ould set it bleeding again. Then
she mounted too, nimble as any boy that ever robbed an orchard, and we
set out once more. And now it was a very contrite and humbled lady that
rode with me, and one that was at no pains to dissemble her contrition,
but, rather, could speak of nothing else.

It moved me strangely to have her suing pardon from me, as though I had
been her equal instead of the sometime jester of the Court of Pesaro,
dismissed for an excessive pertness towards one with whom his master
curried favour.

And presently, as was perhaps but natural after all that she had
witnessed, she fell to questioning me as to how it came to pass that
one of such wit, resource and courage should follow the mean calling
to which I had owned. In answer I told her without reservation the full
story of my shame. It was a thing that I had ever most zealously kept
hidden, as already I have shown.

To be a Fool was evil enough in all truth; but to let men know that
under my motley was buried the identity of a man patrician-born was
something infinitely worse. For, however vile the trade of a Fool may
be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or
too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a
half-cowardice and persevered in it through very sloth.

Yet on that night and after all that had chanced, no matter how my
cheeks might burn in the gloom as I rode beside her, I was glad for once
to tell that ignominious story, glad that she should know what weight of
circumstance had driven me to wear my hideous livery.

But since my story dealt oddly with that Lord of Pesaro, the kinsman
whose shelter she was now upon her way to seek, I must first assure
myself that the candour to which I was disposed would not offend.

"Does it happen, Madonna," I inquired, "that you are well acquainted
with the Lord of Pesaro?"

"Nay; I have never seen him," answered she. "When he was at Rome, a year
ago in the service of the Pope, I was at my studies in the convent. His
father was my father's cousin, so that my kinship is none so near. Why
do you ask?"

"Because my story deals with him, Madonna, and it is no pretty tale. Not
such a narrative as I should choose wherewith to entertain you. Still,
since you have asked for it, you shall hear it.

"It was in the year that Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, celebrated his
nuptials with the Lady Lucrezia Borgia--three years ago, therefore--that
one morning the