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.
"Wise Aldo," she said to him after having had placed on his table a bag containing 2,000 gold coins and a weighty manuscript, "you will be in the eyes of the most remote posterity, the most erudite and skilful printer of all time and the author of this book that I am entrusting you with will leave behind the renown of the greatest painter and the greatest poet of this century now drawing to a close. You are the sole repository of this treasure, which I will ask you to give me back once your art has reproduced it. I have not wanted to deprive of its presence completely those minds favoured by heaven who know how to view the concepts of genius, but I have waited, to multiply the copies of it, the moment I could turn to a great printer. You know now, wise Aldo, what I expect of you: a masterpiece worthy of your name and capable just by itself of perpetuating your memory through ages to come. When this gold has been used up, I will bring more." Afterwards Polia got up and leaned with both hands on the women who had come with her. Aldo followed her to her gondola, showing his agreement with her by respectful gestures, but without talking to her, because he was not ignorant of the fact that, having lived in total solitude for more than thirty years, she had eschewed both the business and the conversation of men.
The book we must consider here is entitled the 'Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, sive pugna d'amore in sogno', that is to say 'Love's combat in a dream' and not 'The Combat of Love and Sleep' as Mister Ginguené, author of 'The Literary History of Italy', has in error translated it. We do not pretend, heaven forbid, that Mr Ginguené, author of 'The Literary History of Italy', did not know Italian. We are more indulgent towards talent's lapses.
"Sign that as you will," said Lowrich getting up. "I am not in the habit of putting my name to such trifles, and, as God is my witness, I have never granted such lightweight stories to sellers of books for any other purpose than to get books."