n succession one kind
after another, first rabbits, hares, roebucks, foxes, porcupines, and
badgers, and then stags, boars, and bears, and even some savage horses
all burning with love; and in the end, as the most noble and most superb
chase of all, after they had sought several times by means of an immense
turtle and a vast and most hideous mask of a monster, which were full of
men and were made to move hither and thither with various wheels, to
incite a most fierce lion to do battle with a very valiant bull;
finally, since that could not be achieved, both the animals were seen
struck down and slain, not without a long and bloody struggle, by the
multitude of dogs and huntsmen. Besides this, every evening the noble
youth of the city exercised themselves with most elegant dexterity and
valour, according to their custom, at the game of football, the peculiar
and particular sport of that people, with which finally there was given
on one of those Sundays one of the most agreeable and most graceful
spectacles that anyone could ever behold, in very rich costumes of cloth
of gold in red and green colours, with all the rules, which are many and
beautiful.

But since variety seems generally to enhance the pleasure of most
things, another time the illustrious Prince sought with a different show
to satisfy the expectant people by means of his so much desired Triumph
of Dreams. The invention of this, although, since he went to Germany to
see his exalted bride and to do reverence to the most august Emperor
Maximilian and to his other illustrious kinsmen, it was arranged and
composed by others with great learning and diligence, may yet be said to
have been born in the beginning from his most noble genius, so competent
in no matter how subtle and exacting a task; and with it he who
afterwards executed the work, and was the composer of the song, sought
to demonstrate that moral opinion expressed by Dante when he says that
innumerable errors arise among living mortals because many are set to do
many things for which they do not seem to have been born fitted by
nature, deviating, on the other hand, from those for which, following
their natural inclination, they might be very well adapted. This he also
strove to demonstrate with five companies of masks led by five of those
human desires that were considered by him the greatest; by Love, namely,
behind whom followed the lovers; by Beauty, figured under the form of
Narcissus, and followed