I took a deep breath and a minute to process her words, then thanked her, turned, and headed down Michelangelo’s grand staircase, this time practically running.

The guard out front perused my letter, then pointed to a heavy wooden door decorated with large nailheads like bullets, beside it a worn metal plaque, Medicea Laurenziana Studios, and a modern-looking box with buttons for a code and a bell, which I pressed, hard.

The woman who answered wore a cheery flowered dress though there was nothing cheery about her: midforties, cropped hair, tight-lipped, glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, which she raised to read my letter. She handed it back to me without a word. Inside, she took my backpack before ushering me through a full body scanner.

When the alarm sounded, I emptied my pockets, keys and change deposited into her waiting outstretched palm. Then I walked through again. When I set off the alarm for a second time, she put up a hand for me to wait, disappeared, and returned with a gray-bearded man in a baggy wool vest, who patted me down, torso and sides, up and down my legs and inner thighs, stopping just short of my crotch, the whole time avoiding eye contact.

The tight-lipped woman got my cell phone out of the backpack, held it up, and pointed to a sign on the wall: Niente Telefono. Niente Fotos. “I will hold,” she said, “give back when you leave.” She dropped the phone into a wire mesh basket on her desk, then continued to rustle around in the backpack and came up with a small box of hard candy, which she inspected as if it were a bomb.

“Caramella,” I said, “You know, candy.”

“Mangiare nella biblioteca e’ vietato!” she barked.

I promised not to eat any and made the sign of the cross, a vestigial tic from my strict Catholic upbringing. She looked me over, squinting. I smoothed my hair behind my ears, wished I’d gotten a haircut and taken the time to shave, the whole time feeling as if I were waiting for my high school principal to tell me I was suspended.

She took my laptop out of the backpack, set it aside, then found the small bag of Jolly Ranchers. “Mangiare vietato!” she said again and tossed the bag into the wire basket. She slid the laptop back into my backpack, handed it to me, stared at me another moment while speaking in Italian to the man who had all but cavity-searched me, as if I could not understand. What she’d said was, “Show him into the research room but keep an eye on him.”

The gray-bearded guy led me through a small room with a wall of card-catalog boxes, a glass-topped wooden table stacked with books, and a large hissing radiator. Then, into the actual research room, medium-sized and brightly lit, three walls lined with books, a long table that stretched from one end to the other. Two librarians, both women, seated at small desks, looked up when I came in. The bearded guy, who introduced himself as Riccardo, turned out to be a librarian as well and a lot nicer away from the commandant out front. In a hushed tone, he indicated that the long table was for scholars, like me, to read, that I would request any books or papers from the head librarian at the front of the room, then introduced me to her.