The Shame of Motley | Page 4

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 be 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 that I entered the great man's
closet.
He received me in a manner calculated to set me at my ease, and yet
there was about him a something that overawed me. Cesare Borgia,
Cardinal of Valencia, was then in his twenty-third year, for all that
there hung about him the semblance of a greater age, just as his
cardinalitial robes lent him the appearance of a height far above the
middle stature that was his own. His face was pale and framed in a
silky auburn beard; his nose was aquiline and strong; his eyes the
keenest that I have ever seen; his forehead lofty and intelligent. He
seemed pervaded by an air of feverish restlessness, something
surpassing the vivida vis animi, something that marked him to
discerning eyes for a man of incessant action of body and of mind.
"My sister tells me," he said in greeting, "that you are willing to take
service under me, Messer Biancomonte."
"Such was the hope that guided me to Rome, Most Excellent," I
answered him.
Surprise flashed into his eyes, and was gone as quickly as it had come.
His thin lips parted in a smile, whose meaning was inscrutable.
"As some reward for the safe delivery of the letter you brought me
from her?" he questioned mildly.
"Precisely, Illustrious," I answered in all frankness.
His open hand smote the table of wood-mosaics at which be sat.
"Praised be Heaven!" he cried. "You seem to promise that I shall have
in you a follower who deals in truth."
"Could your Excellency, to whom my real name is known, expect
ought else of one who bears it--however unworthily?"

There was amusement in his glance.
"Can you still swagger it, after having worn that livery for three years?"
he asked, and his lean forefinger pointed at my hideous motley of red
and black and yellow.
I flushed and hung my head, and--as if to mock that very expression of
my shame--the bells on my cap gave forth a silvery tinkle at the
movement.
"Excellency, spare me," I murmured. "Did you know all my miserable
story you would be merciful. Did you know with what joy I turned