Page 14 (1/2)

They pulled h the house, the "palazzo" as they called it, teaching me the ith relish

The entire place was filled with such paintings-on its walls, its ceilings, on panels and canvases stacked against each other-towering pictures full of ruined buildings, broken colureenery, distant mountains and an endless stream of busy people with flushed faces, their luxuriant hair and gorgeous clothing always ru in a wind

It was like the big platters of fruit and ht out and set before reat drench of colors and shapes It was like the wine, too sweet and light

IT WAS LIKE the city belohen they threw open the s, and I saw the sht coursing through the greenish waters, when I saw thethe quays

Into our gondolas we piled, a troop of us, and suddenly we traveled in graceful darting silence anificent as a Cathedral, with its narrow pointed arches, its lotus s, its covering of glea white stone

Even the older, sorrier dwellings, not too ornate but nevertheless monstrous in size, were plastered in colors, a rose so deep it seereen so thick it seemed to have been mixed from the opaque water itself

Out into the Piazza San Marco we caular arcades on both sides

It see place of Heaven as I stared at the hundreds olden domes of the church

Golden domes Golden domes

Soolden do picture, had I not? Sacred domes, lost domes, domes in flames, a church violated, as I had been violated Ah, ruin, ruin was gone, laid waste by the sudden eru

ption all around me of as vital and whole! How had all this been born out of wintry ashes? How had I died a fires and co sun?

Its warars and tradeses to carry their ornate velvet trains behind them, on the booksellers who spread their books beneath scarlet canopies, lute players who vied for small coins

The wares of the wide diabolical world were displayed in the shops andgoblets of all possible colors, not toani trinkets There were ht and beautifully turned beads for rosaries;even snohite pictures of actual church towers and little houses s and doors; great feathery plu and screeching in gilt cages; and the finest and nificently worked multicolored carpets only too reminiscent of the powerful Turks and their capital from which I'd come Nevertheless, who resists such carpets? Forbidden by law to render hus, Moslems rendered flowers, arabesques, labyrinthian curlicues and other such designs with bold dyes and awe-inspiring exactitude There were oils for lalistering jewels of indescribable beauty and the oldsmiths and silversmiths, in plate and ornamental items both newly made and old There were shops that sold only spices There were shops that sold medicines and cures There were bronze statues, lion heads, lanterns and weapons There were cloth merchants with the silks of the East, the finest woven wools dyed in miraculous tints, cotton and linen and fine specialore

Men and wo casually on freshclear red wine and eating sweet cakes full of cream

There were booksellers offering the new printed books, of which the other apprentices toldpress, which had only lately made it possible for men far and wide to acquire not only books of letters and words but books of drawn pictures as well