he mouth of Folly. At heart, I fear,
you are a hypocrite, Messer Biancomonte; the worst form of hypocrite--a
hypocrite to your own self."

"Did your Excellency know all!" I cried.

"I know enough," he answered, with stern sorrow; "enough to make me
marvel that the son of Ettore Biancomonte of Biancomonte should play the
Fool to Costanzo Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Oh you will tell me that you
went there for revenge, to seek to right the wrong his father did your
father."

"It was, it was!" I cried, with heated vehemence. "Be flames everlasting
the dwelling of my soul if any other motive drove me to this shameful
trade."

There was a pause. His beautiful eyes flamed with a sudden light as they
rested on me. Then the lids drooped demurely, and he drew a deep breath.
But when he spoke there was scorn in his voice.

"And, no doubt, it was that same motive kept you there, at peace for
three whole years, in slothful ease, the motleyed Fool, jesting and
capering for his enemy's delectation--you, a man with the knightly
memory of your foully-wronged parent to cry hourly shame upon you. No
doubt you lacked the opportunity to bring the tyrant to account. Or was
it that you were content to let him make a mock of you so long as he
housed and fed you and clothed you in your garish livery of shame?

"Spare me, Excellency," I cried again. "Of your charity let my past be
done with. When he drove me forth with threats of hanging, from which
your gracious sister saved me, I turned my steps to Rome at her bidding
to--"

"To find honourable employment at my hands," he interrupted quietly.
Then suddenly rising, and speaking in a voice of thunder--"And what,
then, of your revenge?" he cried.

"It has been frustrated," I answered lamely. "Sufficient do I account
the ruin that already I have wrought in my life by the pursuit of that
phantom. I was trained to arms, my lord. Let me discard for good these
tawdry rags, and strap a soldier's harness to my back."

"How came you to journey hither thus?" he asked, suddenly turning the
subject.

"It was Madonna Lucrezia's wish. She held that my errand would be safer
so, for a Fool may travel unmolested."

He nodded that he understood, and paced the chamber with bowed head. For
a spell there was silence, broken only by the soft fall of his slippered
feet and the swish of his silken purple. At last he paused before me and
looked up into my face--for I was a good head taller than he was. His
fi