Yet, if I permitted myself to hope as she bade me; I did so none too fully.
My situation, bearing in mind how at once I had served and thwarted the ends of Cesare Borgia, was perplexing.
Another visitor I had was Messer Magistri--the pompous seneschal of Pesaro--who, after his own fashion, seemed to have a liking for me, and a certain pity.

Here was my chance of discharging the true errand on which I was returned.
"I owe thanks," said I, "to many circumstances for the sparing of my life; but above all people and all things do I owe thanks to our gracious Lady Lucrezia.

Do you think, Messer Magistri, that she would consent to see me and permit me again to express the gratitude that fills my heart ?" Mosser Magistri thought that he could promise this, and consented to bear my message to her.

Within the hour she was at my bedside and divining that, haply, I had news to give her of the letter I had born her brother, she dismissed Magistri who was in attendance.
Once we were alone her first words were of kindly concern for my condition, delivered in that sweet, musical voice that was by no means the least charm of a princess to whom Nature had been prodigal of gifts.
For without going to that length of exaggerated praise which some have bestowed--for her own ear, and with an eye to profit--upon Madonna Lucrezia, yet were I less than truthful if I sought to belittle her ample claims to beauty.

Some six years later than the time of which I write she was met on the occasion of her entry into Ferrara by a certain clown dressed in the scanty guise of the shepherd Paris, who proffered her the apple of beauty with the mean-souled flattery that since beholding her he had been forced to alter his old-time judgment in favour of Venus.
He lied, like the brazen, self-seeking adulator that he was, and for which he should have been soundly whipped.