“There is a proverb which says that when our enemy is in the water up to the belt, we must offer him our hand and lift him out of peril; but when he is in up to the chin, we must set our foot on his head and drown him outright. Thus there are some who do this with their rival, and as long as they have no safe way of ruining him, go about dissimulating and pretend to be rather his friend than otherwise; then if an opportunity offers—such that they know they can overwhelm him with certain ruin by saying all manner of evil of him (whether it be true or false),—they do it without mercy, with craft, deception and all the means they know how to invent. “But since it would never please me to have our Courtier use any deceit, I would have him deprive his rival of the lady’s favour by no other craft than by loving and serving her, and by being worthy, valiant, discreet and modest; in short, by deserving her better than his rival, and by being in all things wary and prudent, abstaining from all stupid follies, wherein many dunces fall and in diverse ways. For in the past I have known some who use Poliphilian words in writing and speaking to women,[426] and so insist upon the niceties of rhetoric, that the women are diffident of themselves and account themselves very ignorant, and think each hour of such discourse a thousand years, and rise before the end. Others are immoderately boastful. Others often say things that redound to their own discredit and damage, like some I am wont to laugh at, who profess to be in love and sometimes say in the presence of women: ‘I have never found a woman to love me;’ and they do not perceive that those who hear them at once conclude that this can arise from no other reason than that they deserve neither love nor the water they drink, and hold them for men of slight account, and would not love them for all the gold in the world, thinking that to love them would be to stand lower than all the other women who loved them not. “Still others are so silly that for the purpose of bringing odium upon some rival of theirs, they say in the presence of women: ‘So and So is the luckiest man on earth; for although he is not at all handsome, discreet or valiant, and cannot do or say more than the rest, yet all the women love him and run after him;’ and thus showing themselves to be envious of the man’s good luck, they incite belief that (although he shows himself to be lovable in neither looks nor acts) he has in him some hidden quality for which he deserves so many women’s love; hence those who hear him thus spoken of are by this belief even much more moved to love him.” 71.—Then Count Ludovico laughed, and said: “I assure you that the discreet Courtier will never use these stupidities to win favour with women.” Messer Cesare Gonzaga replied: “Nor yet that one which was used in my time by a gentleman of great repute, whose name for the honour of men I will not mention.” My lady Duchess replied: “At least tell what he did.”