The poet, alluding in direct terms to his visit to Rome, and his specious reception by Leo, says, "I had better remain in my accustomed quiet, than try whether it be true, that whomsoever fortune exalts, she first dips in Lethe." The subtle irony that follows cannot be mistaken in the original, while the indignant satirist, with the most unaffected gravity, and in right good faith, seems to acquit his patron of forgetfulness and ingratitude,--the very things with which it is certain that he means to charge him. Ariosto can keep his countenance like the Spartan boy, who, having stolen a fox, and hidden it under his cloak, suffered the animal to worry its way into his heart, without betraying, by any contortion, the secret of his theft. "Nevertheless, if it be the fact that she (Fortune) does plunge others there (in Lethe), so that all remembrances of the past are washed out, I can testify that he (Leo) had not lost his memory when I first kissed his foot; he bowed himself towards me from the blessed seat, took me by the hand, and gave me a holy kiss on either cheek; he likewise granted me most graciously one half of that same bull of which my friend Bebiena lately remitted me the balance, at my own expense; wherefore, with skirts and bosom full of hopes, but splashed from head to foot with rain and mud, I returned to supper at my inn the same night. But even if it be true that the pope means to make good all his former promises, and now intends me to reap fruit of the seed which I have sown through so many years; if it be true that he will bestow upon me as many mitres and coronets as the master of his chapel ever saw assembled when his holiness says mass; if it be true that he will fill my sleeves, my pockets, and my lap with gold, and, lest that should not be enough, cram me bodily with it up to the chin (_la gola, il ventre e le budella_); would all this glut my enormous voracity for wealth? or would the fierce thirst of my cerastes[103] be appeased with this? From Morocco to China, from the Nile to the Danube, and not merely to Home, I must travel, if I would find means to satiate the unnatural cravings of avarice. Were I a cardinal, or even the great servant of servants, and yet could not find bounds to my inordinate desires, what good should I get by wearying myself with such huge leaps? I had better lie still, and tire myself less." The fable which follows, typifies the mournful but ludicrous fact, that, while all who reach the heights they aim at are disappointed,--that _for_ which they aim at these being as unapproachable at the top of the hill as from the bottom,--others are continually aspiring, through all the stages of the wearisome ascent, towards the very prize which the successful have _not_ gained, though to those beneath it appears to be actually in their possession:--