To what end do we avoid the servile attendance of courts, if we bring the same trouble home to our own private houses?
It is also a common rule in all assemblies, that those of less quality are to be first upon the place, by reason that it is more due to the better sort to make others wait and expect them.
Nevertheless, at the interview betwixt Pope Clement and King Francis at Marseilles,--[in 1533.]--the King, after he had taken order for the necessary preparations for his reception and entertainment, withdrew out of the town, and gave the Pope two or three days' respite for his entry, and to repose and refresh himself, before he came to him.

And in like manner, at the assignation of the Pope and the Emperor,--[Charles V.

in 1532.] at Bologna, the Emperor gave the Pope opportunity to come thither first, and came himself after; for which the reason given was this, that at all the interviews of such princes, the greater ought to be first at the appointed place, especially before the other in whose territories the interview is appointed to be, intimating thereby a kind of deference to the other, it appearing proper for the less to seek out and to apply themselves to the greater, and not the greater to them.
Not every country only, but every city and every society has its particular forms of civility.

There was care enough to this taken in my education, and I have lived in good company enough to know the formalities of our own nation, and am able to give lessons in it.

I love to follow them, but not to be so servilely tied to their observation that my whole life should be enslaved to ceremonies, of which there are some so troublesome that, provided a man omits them out of discretion, and not for want of breeding, it will be every whit as handsome.