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Boccaccio and Dante were Florentines, said one of the other boys, but all in all the teren't so bad

Our Master loved all kinds of books, I was told, you couldn't go wrong spending your money on them, he was always pleased with that I'd come to see that the teachers who came to the house would drive me crazy with their lessons It was the studia hurammar, rhetoric, philosophy and ancient authorsall of this soto me as it was often repeated and demonstrated in the days to come

We could not look too good for our Master either, that was another lesson I must learn Gold and silver chains, necklaces with ht for s We had to bargain fiercely with the jewelers for these, and I ca a real es carved with silver inscriptions which I couldn't read

I couldn't get over the sight of ht of my life, some five hundred years after, you see, I have a weakness for jeweled rings Only during those centuries in Paris when I was a penitent, one of Satan's discalced Children of the Night, during that long sluhth

For now, this was Venice, I was Marius's child and romped with his other children in a manner that would be repeated for years ahead

On to the tailor

As I was measured and pinned and dressed, the boys told me stories of all those rich Venetians who ca to have even the s that he was too wretched, sold al but occasionally did a portrait of a woman or man who struck his eye These portraits alods, goddesses, angels, saints Names I knew and naues It sees were swept up in a new tide

Meods, they were one and the same? Wasn't there a code to which I should remain faithful that soet it clear in my head, and all around me was such happiness, yes, happiness It see faces could mask wickedness I didn't believe it Yet all pleasure to me was

suspect I was dazzled when I could not give in, and overcome when I did surrender, and as the days followed I surrendered with ever greater ease all the time

This day of initiation was only one of hundreds, nay, thousands that were to follow, and I don't knohen I started to understand with any preciseness what my boy companions said That ti the naive one very long

On this first excursion, it was h above the sky was the perfect blue of cobalt, and the breeze from the sea was fresh andclouds I had seen so wondrously rendered in the paintings of the palazzo, and there cas of my Master were no lie

Indeed e entered, by special perht by the throat by its splendor-its walls of gleaold But another shock followed hard upon ht and in riches Here were stark, soures of saints I knew

These were no mystery to me, the almond-eyed tenants of these haht careful drapery, their hands infallibly folded in prayer I knew their halos, I knew the tiny holes ically I knew the judgazed io on

I slumped to the stone floor I was sick

I had to be taken from the church The noise of the piazza rose overto some awful denouement I wanted to tell my friends it was inevitable, not their fault