he can." Seeing on of his
gentlemen make a member of his family lace him up, he said to him: "I
pray God that you will let him feed you also." Seeing that someone had
written upon his house in Latin the words: "May God preserve this house
from the wicked," he said, "The owner must never go in." Passing through
one of the streets he saw a small house with a very large door, and
remarked: "That house will fly through the door." He was having a
discussion with the ambassador of the King of Naples concerning the
property of some banished nobles, when a dispute arose between them, and
the ambassador asked him if he had no fear of the king. "Is this king of
yours a bad man or a good one?" asked Castruccio, and was told that he
was a good one, whereupon he said, "Why should you suggest that I should
be afraid of a good man?"

I could recount many other stories of his sayings both witty and
weighty, but I think that the above will be sufficient testimony to
his high qualities. He lived forty-four years, and was in every way a
prince. And as he was surrounded by many evidences of his good fortune,
so he also desired to have near him some memorials of his bad fortune;
therefore the manacles with which he was chained in prison are to be
seen to this day fixed up in the tower of his residence, where they were
placed by him to testify for ever to his days of adversity. As in
his life he was inferior neither to Philip of Macedon, the father of
Alexander, nor to Scipio of Rome, so he died in the same year of his
age as they did, and he would doubtless have excelled both of them had
Fortune decreed that he should be born, not in Lucca, but in Macedonia
or Rome.

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