Awhile we stood discussing which of the animals we should take.  It was my suggestion that we should ride the horses but she wisely contended that the mules would prove the more convenient if the slower.  I agreed with her, and then, ere we set out, I went to see to my late opponents.  One of them—­Ser Stefano—­was cold and stiff; the other two still lived, and from the nature of their wounds seemed likely to survive, if only they were not frozen to death before some good Samaritan came upon them.

I knelt a moment to offer up a prayer for the repose of the soul of him that was dead, and I bound up the wounds of the living as best I could, to save them greater loss of blood.  Indeed, had it lain in my power, I would have done more for them.  But in what case was I to render further aid?  After all, they had brought their fate upon themselves, and I doubt not they were paying a score that they had heaped up heavily in the past.

I went back to the mules, and, despite my remonstrances, Madonna Paola insisted upon aiding me to mount, urging me to have a care of my wound, and to make no violent movement that should set it bleeding again.  Then she mounted too, nimble as any boy that ever robbed an orchard, and we set out once more.  And now it was a very contrite and humbled lady that rode with me, and one that was at no pains to dissemble her contrition, but, rather, could speak of nothing else.

It moved me strangely to have her suing pardon from me, as though I had been her equal instead of the sometime jester of the Court of Pesaro, dismissed for an excessive pertness towards one with whom his master curried favour.

And presently, as was perhaps but natural after all that she had witnessed, she fell to questioning me as to how it came to pass that one of such wit, resource and courage should follow the mean calling to which I had owned.  In answer I told her without reservation the full story of my shame.  It was a thing that I had ever most zealously kept hidden, as already I have shown.

To be a Fool was evil enough in all truth; but to let men know that under my motley was buried the identity of a man patrician-born was something infinitely worse.  For, however vile the trade of a Fool may be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a half-cowardice and persevered in it through very sloth.

Yet on that night and after all that had chanced, no matter how my cheeks might burn in the gloom as I rode beside her, I was glad for once to tell that ignominious story, glad that she should know what weight of circumstance had driven me to wear my hideous livery.

But since my story dealt oddly with that Lord of Pesaro, the kinsman whose shelter she was now upon her way to seek, I must first assure myself that the candour to which I was disposed would not offend.

“Does it happen, Madonna,” I inquired, “that you are well acquainted with the Lord of Pesaro?”