“You say truly,” replied messer Federico. “Yet what one of us is there, who, on seeing a gentleman pass by with a garment on his back quartered in divers colours, or with a mass of strings and knotted ribbons and cross lacings, does not take him for a fool or a buffoon?” “Neither for a fool,” said messer Pietro Bembo, “nor for a buffoon would he be taken by anyone who had lived any time in Lombardy, for all men go about like that.” “Then,” said my lady Duchess, laughing, “if all men go about like that, we must not cast it at them as a fault, since this attire is as fitting and proper to them as it is for the Venetians to wear puffed sleeves,[169] or for the Florentines to wear the hood.” “I am not speaking,” said messer Federico, “more of Lombardy than of other places, for both the foolish and the wise are to be found in every nation. But to say what I think is important in attire, I wish that our Courtier may be neat and dainty throughout his dress, and have a certain air of modest elegance, yet not of a womanish or vain style. Nor would I have him more careful of one thing than of another, like many we see who take such pains with their hair that they forget the rest; others devote themselves to their teeth, others to their beard, others to their boots, others to their bonnets, others to their coifs;[170] and the result is that these few details of elegance seem borrowed by them, while all the rest, being very tasteless, is recognized as their own. And this kind of dress I would have our Courtier shun, by my advice; adding also that he ought to consider how he wishes to seem and of what sort he wishes to be esteemed, and to dress accordingly and contrive that his attire shall aid him to be so regarded even by those who neither hear him speak nor witness any act of his.” 28.—Then my lord Gaspar Pallavicino said: “Methinks it is not fitting, or even customary among persons of worth, to judge men’s quality by their dress rather than by their words and acts; for many would make mistakes, nor is it without reason that we have the proverb, ‘dress makes not the monk.’” “I do not say,” replied messer Federico, “that fixed opinions of men’s worth are to be formed only in this way, or that they are not better known by their words and acts than by their dress: but I do say that dress is no bad index of the wearer’s fancy, although it may be sometimes wrong; and not only this, but all ways and manners, as well as acts and words, are an indication of the qualities of the man in whom they are seen.” “And what things do you find,” replied my lord Gaspar, “from which we may form an opinion, that are neither words nor acts?” Then messer Federico said: