valour, according to their custom, at the game of football, the peculiar and particular sport of that people, with which finally there was given on one of those Sundays one of the most agreeable and most graceful spectacles that anyone could ever behold, in very rich costumes of cloth of gold in red and green colours, with all the rules, which are many and beautiful. But since variety seems generally to enhance the pleasure of most things, another time the illustrious Prince sought with a different show to satisfy the expectant people by means of his so much desired Triumph of Dreams. The invention of this, although, since he went to Germany to see his exalted bride and to do reverence to the most august Emperor Maximilian and to his other illustrious kinsmen, it was arranged and composed by others with great learning and diligence, may yet be said to have been born in the beginning from his most noble genius, so competent in no matter how subtle and exacting a task; and with it he who afterwards executed the work, and was the composer of the song, sought to demonstrate that moral opinion expressed by Dante when he says that innumerable errors arise among living mortals because many are set to do many things for which they do not seem to have been born fitted by nature, deviating, on the other hand, from those for which, following their natural inclination, they might be very well adapted. This he also strove to demonstrate with five companies of masks led by five of those human desires that were considered by him the greatest; by Love, namely, behind whom followed the lovers; by Beauty, figured under the form of Narcissus, and followed by those who strive too much to appear beautiful; by Fame, who had as followers those too hungry for glory; by Pluto, signifying Riches, behind whom were seen those eager and greedy for them, and by Bellona, who was followed by the men enamoured of war; contriving that the sixth company, which comprised all the five described above, and to which he wished that they should all be referred, should be guided by Madness, likewise with a good number of her followers behind her, signifying that he who sinks himself too deep and against the inclination of Nature in the above-named desires, which are in truth dreams and spectres, comes in the end to be seized and bound by Madness. And then this judgment, turning, as a thing of feast and carnival, to the amorous, announces to young women that the great father Sleep is come with all his ministers and companions in order to show to them with his matutinal dreams, which are reputed as true (comprised, as has been told, in the first five companies), that all the above-named things that are done by us against Nature, are to be considered, as has been said, as dreams and spectres; and therefore, exhorting them to pursue that to which their nature inclines them, it appears that in the end he wishes, as it were, to conclude that if they