Rather let me ask you: how should a man so placed make choice to be full worthy of the office proffered him ?" There was a moment's silence while she pondered.
"Why," she answered me, at last, "a fool I take it would have chosen death: the wise man life, since it must hold the hope of better days." "And since it asked a man of wit to play the fool to such a tune as the Lord Giovanni piped, that wise young man chose life and folly.

But was that choice indeed so wise?
The story ends not there.

That young men whose early life had been one of hardships found himself, indeed, well-housed and fed as the Lord Giovanni had promised him, and so he fell into a slothful spirit, and was content to play the Fool for bed and board.
"There were times when conscience knocked loudly at my heart, and I was tortured with shame to see myself in the garb of Fools, the sport of all, from prince to scullion.

But in the three years that I had dwelt at Pesaro my identity had been forgotten by the few who had ever been aware of it.

Moreover, a court is a place of changes, and in three years there had been such comings and goings at the Court of Giovanni Sforza, that not more than one or two remained of those that had inhabited it when first I entered on my existence there.