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"Boccadoro," said he, planting himself before me, and eyeing me with eyes that were very full of malice, "you will recall the punishment I promised you if I came to discover it was you had thwarted me in Pesaro. It is the second time you have fooled Ramiro del' Orca. There does not live the man who can boast that he did it thrice, nor will I risk it that you be that man.
The Governor made a hideous noise at sight of me, which I was constrained to accept as an expression of horrid glee. "Boccadoro," said he, "do you recall that when last I had the honour of being entertained by your pert tongue, I promised you that did you ever cross my path again I would raise you to the dignity of Fool of my Court of Cesena?" Into what magniloquence does vanity betray us!
There, indeed, if he escaped the madness with which the poignancy of his grief was threatening him, was a tool that might turn its edge against this inhuman monster, this devil, this bloody carnifex of a Governor. "Chance," said Ramiro, "has designed that you should see something of how we deal with clumsy knaves at Cesena, Boccadoro.
Of the joy with which she welcomed me to the little home near Biancomonte, in which the earnings of Boccadoro the Fool had placed her, it could interest you but little to read in detail, nor could it interest you to know of the gentle patience with which she cheered and humoured me during the period that I sojourned there, tilling the little plot she owned, reaping and garnering like any born villano.
Next he adjusted the gorget, and handed me, last of all, the helm, a splendid head-piece of black and gold, surmounted by the Sforza lion. I took it from him and passed it over my head. Then ere I snapped down the visor and hid the face of Boccadoro, I bade him, unless he would render futile all this masquerade, to lock the door of his closet, and lie there concealed till my return.
I gathered consolation from the fact that there were not any who now remembered the story of my coming to Pesaro, or who knew of the cowardliness I had been guilty of when I consented to mask myself in the motley and assume the name of Boccadoro.
I might have gone my ways, had I so wished it, but something kept me there at Pesaro, curious to see the events with which the time was growing big. We grew sadly stagnant during Lent, and what with the uneventful course of things, and the lean fare proscribed by Mother Church, it was a very dispirited Boccadoro that wandered aimlessly whither his dulling fancy took him.
Dimly I remember for very dim were my perceptions growing that as we crossed the bridge and passed beneath the archway of the Porta Romana, the officer turned out to see who came. At sight of me be gaped a moment in astonishment. "Boccadoro?" he exclaimed, at last. "So soon returned?"
He stared at me as though I had been a wizard. "Messer Boccadoro " he began. "My name," I corrected him, "is Biancomonte Lazzaro Biancomonte." "Whatever be your name," he returned, "of the quality of your wits there can be no question. You have guessed for yourself the half of what I was come to tell you. Has your shrewdness borne you any further?
And there they left me to my ugly thoughts and my deeply despondent mood what time the Governor of Cesena supped with his officers in the hall of the Castle. Ramiro drank deep that night as was his habit, and being overladen with wine it entered his mind that in one of his dungeons lay Lazzaro Biancomonte, who, at one time, had been known as Boccadoro, the merriest Fool in Italy.
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