Well, well, it were better she should know the truth at once, and choose such a demeanour as she considered fitting towards a Fool. I had no stomach for the courtesies that were meant for such a man as I was not. “Madonna, you are in error,” I informed her, speaking slowly. “This garb is no travesty. It is my usual raiment.” There was a pause and I saw the slackening of her reins. No doubt, had we been afoot she would have halted, the better to confront me. “How?” she asked, and a new note, imperious and chill, was sounding already in her voice. “You would not have me understand that you are by trade a Fool? “Allowing that I am not a fool by birth, under what other circumstances, think you, I should be likely to wear the garments of a Fool?” “But this morning,” she protested, after a brief pause, “when first I met you, you were not so arrayed.” “I was arrayed even as I am now, in a cloak and hat and boots that hid my motley from such undiscerning eyes as were yours and your grooms’—all taken up with your own fears as you then were.” There was in the tail of that a sting, as I meant there should be, for the sudden haughtiness of her tone was cutting into me. Was I less worthy of thanks because I was a Fool? Had I on that account done less to serve and save her? Or was it that the action which, in a spurred and armoured knight, had been accounted noble was deemed unworthy of thanks in a crested, motleyed jester? It seemed, indeed, that some such reasoning she followed, for after that we spoke no more until we were approaching Fano. A many times before had I felt the shame of my ignoble trade, but never so acutely as at that moment. It had seared my soul when Giovanni Sforza had told my story to his Court, ere he had driven me from Pesaro with threats of hanging, and it had burned even deeper when later, Madonna Lucrezia, upon entrusting me with her letter to her brother, had upbraided me with the supineness that so long had held me in that vile bondage. But deepest of all went now the burning iron of that disgrace. For my companion’s silence seemed to argue that had she known my quality she would have scorned the aid of which she had availed herself to such good purpose. If any doubt of this had mercifully remained me, her next words would have served to have resolved it. It was when the lights of Fano gleamed ahead; we were coming to a cross-roads, and I urged the turning to the left. “But Fano is in front,” she remonstrated coldly. “This way we can avoid the town and gain the Pesaro road beyond it,” answered I, my tone as cool as hers. “Yet may it not be that at Fano I might find an escort?” I could have cried out at her cruelty, for in her words I could but read my dismissal from her service. There had been no more talk of an escort other than that which I afforded, and with which at first she had been well content.