Therefore my calm and control can be demonstrated by my behavior. I practiced moderation, as both my Delphic injunction and Plato recommend. I did not burn down Hilfa’s house in sudden fusion heat. I did not even char Athene’s letter to ash as I read it. I talked reasonably to the others, though I did not show the letter to them. There was no need to make things any worse.

It was the late summer of 1506 when I strode rapidly down one of the little streets in Bologna that run between the cathedral and the town hall. It was a narrow laneway, lined on both sides with people selling things, pushing them on the passersby with cries and importunities. I shoved through them impatiently. He was sitting on a high stool outside a wineshop, disputing, surrounded by a gaggle of students. He was as I had last seen him on Olympos, young and able to see, but he was wearing the robes of an Augustinian monk. He had a white ceramic winecup in his hand, and was gesturing with it. I grabbed him by the shoulder, pulled him off the stool and turned him to face me.

“Ah,” he said, admirably unsurprised. “Pytheas. With your cloak flaring around you like that, I thought you must be an avenging angel.”

His friends laughed. I glared at them, and back at Pico. “Shall we go somewhere we can talk privately?” I asked, speaking Latin because he had. It was wrong to take out my wrath on Pico. He wasn’t the one who deserved it.

He fumbled some coins out of his pouch and put them down on the table among the winecups. “An old friend. I’ll see you later,” he said to the others.

“You needn’t think you’ll get away without making a proper refutation!” one of them said.

“Tomorrow,” Pico said, smiling and shaking his head.

“Why are you dressed as an Augustinian?” I asked quietly as we walked down the street together, ignoring offers of fish, wine, fruit, and young bodies of both sexes from the street vendors.

“I’m staying at the monastery of St. Stephen’s,” he explained.

“And what are you doing here?”

“Research.” He looked wary. “And arguing with Averroists. They’re young, and they haven’t been properly trained, but some of them are extremely smart.”

“You’re not a lawyer or a doctor, so what are you researching in Bologna?” We came out of the little street into the square by the Ducal Palace.

He smiled. “Theology?”

“Really? You barely got away from the Inquisition last time, and you had influential friends then!”