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Updated: June 2, 2025
For all that I was no longer Boccadoro the Fool, yet as Lazzaro Biancomonte, the poet, I was not so much better that I could indulge any mad aspirations of my own such as might have led me to betray the dastard who had arrayed his craven self in the peacock feathers of my achievements.
It was a matter of which I could not pretend to offer a solution, but, nevertheless, it was one, I thought, that promised to repay investigation. Ramiro grew impatient, and my reflections suffered interruption by his rough command that I should hasten. One of the men-at-arms helped me to truss my points, and when that was done I stepped forward Boccadoro the Fool once more.
For, after all, my concern and yours is with the story of Lazzaro Biancomonte, sometime known as Boccadoro the Fool, and not with his philosophies philosophies so unprofitable that it can benefit no man that I should set them down. My windows faced west, and so I was able to watch the fall of the sun, and measure by its shortening distance from the horizon the ebbing of my poor life.
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.
"They are at the door, Madonna," he protested, bowing as he spoke. "And your escort is already waiting in the saddle." She turned and strode abruptly towards the threshold. Over her shoulder she called to me: "If you come with us, Boccadoro, you had best be brisk." "I follow, Madonna," said I, with a grim relish, "so soon as I have paid the reckoning."
There was scarce a man, a woman or a child in the entire domains of Giovanni Sforza to whom Boccadoro, the Fool, was not known; and many a villano, who had never noticed the features of the Lord of Pesaro, could have told you the very colour of his jester's eyes; which, after all, is no strange thing, for sad reflection! in a world in which Wisdom may be overlooked, Folly goes never disregarded.
And with my outward trappings I cast off, too, the name of Boccadoro, and I insisted upon being known again as Lazzaro Biancomonte. But in so far as the Court of Pesaro was concerned, this new life upon which I was embarked was of little moment, for on the Tuesday that followed that first Sunday in October of such momentous memory, the Lord Giovanni's Court passed out of being.
"Are you not that same Boccadoro, Fool of the Court of Pesaro, who donned the Lord Giovanni's armour and rode out to do battle in his stead?" I answered him that I was that man. "I have heard the tale," said he. "Indeed, all Italy has heard it, and knows you for a man of steel, as strong and audacious as you are cunning and resourceful.
"Indeed it was nothing but my astonishment at sight of the face I was about to stab, after having broken the fastenings of his visor that stayed my hand for long enough to give him the advantage. But I bear you no grudge for that," he ended, turning on me with a ferocious smile, "nor yet for that other trick by which as Boccadoro the Fool you bested me.
"That is a matter that I shall leave to the shrewd wit which all Italy says is the heritage of Boccadoro, the Prince of Fools. Does the task daunt you?" His glance and voice were alike harsh. In very truth it did, and I told him so, but in the terms which the shrewd wit he said was mine dictated.
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