"And then?" urged his companion, with interest.
"I can tell no more now, Fosca. I know too many things.... Well, imagine that Dardi falls in love with his prisoner. It is called Ornitio, because it leads flights of migrating birds. A continual twittering of swallows surrounds Temòdia; nests hang from the posts and the scaffolding that surround the great structure; wings are singed in the flames of the furnace, when Ornitio blows through the tube to create a light and luminous column with that ball of burning paste. But before he had tamed it and taught it what to do, he had much trouble with it. The Master of the Flame began by speaking Latin to it, and reciting lines of Virgil to it, believing it would understand. But the azure-haired Ornitio spoke Greek, naturally, with a slightly sibilant accent. It knew Sappho's odes by heart, and while it breathed through the unequal tubes, it remembered the pipes of Pan."
"And what did it eat?"
"Pollen and salt."
"Who gave it the food?"
"No one. It was sufficient to inhale the pollen and salt scattered on the breeze."
"And did it never try to escape?"
"Always. But Seguso took infinite precautions, like the lover he was."
"And did Ornitio return his love?"