“I should be sorry, my Lady, that my saying it is permissible for old men to love should be a reason for these ladies to regard me as old; therefore please to give this task to someone else.”[473] My lady Duchess replied: “You ought not to shun being reputed old in wisdom, even if you are young in years; so speak on, and make no more excuse.” Messer Pietro said: “Indeed, my Lady, if I must talk about this matter, I should need to go take counsel with my Lavinello’s Hermit.”[474] Then my lady Emilia said, half vexed: “Messer Pietro, there is no one in the company who is more disobedient than you; therefore it will be well for my lady Duchess to inflict some chastisement upon you.” Messer Pietro said, again smiling: “Be not angry with me, my Lady, for love of God; for I will tell what you wish.” “Then tell it at once,” replied my lady Emilia. 51.—Whereupon messer Pietro, having first remained silent awhile, then settled himself a little as if about to speak of something important, and spoke thus:[475] “My Lords, in order to prove that old men can love not only without blame but sometimes more happily than young men, it will be needful for me to make a little discourse to explain what love is, and in what consists the happiness that lovers may enjoy. So I pray you hear me with attention, for I hope to make you see that there is no man here whom it does not become to be in love, even though he were fifteen or twenty years older than my lord Morello.” And then after some laughter, messer Pietro continued: “I say, then, that according to the definition of the ancient sages love is naught but a certain desire to enjoy beauty; and as desire longs only for things that are perceived, perception must needs always precede desire, which by its nature wishes good things, but in itself is blind and does not perceive them. Therefore nature has so ordained that to every faculty of perception there is joined a certain faculty of appetite; and since in our soul there are three modes of perceiving, that is, by sense, by reason, and by intellect: from sense springs appetite, which we have in common with the brutes; from reason springs choice, which is peculiar to man; from the intellect, by which man is able to commune with the angels, springs will. Thus, just as sense perceives only things that are perceptible by the senses, appetite desires the same only; and just as intellect is directed solely to the contemplation of things intellectual, the will feeds only upon spiritual benefits. Being by nature rational and placed as a mean between these two extremes, man is able at will (by descending to sense or mounting to intellect) to turn his desires now in the one direction and now in the other. In these two ways, therefore, it is possible to desire beauty, which universal name applies to all things (whether natural or artificial) that are framed in good proportion and due measure according to their nature. [Illustration: PIETRO BEMBO 1470-1547 ]