Throughout Italy a somewhat Ciceronian and Attic beauty of form played a highly important part in conversation. Men were distinguished by their dignity of style and by a high-bred refinement free from the slightest taint of the stable. We can only judge of their manner of talk indirectly, through their letters; but an idea of it may be gained from the letters of Bembo, Castiglione, and others, in which a lady could see how to win men’s hearts while retaining all womanliness of style, and how much affection—whether it be called love, friendship, or simply a good understanding—gains by displaying itself delicately. Women played the part of judges: they were permitted, if need were, to stand on their dignity, to be silent or to speak freely at pleasure; but no man could succeed without a highly suave manner; merit had to be shown by some external mark: “Merit is not enough unless prolific in the outward graces on which the praiseworthiness of actions depends.” But appearances were sometimes sufficient. Even in their portraits, men like Castiglione retain a something infinitely engaging and attractive—a bloom on the lips, a softness in the eyes.[261] When at Venice we come upon portraits of men all energy and self-assertion, the inference is that the women must have lost their empire; and we do in fact see opposite them portraits of passive women, all softness and sensuousness. And these tender lips that opened only to speak to women, these caressing eyes, do not deceive us. The prattle of these men was impregnated with a dove-like gentleness, an adoration, in appearance wholly spiritual, for the beautiful. Castiglione, an eminently graceful, caressing, and persuasive talker, spoke with fluency, with something of flabbiness and redundance, perhaps—a sort of perfumed talk, with nothing of “French filthiness,” as he said. Vittoria Colonna wrote a charming letter to Paul Jove, in which she spoke with great enthusiasm of “her” divine Bembo. Paul Jove lost no time in passing this letter on to Bembo. “I send you,” he writes, “a letter from your lady-love, the most illustrious marchioness. It is very pretty, and speaks of you, and I send it you at once without any of that resentment which rivals are so apt to feel, for I am fully assured that Her Excellency’s love for your lordship is in all points like to my own love for her, that is, celestial, holy, altogether platonic. Her Excellency is come from Ischia to Naples with the other noble dames; I mean the serene Amalfia and the superb Vasta, with the Francavila, a mirror of virtue and verily a matchless beauty.”