“Just a story, worthy sir,” I calmed him, “nothing particularly remarkable. I also can’t tell you when it happened. Maybe under Doge Alvise Mocenigo IV, but it might also have been somewhat earlier or later. The paintings of Carpaccio, in case you might have seen those, seem to have been painted on purple velvet. Something warm, something, as it were, of the forest comes off every part of them, and eavesdropping shadows huddle around the subdued lights within them. Giorgione painted on dull, antiqued gold, and Titian on black satin. But during the time I’m talking about, people liked pictures that were light and bright, done on a ground of white silk. And the name people were bandying about, that sprang from beautiful lips into the sunshine and that charming ears caught when it fell quivering back down—that name was Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.”

But none of that appears in my story. That all has to do only with the real Venice, the city of palaces, of adventures, of balls, of pale nights on the lagoons, which carry the sounds of secret romances as no other nights do. But in the part of Venice where my story occurs, there are only poor, everyday noises. The days pass over it, each like the day before, as though there were only one, and the songs you hear there are swelling laments that do not rise but lie over the narrow streets like seething fumes. As soon as dusk falls, a shy rabble comes out and goes about its business. Countless children have their homes in the squares and in cold, narrow doorways, where they play with shards of broken pots and with multicolored pieces left over from the glass works, the same material out of which the masters put together the solemn mosaics of San Marco. An aristocrat seldom finds his way into the Ghetto. The most likely time is when the Jewish girls come to the well; perhaps at that time one might see a figure in a black cloak wearing a mask. Certain people know from experience that this figure carries a dagger hidden in the folds of his cloak. Someone claims to have seen the face of the youth, and since that time it has been said that the slender, black-clad guest is Marcantonio Priuli, the son of Proveditore Nicolo Priuli and the beautiful Catharina Minelli. People know that he waits under the portico of Isaac Rosso’s house; then, when the square empties of people, he crosses it and goes into the house of old Melchizedek, the rich goldsmith, who has many sons and seven daughters and from those sons and daughters, many grandchildren.