But I have out-millioned you, Marco, and my jewels are worlds, not merely millions and millions, but innumerable worlds in infinite space where I travel every night unlike you who only sailed half a world away. And I know that the planets are worlds and that like Earth they have moons and the moons are smaller worlds that revolve around their mother-world and all the worlds spin around the Sun, their sire. He almost nightly ventured out among these nearby worlds, leaving his body behind to deeply sleep, while the soul, fueled by spirit, roamed in space. Some metaphysical law always forced him to return to his body as it emerged from dreamless slumber.

He turned back after reaching only the first Corte and passed by the church again. The service was still going on so he continued north on the salizzada, even though he knew he would eventually have to turn around and gradually wend his way back south through the Venetian labyrinth toward his room near San Marco. When he came to the San Giovanni Grisostomo bridge, he stopped as something black caught his eye to his right, standing out against the white pillared balcony of a house on the narrow rio. It was a cat precariously balanced on the ledge, rubbing itself against the central pillar. Suddenly the cat was falling, and Filippo thought he saw a broomstick jutting between the pillars, then retract into the house. Had someone poked the cat off the balcony? It fell with a plop into the canal, and was now struggling to stay afloat. A woman, obviously a servant, appeared at the doorway above the canal and, seeing Filippo on the bridge, cried "Aiuto! Aiuto! Signore, please, our cat has fallen from the balcony. She'll drown!"

Filippo followed Veronica into the kitchen, where she placed the cat on the side-table to endure the maid's ministrations with towels. The poor creature was so wet and scraggly it resembled a mop dipped in tar, but it seemed to have survived its fall unscathed, except for a red gash across the nose. "My dear Circe," Veronica cooed, now taking over the rubbing and scrubbing as the cat began to purr. "Did you scrape past a gondola's ferro before falling into the water?"

"I think she did that to herself," said Filippo. "Scratched herself when she was flailing, trying to climb the very water."

"Certo, signora. What are you suggesting?"

"Bertola is at the mercato, is she not?"

She was avoiding her mistress's piercing eyes. "Sì, signora."

"Bertola is my superstitious cook," Veronica told Filippo. "She hates cats, especially black ones, I know she thinks I'm a witch and Circe's my familiar, or at the very least a bad omen, she calls her Malocchio, she says there are too many cats in Venice and maybe they carry the plague."

"Rats carry the plague, signora, not cats."

"Oh? I was told it was courtesans." She took the cat, still wrapped in the towel, to her bosom. "So you weren't pushed, then, were you my sweet one?"

"I saw her slip off the balcony, signora," Ancilla assured her. Filippo's mouth opened to speak, then closed. He thought it was not a good idea to get involved in a dispute involving servants; and besides, he was not at all sure what he had seen.

      "Va bene," said Veronica. "Let me find you those dry clothes, signor."

The next afternoon, he sat with Veronica in the parlor while she told her son Achiletto all about the rescue. She sat with her son on a divan under a magnificent portrait of her, painted by Tintoretto just before the plague had descended. Across the parlor in a chair, Filippo studied the image. The broad forehead and bright brown eyes evinced great intellect, yet the blushing cheeks and pursed lips were vivid with sensuality. She wore hoop earrings tied with bows of red ribbon, a sumptuous pearl necklace, and a crimson gown with tight silk bodice so low-cut that the frills of her linen camicia failed to quite cover one of her nipples. Indeed between her lovely breasts her right hand held the dark blue scarf, draped loosely over her shoulders, away from her left breast, deliberately exposing it.

"You were very fortunate, signora, to sit for Tintoretto."

"Certo, Signor Nolano, but he flattered me excessively, outdoing nature. I am not nearly that handsome."

"Oh Mother," said Achiletto, "don't be so modest, it ill becomes you."

"Your tutor will be here any minute, dear. You'd best go prepare your lesson now."

After he left the room, she said, "Actually he's right. It really is a perfect likeness, it captures exactly how I was, before the plague. When I first saw it I wondered for awhile whether it was a painting or an apparition set before me by some trickery of the devil, not to make me fall in love with myself like Narcissus, but to make me miserable when my skin finally wrinkles and cracks long before the oil in the painting. When I grow older and poorer, an honored courtesan no longer."

That was the first book. In the next fourteen years there had followed many more, but only a few of them could be found in the bookshops of Venice. Apparently Signor Mocenigo had found one of them at Ciotto's and asked if he could get him in touch with this cabalist, this magus Filippo Nolano, who he hoped would teach him the secrets of his magic, in turn for which Filippo would be lodged in comfort in Palazzo Mocenigo. Ciotto had found Filippo in Frankfurt and said he could arrange a meeting with the patrician. But Filippo was wary about returning to Italy, where he had run afoul of authorities both secular and sacred several times before, and since he was known to have dallied with Protestants in England and Germany, he would at the very least be found guilty of heresy by association.

Now in the gondola he worried that if they actually did read his books he would truly be undone, having gone far beyond Copernicus--leaving not only the geocentric universe behind but the heliocentric one as well, envisioning an infinite number of centers. Which really amounts to a universe without a center, without a Lord, but one filled no less with divinity diffused through all matter in the continuous act of creation and transformation. But worse than the pantheist heresy, he rejected the notion that an infinite God would condescend to become a finite being, for he, Filippo Nolano, knew the heroic frenzy of a finite self linking up with the infinite. There had been a time when he thought he could unite the warring factions of Christianity by convincing them, through his lectures and books, to return to the ancient Hermetic religion they had abandoned, but now he knew only magic would do it, the kind of magic Christ himself could work, for he had been a wizard, a master manipulator, a magus of the highest order who had indeed tapped into the infinite source.

So now Filippo was incognito, testing the waters. Seeking sage counsel from the only person he fully trusted, the only one to whom he felt any bond at all, Veronica.