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 me.
"Let us go, then," I answered with alacrity, and so confident was I that the interview to which he bade me was the first step along the road to better fortune, that I permitted myself a momentary return to the Fool's estate from which I thought myself on the point of being for ever freed.
"I shall use the interview to induce his Excellency to submit a tenth beatitude to the approval of our Holy Father: Blessed are the bearers of good tidings.

Come on, Messer the seneschal." 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.