True, I had been housed and
fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I
was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my arrival,
and, wherever I might roam, there followed ever at my heels a crowd of
underlings, seeking to have their tedium lightened by jests and capers,
and voting me--when their hopes proved barren--the sorriest Fool that
had ever worn the motley.

On that third day I speak of, my patience tried to its last strand, I
had beaten a lacquey with my hands, and fled from the cursed gibes his
fellows aimed at me, out into the misty gardens and the chill January
air, whose sting I could, perhaps, the better disregard by virtue of
the heat of indignation that consumed me. Was it ever to be so with me?
Could nothing lift the curse of folly from me, that I must ever be a
Fool, and worse, the sport of other fools?

It was there on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights above
immortal Rome that Messer Gianluca found me. He greeted me courteously;
I answered with a snarl, deeming him come to pursue the plaguing from
which I had fled.

"His Most Illustrious Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia is asking for
you, Messer Boccadoro," he announced. And so despairing had been my mood
of ever hearing such a summons that, for a moment, I accounted it some
fresh jest of theirs. But the gravity of his fat countenance reassured
me.

"Let us go, then," I answered with alacrity, and so confident was I that
the interview to which he bade me was the first step along the road to
better fortune, that I permitted myself a momentary return to the Fool's
estate from which I thought myself on the point of being for ever freed.

"I shall use the interview to induce his Excellency to submit a tenth
beatitude to the approval of our Holy Father: Blessed are the bearers of
good tidings. Come on, Messer the seneschal."

I led the way, in my impatience forgetful of his great paunch and little
legs, so that he was sorely tried to keep pace with me. Yet who would
not have been in haste, urged by such a spur as had I? Here, then, was
the end of my shameful travesty. To-morrow a soldier's harness should
replace the motley of a jester; the name by which I should be known
again to men would be that of Lazzaro Biancomonte, and no longer
Boccadoro--the Fool of the golden mouth.

Thus much had Madonna Lucrezia's promises led me to expect, and it was
with a soul full of joyous expectation tha