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 he 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 my back on the Court of Pesaro—­”

“Aye,” he broke in mockingly, “when Giovanni Sforza threatened to have you hanged for the overboldness of your tongue.  Not until then did it occur to you to turn from the shameful life in which the best years of your manhood were being wasted.  There!  Just now I commended your truthfulness; but the truth that dwells in you is no more, it seems, than the truth we may look for in the mouth of Folly.  At heart, I fear, you are a hypocrite, Messer Biancomonte; the worst form of hypocrite—­a hypocrite to your own self.”