The same was it among the ladies, with whom there was intercourse most free and honorable; for every one was permitted to talk, sit, jest, and laugh with whom he pleased; but such was the reverence paid to the wish of my lady Duchess, that this same liberty was a very great check; nor was there any one who did not esteem it the utmost pleasure he could have in the world to please her, and the utmost pain to displease her. And thus most decorous manners were here joined with the greatest liberty, and games and laughter in her presence were seasoned not only with keenest wit, but with gracious and sober dignity; for that purity and loftiness which governed all the acts, words, and gestures of my lady Duchess, bantering and laughing, were such that she would have been known for a lady of noblest rank by any one who saw her even but once. And impressing herself thus upon those about her, she seemed to attune us all to her own quality and pitch: accordingly each strove to follow this example, taking as it were a pattern of beautiful behavior from the bearing of so great and virtuous a lady; whose highest qualities I do not now purpose to recount, they not being my theme and being well known to all the world, and far more because I could not express them with either tongue or pen; and those that perhaps might have been somewhat hid, fortune, as though wondering at such rare virtue, chose to reveal through many adversities and stings of calamity; so as to give proof that in the tender breast of a woman, in company with singular beauty, there may abide prudence and strength of soul and all those virtues that even among stern men are very rare.