On the eleventh day I rose, and the weather being mild and spring-like, I was permitted by my grave-faced doctor to take the air a little on the terrace that overlooks the sea.  I found no garments but some suits of motley, and so, in despite of my repugnance now to reassume that garb, I had no choice but to array myself in one of these.  I selected the least garish one—­a suit of black and yellow stripes, with hose that was half black, half yellow, too; and so, leaning upon the crutch they had left me, I crept forth into the sunlight, the very ghost of the man that I had been a fortnight ago.

I found a stone seat in a sheltered corner looking southward towards Ancona, and there I rested me and breathed the strong invigorating air of the Adriatic.  The snows were gone, and between me and the wall some twenty paces off—­there was a stretch of soft, green turf.

I had brought with me a book that Madonna Lucrezia had sent me while I was yet abed.  It was a manuscript collection of Spanish odes, with the proverbs of one Domenico Lopez—­all very proper nourishment for a jester’s mind.  The odes seemed to possess a certain quaintness, and among the proverbs there were many that were new to me in framing and in substance.  Moreover, I was glad of this means of improving my acquaintance with the tongue of Spain, and I was soon absorbed.  So absorbed, indeed, as never to hear the footsteps of the Lord Giovanni, when presently he approached me unattended, nor to guess at his presence until his shadow fell athwart my page.  I raised my eyes, and seeing who it was I made shift to get on my feet; but he commanded me to remain seated, commenting sympathetically upon my weak condition.

He asked me what I read, and when I had told him, a thin smile fluttered across his white face.

“You choose your reading with rare judgment,” said he.  “Read on, and prime your mind with fresh humour, prepare yourself with new conceits for our amusement against the time when health shall be more fully restored you.”

It was in such words as these that he intimated to me that I was pardoned, and reinstated—­as the Fool of the Court of Pesaro.  That was to be the sum of his clemency.  We were precisely where we had been.  Once before had he granted me my life on condition that I should amuse him; he did no more than repeat that mercy now.  I stared at him in wonder, open-mouthed, whereit he laughed.

“You are agreeably surprised, my Boccadoro?” said he, his fingers straying to his beard as was his custom.  “My clemency is no more than you deserve in return for the service you have rendered to the House of Sforza.”  And he patted my head as though I had been one of his dogs that had borne itself bravely in the chase.

I answered nothing.  I sat there as if I had been a part of the stone from which my seat was hewn, for I lacked the strength to rise and strangle him as he deserved—­moreover, I was bound by an oath, which it would have damned my soul to break, never to raise my hand against him.