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"Tell me everything, Piero," I said, winking at him, and smiling. "Come on. What do you think?"

"The colors, Master, they were beautiful! When will it be time for us to work with you? I'm more skilled than you might think. "

"I remember, Piero," I said, referring to the shop from which he'd come. "I'll call upon you soon enough. "

In fact, I called upon them the very next night.

Having severe doubts about subject matter more than anything else, I resolved to follow Botticelli in that regard.

I chose the Lamentation for my subject matter. And I made my Christ as tender and vulnerable as I could conceivably do it, and I surrounded him with countless mourners. Pagan that I was, I didn't know who was supposed to be there! And so I created an immense and varied crowd of weeping mortals¡ªall in Florentine dress¡ªto lament the dead Jesus, and angels in the sky torn with anguish much like the angels of the painter Giotto whose work I had seen in some Italian city the name of which I could not recall.

My apprentices were quite astonished by the work and so were the teachers, whom I invited into the huge workroom for the initial view. Once again the faces I painted elicited special comment but so did the bizarre qualities of the painting¡ªthe inordinate amount of color and gold¡ªand small touches I had added, such as insects here and there.

I realized something. I was free. I could paint what I wanted. Nobody was going to be the wiser. But then again, I thought, perhaps dial's not true.

It was desperately important for me to remain in the middle of Venice. I did not want to lose my foothold in the warm, loving world.

I drifted out in the following weeks to all the churches once more in search of inspiration for my paintings, and I studied many a grotesque and bizarre picture which amazed me almost as much as my own work.

An artist by the name of Carpaccio had created a work called Meditation on the Passion which revealed the body of the dead Christ end ironed against a fantastical landscape, and flanked by two white-haired saints who peered at the viewer as if Christ were not there!

In the work of a painter named Grivelli, I found a truly grotesque picture of the dead Savior, flanked by two angels who looked like monsters. And the same painter had done a Madonna almost as lovely and

lifelike as Botticelli's goddesses or nymphs.

I arose night after night hungry not for blood, though I certainly fed when I had to feed, but for my time in the workshop, and soon my paintings, all of them on large wooden panels, were propped all over the enormous house.

Finally, because I could keep track of them no longer, and went on to things new, rather than to perfect the old, I gave in to Vincenzo that he might have these works properly mounted as he wished.

Meanwhile our whole palazzo, though it had become famous in Venice as "a strange place," remained somewhat closed to the world.

Undoubtedly my hired teachers spoke of their days and evenings in the company of Marius de Romanus, and all our servants gossiped, no question of it, and I did not seek to put an end to such talk.

But I did not admit the true citizens of Venice. I did not lay put the banquet table as I had done in the old nights. I did not open the doors.

Yet all the while I was longing to do it. I wanted the fashionable world of the city to be received under my roof.

What I did instead of extending invitations was to accept those I received.

Often in the early evening, when I didn't want to dine with my children, and long before I needed to begin painting furiously, I went to other palaces where feasting was in progress, and I entered, whispering my name when asked, but more often being received without question and discovering that the guests were eager to have me among them and had heard of my paintings and of my famous little school where the apprentices hardly did any work at all.

Of course I kept to the shadows, spoke in vague but gentle words, read minds well enough to make the most clever conversation and in general almost lost my wits so great was this love to me, this convivial reception of me which was nothing more than most of the noblemen of Venice took for granted every night of their lives.

I don't know how many months passed in this way. Two of my students went on to Padua. I went out into the city and found four more. Vincenzo showed no signs of ill health. I hired new and better teachers from time to time. I painted fiercely. So on it went.

Let me say a year or two had gone by before I was told of a very lovely and brilliant young woman who maintained a house always open to poets and playwrights and clever philosophers who could make their visits worth her while.

Understand the payment in question was not a manner of money; it was that one had to be interesting to be admitted to this woman's company; poems had to be lyrical and meaningful; there had to be wit in conversation; one could play the virginal or the lute only if one knew how.

I was fiercely curious as to the identity of this creature, and the general sweetness of the reports of her.

And so passing her house, I listened, and I heard her voice threading through the voices of those around her, and I knew her to be a mere child, but one filled with anguish and secrets, all of which she concealed with immense skill behind a graceful manner and a beautiful face.

How beautiful, I had no idea, until I mounted the steps, entered her rooms boldly and saw her for myself.

When I came into the room, she had her back to me, and turned as if my arrival had made some noise which it had not. I saw her in profile and then completely as she rose to greet me, and I could not speak for a moment, so great was the impression on my mind of her form and face.

That Botticelli hadn't painted her was a mere accident. Indeed he might well have done so. She looked so very like his women that all other thoughts left my mind. I saw her oval face, her oval eyes, and her thick wavy blond hair, interwound with long strings of tiny pearls, and the fine shape of her body with exquisitely molded arms and breasts.