"You know better than anyone," Polia went on, "that I have pledged my troth elsewhere and that my decision to do so is irrevocable. But I must forgive your suspicions for yours is guaranteed by the oath that binds you to an altar and I have never given you a guarantee like that. Listen, Francesco. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day you made your first vows, and it will be during the last morning mass that you will render them even more binding and more sacred by renewing them before the Lord. Have you, now a year has passed, changed your way of thinking about the nature of this sacrifice and the need for it?"
"No, no, Polia!" cried Francesco, falling to his knees.
"It is enough," continued Polia. "My thinking has not changed either. I shall be present tomorrow at the last morning mass, and I shall support with all the strength of my soul the vow that you will repeat then, so that henceforth you will know, Francesco, that between the heart of Polia and inconstancy there are also perjury and sacrilege."
Francesco tried to reply, but when the words came to his lips,
Polia had disappeared.
The young monk found it almost as difficult to bear his joy as he did his misfortune. He felt that he no longer had enough strength to be happy, for the mainspring of his life, worn by so many conflicting emotions, had almost reached breaking point.
The following morning, at the final mass, when the monks entered the choir, Polia was sitting in her usual place, in the first row of benches set aside for the nobility. She got up and went to kneel in the middle of the pavement of the central nave.
Francesco had noticed her. He renewed his vows with an assured voice, went back down the altar steps, and prostrated himself on the floor. At the moment of the elevation of the host, he stretched out completely, throwing his crossed hands before his head.
Once mass was over, Polia left the church. The monks passed, one after the other, before the sanctuary, genuflecting deeply. But Francesco did not leave his position, and no-one was taken aback, for he had often been seen to prolong like this, in a motionless ecstasy, the duration of his prayer.
When the evening service came, Francesco had not changed his posture. A young friar came out of the choir stalls, approached him, bent down to him and took one of his hands in his, pulling his body towards him to recall it to its accustomed duties. Then he got up again, and, turning towards the assembled monks, said: "He's dead!"
This event, one of those which are so swiftly effaced in the collective memory of a new generation, had happened more than thirty-one years before when, on a winter evening in 1498, a gondola stopped in front of the shop of Aldo Pio Manucci, whom we refer to as the Elder. A moment later a visit from the princess Hippolita Polia of Treviso was announced in the study of the scholarly printer. Aldo ran to meet her, ushered her in, made her sit down, and was struck by admiration and respect for this celebrated beauty, whom half a century of life and sorrows had rendered more solemn, without taking anything away from her brilliance.