"Just this once," Apostolo replied smartly, "I dare you to recite it, for it is written in a language so heterogeneous that none of my friends from Treviso, Venice or Padua has dared to undertake to decipher a page of it, and if, as you say, you know it by heart, I'll give it you for nothing, a sacrifice besides I would be more than willing to make by reason of the excellent information that you have just given me, for I was on the point of announcing this volume in the Adriatic Literary Gazette in a misleading way and there was enough scope to make me lose forever the good and high flying reputation I enjoy as a bookseller."
"What you have just said yourself on the decidedly very strange style of our author," replied Abbot Lowrich, "and on the wasted efforts of so many scholars who have tried so hard to interpret it, is ample proof that what you are asking me for is a tiresome and fastidious demonstration that would take all day. And where would your pot boiler be if I were to recite the Hypnerotomachia from start to finish? I nevertheless will accept your challenge if you are willing to content yourself with trying an experiment which is no less conclusive, but would be quicker and easier. The chapter headings in your book are already too numerous and would try your patience, so I will only undertake to tell you their initial letters, beginning with the first, on which I see that you have just placed your finger."
"Let it be done as you say it should," said Apostolo. "And the first letter of the first chapter is…"
"A P," said Lowrich. "And now look for the second."
The list was long, but the abbot went down it to the final and thirty-eighth chapter without being disconcerted for a moment and without making a single mistake.
"Guessing an initial letter out of twenty-four to choose from, can be thought of as an outlandish freak of good fortune, with the devil well out of it," Apostolo observed sadly, "but to do that same trick thirty-eight times on the trot, the game must be rigged. Take this tome, abbot, and we'll never talk of it again."
"May God keep me, oh phoenix of bibliophiles," answered Lowrich, "from taking advantage to such an extent of your innocence and candour! What you have just witnessed is nothing more than a trick hardly worthy of a schoolboy, and which shortly you will be able to do just as well as I can. Know then that the author of this book judged it meet to conceal in the initial letters of his chapter headings his name, his profession and his secret love, so that, joined together, these letters make a sentence, the secret of which I cannot advise you to seek in the Universal Biography in Paris, as it would make you lose the wager that I have just won. Besides, that simple and touching sentence is easy to remember: Poliam frater Franciscus Columna peramavit, Friar Francesco Colonna loved Polia very much. Now you know as much about this as Bayle and Prosper Marchand."
"How strange it is," Apostolo said, half to himself. "This friar of the Dominicans fell in love. There's a story there somewhere."
"Why not?" replied Lowrich. "Pick up your quill again and let's look for your pot boiler, being as you have to have one."
Apostolo made himself comfortable on his chair, dipped his quill in the ink, and wrote what follows, starting with the title I have wandered away from in too long a digression: