There once lived an alchemist in Venice, famous among magicians, extraordinarily renowned; he married a bride called Rosamund. Now, this alchemist--Prosper Philomenus was his name--had studied every aspect of the hermetic art. His neighbors whispered wild rumors about him: that he knew all the secrets, could converse with angels or devils alike, and was still hale and hearty at the age of one-hundred-and-one. He could transform kitchen garbage to gold! Everyone said so. Yes, he had risen to the very pinnacle of his philosophy, and surely plumbed mysteries undreamt-of.

The science of alchemy was that of the Good Life. It brought a man riches, health and length of days; it could bring him love, if he wanted that. It prolonged enjoyment of the marriage bed; it made the old feel frisky and young; it endowed even the feeble with vigor. Certainly, Prosper was known to be wealthy. His studies ought to have made him a desirable husband in every way. He had but a single flaw.

He was insanely jealous of his wife.

#

What can we say about Rosamund?

Oh! she was lovely, she was young; no other maiden in all Venice was her rival. She was of gentle birth, educated in all the arts, sweet-tempered: a paragon. And she had no thought but happiness in her heart, for she knew what a prize she was marrying--her mother had certainly taken pains to inform her. Why, Magister Philomenus could buy and sell half the merchants of Venice! What more needed to be said?

As for Prosper, he gazed upon his bride at the altar and rejoiced. All the tinctures of alchemy were mingled in her, he thought; she was a treasure, with hair of virgin gold, pale as golden angels of England. Ruddy gold was the tint of her cheeks, and her smiling lips (Prosper told himself) were gold alloyed with copper: rose gold. She brought very little to her new home--a rose in a pot, and a nightingale in a brazen cage--but when she stepped over the threshold, she seemed to invite the sun along with her, she seemed to beckon cupids in her wake. Her yellow rose filled his house with perfume; her nightingale, finding itself among strangers, opened its beak and uttered a stream of gilded melody that might have come straight from Heaven. Prosper's happiness was innocent and complete.

This lasted till soon after the wedding, when he noticed all the other men ogling her.

Then he became the victim of his own mistrust. Jealousy devoured him, a dragon-canker gnawing his cheek; it was a constant pain in his vitals, in fact it chewed up his belly like a fox. No longer happy, our Prosper tore out the hairs of his beard, bit his lips and ground his teeth. He shunned his fellow men and neglected his studies. Nothing he started was finished, nothing that was said to him sank in, nothing came out of his mouth but nonsense; he watched his wife all the time. While escorting her on the street, he rolled his eyes at every passing stranger. To make a long story short, he was acting like a madman.

At last he shut her up entirely in their house, with two maidservants to attend her. No man would ever get at his treasure, he vowed. Then what can we say of Rosamund's sufferings? The only time she ever got out of doors was to attend mass. The rest of her life narrowed down to stone walls and boredom. Prosper chased away the peddlers who mended the pots, he forbade her to talk to the man-servants, he even dismissed his valet . . . so insanely jealous was he.

In church, he made Rosamund and her maids sit in the darkest corner, behind a screen so high it came to the tops of their heads. Rosamund was not permitted to remove her veil and gloves. Only when she stood for the reading of the Scriptures could she catch a glimpse of her fellow parishioners, and then her gaze devoured them. She had known them all her life, after all. There was Portia the butcher's daughter, there was little Elisabetta whose father was the most famous glazier in Venice; there were Marietta and Musetta and Carlotta and Simonetta. There were all her former friends. Her life was now severed from theirs, and though they looked messages at her with their eyes, she never got to exchange a single word with them. She could not so much as hug them or kiss their babies.

While communion was celebrated, she and her maids sat mumchance in their corner. The priest came to them with the chalice; Prosper had arranged it. Only the priest's clerk, who brought her the holy book for the Kiss of Peace, could ever see her face.

Girolamo was his name. She had known him all his life too; everyone in Venice knew everyone else those days. Sometimes she sighed deeply as she laid her fingertips on the Bible, and then Girolamo would whisper a single word: "Peace," or "Courage," or "Consolation."

Her rose withered untimely, and the nightingale pined away and died.

For many years, such were the trials she bore.

#

Now, what can we say about Giovanni?

Giovanni Cortesan, he is. With curly blond hair, with black arched eyebrows, with laughing blue eyes and smiling red lips; his chin is cleft, his nose arrow-straight, his shoulders as broad as his waist is narrow; his chest is supremely powerful, his thighs ripple with muscle, his knees are straight, and even his feet are arched and graceful. Many women have swooned over his manly swagger and forthright glance. He has no rival on the jousting field, and yet he's studied at Bologna university and can reel off reams of Cicero and Virgil, along with Plato in the original Greek. He's even independently wealthy. Such is the knight Giovanni Cortesan, a man of the world and every inch a courtier, and there is no achievement he has not mastered. Only a single thing is lacking. He has never been in love.

However, this paragon has read all the classical authors--some of them very spicy, too!--and every love-poem under the sun, and when the time is ripe, he's sure a passionate adventure will come his way. In this spirit, our Giovanni traveled the length and breadth of Italy. Everywhere he went, he won all the tourneys, spent gold like water, and listened avidly to all the local minstrels. His lantern was lifted high; he was looking for an amorous woman.

Hearing the tale of the alchemist's wife, of her beauty and her misfortunes, he knew she was the lady for him. Off he dashed to Venice, full of delicious hopes.

Soon he was walking down the street on which she lived, looking up at her tall stone house with its shadowy windows: such a tragedy! The doors of the alchemist's manor were barred with stout beams, studded with nails; the lock would have done justice to an arsenal. Giovanni trembled, thinking of all the frustration pent up behind those scowling prison walls. He inquired after Rosamund at the bathing-establishment two doors down.

The proprietress sighed gustily. "The poor baby! As meek as a squashed cucumber, but more dazzling than any angel. Just last month, the first sign of spirit from her: she prayed her husband to let her come to my establishment and take a hot bath for her health's sake. 'I will die,' she swore, 'if I cannot go.' Well, the villain agreed to let her out once a month--with a maidservant at either elbow, himself marching behind her, and before he lets her set foot through the door he personally searches the entire bath-house. Then he stands guard outside in the street, shouting for her to hurry up. That man! The laughing-stock of all Italy, he is."

Giovanni rented a room at the bathing-establishment, so that he could be closer to the object of his desire.

That Sunday, he was waiting in the church when Rosamund arrived. When she uncovered her head to receive the holy water, he had a glimpse of her hair; at the reading of the Gospel, when she stood up to cross herself, he saw her bare hand and was smitten by emotion. When the priest's clerk brought her the breviary to kiss, Giovanni caught sight of her mouth. He almost swooned on the spot. Then, when the service was over, he stole into the front of the church and laid one hand reverently upon the book. Violent passions made him quake and shudder. He bent--and kissed the breviary where her lips had touched.

When he looked up he saw the priest's clerk watching him, open-mouthed.

#

"Who's that, assisting our priest?" whispered Rosamund on the Feast of All Saints.

Through her veil, as she stood piously for the prayer, she had just caught a glimpse of the congregation. As always, her gaze had raked hungrily over their faces--so well-familiar, so beloved--and then she had blinked in surprise, for an Unknown was standing in place of her old friend Girolamo. At once, she clutched her missal closer to her breast.

"Why, he's handsome," said her maid Lucia, peering avidly over the screen.

"Why, he's a stranger," said her maid Isabella, standing on tiptoe.

"Look at those eyes."

"And those shoulders, too."

"Such large hands--"

"And his thighs! So muscular, oh my!"

"Shhh," hissed Rosamund, averting her face. "My husband is watching."

