“Another time my lord Ottaviano Ubaldini,[273] being at Florence in the company of some citizens of great influence, and the talk being about soldiers, one of them asked him if he knew Antonello da Forli,[274] who had at that time fled from Florentine territory. My lord Ottaviano replied: ‘I do not know him, but have always heard him spoken of as a prompt soldier.’ Whereupon another Florentine said: ‘You see how prompt he is, when he takes his departure without asking leave.’ 75.—“Those witticisms also are very clever in which we take from our interlocutor’s lips something that he does not mean. And of this kind, methinks, was my lord Duke’s reply to the castellan who lost San Leo[275] when this duchy was taken by Pope Alexander and given to Duke Valentino;[276] and it was this: my lord Duke being in Venice at the time I have mentioned, many of his subjects came continually to give him secret news how things were faring in his state; and among the rest came this castellan, who, after having excused himself as best he could, ascribing the blame to mischance, said: ‘Have no anxiety, my Lord, because I still have heart to take measures for the recovery of San Leo.’ Then my lord Duke replied: ‘Trouble yourself no more about the matter, for the mere loss of it was a measure that rendered its recovery possible.’ “There are certain other sayings when a man known to be clever says something that seems to proceed from foolishness. For instance, messer Camillo Paleotto[232] said of someone the other day: ‘He was such a fool that he died as soon as he began to grow rich.’ “Of like kind with this is a spicy and keen dissimulation, where a man (discreet, as I have said) pretends not to understand something that he does understand. Like what was said by the Marquess Federico of Mantua, who,—being pestered by a tiresome fellow who complained that some of his neighbours were snaring doves out of his dovecote, and all the while held one of them in his hand, hanging dead just as he had found it with its foot caught in the snare,—replied that the matter should be looked to. The fellow repeated the story of his loss not once only but many times, always displaying the dove that had been hanged, and saying: ‘And what, my Lord, do you think ought to be done in this case?’ At last the Marquess said: ‘I think the dove ought on no account to be buried in church, for having hanged itself, it must be believed to have committed suicide.’[277]