journey.

Three days were sped, yet nought had happened to signify that things
would shape the course by me so ardently desired; that the means would
be afforded me of mending my miserable ways, and repairing the wreck my
life had suffered on the shoals of Fate. True, I had been housed and
fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I
was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my arrival,
and, wherever I might roam, there followed ever at my heels a crowd of
underlings, seeking to have their tedium lightened by jests and capers,
and voting me--when their hopes proved barren--the sorriest Fool that had
ever worn the motley.

On that third day I speak of, my patience tried to its last strand, I had
beaten a lacquey with my hands, and fled from the cursed gibes his
fellows aimed at me, out into the misty gardens and the chill January
air, whose sting I could, perhaps, the better disregard by virtue of the
heat of indignation that consumed me. Was it ever to be so with me?
Could nothing lift the curse of folly from me, that I must ever be a
Fool, and worse, the sport of other fools?

It was there on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights above
immortal Rome that Messer Gianluca found me. He greeted me courteously;
I answered with a snarl, deeming him come to pursue the plaguing from
which I had fled.

"His Most Illustrious Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia is asking for
you, Messer Boccadoro," he announced. And so despairing had been my mood
of ever hearing such a summons that, for a moment, I accounted it some
fresh jest of theirs. But the gravity of his fat countenance reassured