Pagina 345 di 1391

And if any offer of alliance or parley of individual elders comes

from home, the false spirits shut the gates of the castle and

permit no one to enter,-there is a battle, and they gain the

victory; and straightway making alliance with the desires, they

banish modesty, which they call folly, and send temperance over

the border. When the house has been swept and garnished, they

dress up the exiled vices, and, crowning them with garlands,

bring them back under new names. Insolence they call good

breeding, anarchy freedom, waste magnificence, impudence courage.

Such is the process by which the youth passes from the necessary

pleasures to the unnecessary.