like Nero, and still be first cousin to a peacock. I told him so, but in gentler words, when he asked me to teach him my method. "To every soul its capacities," says I, "and mine are not in ruling a great duchy greatly." "So we are neither of us omnipotent," says he, with a smile. "Well, I will take the lesson to heart." Now, could so simple a creature be all corrupt? ’Of more complicated fibre is his brother, the Signior Ludovico. Very politic and abiding, he rushes at nothing; yet in the end, I think, most things come to him. He is gracious to thy child, as indeed are all; yet, God forgive me, I find something more inhuman in his gentleness than in Galeazzo’s passion. These inexplicable antipathies are surely the weapons of Satan; whereby it behoves us to overcome them. That same Lascaris attributes them to an accidental re-fusion of particles, opposed to other chance re-combinations, in a present body, of particles similarly antipathetic to us in a former existence—a long "short cut" over the way again. ’Now, as for my days in this poignant city—where even the benches and clothes-chests, not to speak of most walls and ceilings, yea, and the very stair-posts themselves, are painted with crowded devices of scrolls and figures in loveliest gold and azure and vermilion—thou mayest believe they are strange to me. Amidst this wealth I, thy simple acolyte, am glorified, I say, and courted beyond measure. Yet fear nothing for me. I appraise this distinction at its right market value. The higher the Duke’s favour, the greater my presumptive influence. Believe me, dear, my urbanity towards his attentions is an investment for my Master. I am an honest factor.