While he was here, M. Bonaventura Pistolfo, secretary to Alfonso, wrote to invite Ariosto to accept a third embassy to Rome; not on a perilous and temporary errand, but to reside there as the representative of his sovereign, "for a year or _two_," at the court of Clement VII. The poet, however, had sagacity enough to decline putting himself again in the way of Fortune, where, instead of taking him by the hand, on former occasions, she had only splashed him with the mud from her wheel as it rolled through the streets, encumbered with aspiring asses in every stage of transmigration.[106] His correspondent having intimated that, besides complying with the duke's pleasure at Rome, he might stand a chance of obtaining great and fat preferments by favour of a member of the house of Medici, with which he had been so long and courteously acquainted, then filling the papal chair; since it was more probable that he should catch, if he fished in a great river, than in an ordinary stream; he thus replies, in the seventh Satire:--"I thank you, that the desire is ever fresh with you to promote my interest, and to change me from a plough-ox into a Barbary steed. You might command me with fire and sword to serve the duke, not in Rome only, but in France, Spain, or India; but if you would fain persuade me that honour and riches may be got in the way you propose, you must find a different bait, to lure your bird into that net. As for honour, I have already as much as my heart could wish: it is enough for me that, at home, I can see more then half a dozen of my neighbours doff their caps when they meet me, because they know that I sometimes sit at table with the duke, and obtain a trifling favour which I seek for myself or a friend. Then, if I have honour enough to satisfy me, I should have abundance of wealth also; and my desires, which sometimes wander, would be at rest, if I had just so much that I could live, and be at liberty, without having to ask any thing of any one: more than this I never hope to attain. But, since so many of my friends have had the power to do thus much for me, and I still remain in poverty and dependence, I will not let her[107], who was so backward to fly out of the box of the imprudent Epimeteus, to lead me by the muzzle like a buffalo." Towards the close of this epistle, he intimates that it is some unconfessed affection which draws him so tenderly and irresistibly towards his native nest; and adds--"It is well for me that I can hide myself among these mountains, and that your eyes cannot run a hundred miles after me, to see whether my cheeks be pale or red at this acknowledgment. Certainly, if you saw my face at the moment I am writing, far away as I am, it would appear to you as deeply crimsoned as that of the father canon was, when he let fall, in the market-place, the wine-flask which he had stolen from a brother, besides the two that he had drunk. If I were at your elbow, perhaps you would snatch up a cudgel