Now the new clerk was bringing her the breviary to kiss. All mantled in blushes, she put back her heavy veil and bent her head, knowing that he was looking straight at her. Then she froze and her eyes opened wide, for she heard him say: "Alas!" Then he sighed. Deeply, distinctly, gustily, he sighed.

#

"I asked Brother Julio," said Lucia, the very next day--it was All Soul's day. "He says that Girolamo has had a bequest, very unexpectedly, a great sum of money. He has gone away to Bologna to study, just as he always dreamed of doing. And this stranger has offered to take his place!"

"Well, I asked at the baker's and the haberdasher's and the notary," said Isabella, pouting, "and they say his name is Giovanni. He's living just down the street, at the old bath-house." She brightened. "He looked straight at me. He admired me, I'm sure of it."

"No, no, it was me he looked at, I'm convinced of it. He winked his eye, too." And Lucia preened, pinching her red cheeks to make them redder.

"Then why did he sigh so grievously?" Rosamund wondered.

She continued to ponder, on and off as days passed; then, on Sunday, she sat as usual between her maids, and watched them crane all through Mass to catch Sire Giovanni's eye. Never had a sermon been so long and tedious. But, finally, the new clerk advanced to put the breviary under her hand. On her right side, Lucia bridled; on her left side, Isabella simpered. The Unknown (how handsome he was, too!) ignored them both. It was at Rosamund that he smiled.

Astonished at her own flushed cheeks and speeding heart, Rosamund bent her head to kiss the book. She was just bold enough to murmur: "Why do you sigh?"

#

"Don't be so silly, he sighs for you, Madam!" said Isabella, on Monday.

Lucia was affronted. "Why not me?" she asked the kettle on the hearth and the kitchen pots and the leather tank of live fish by the chopping board. "Why Madam and not me?"

Nervously, Rosamund glanced toward the kitchen-maids dodging around the kitchen, at the cook pounding meat for that night's dinner. They were too busy to eavesdrop; still, she pulled her maids into the adjoining solar, spoke in their ears. "You're both ridiculous."

"Just this morning," said Isabella, "I saw Sire Giovanni standing on the doorstep, looking up at the window--that window, there--and weeping, as a man does who is half-mad with passion."

"That window?" The long solar was as empty as the kitchen had been busy. There were brown rushes on the floor, and the table-top leaned against the wall, ready to be set on its trestles once the dinner hour came. Above them lay her husband's laboratory, the mysterious place where he transmuted lead to gold; he was up there now, she knew. It was very dim. Rosamund went to the window in dispute and stared at it, embarrassed. Naturally she could see nothing through it: the pane was made of oiled parchment, totally opaque.

High overhead in his sanctuary, Magister Philomenus was busy at his arcane labors. Oh, he studied all day long and late into the night; how she wished she could share in his burdens! She could almost hear his doleful voice: "How my mastery of the Art has dwindled, since I took a wife! God made Adam a helpmate, that his hours all be golden: to bring wealth and fine health and long life and love. But Eve tempted Adam with the apple, and Adam's sons have paid the price ever since. O womankind, womankind--sweet venom, man's confounder, bitter sweet--oh, if only I had never been tempted to marriage!"

She had lived with him for years (indeed, it seemed like eternity) and yet she barely understood her husband's work. Once she had asked, and he had taken down a ponderous tome and read aloud a parable of the Art. "The science of alchemy," he had read, "may be likened to the tale of the Nightingale in the Garden of Love." He had squinted through his spectacles at the faded writing, and sneezed as dust rose from the pages. "The Nightingale adored the Rose, and lived only in devotion to her. If I am parted from her, he sang, I become desolate, I cease my singing and tell my secrets to no one. My secrets are not known to many; only to the Rose are they known with certainty. So deep is my love for the Rose that I do not even think of myself, only of the Rose and the coral of her petals . . . Such was the Nightingale's love for the Rose of the world, that when they came to persuade him to seek the Phoenix--the bird of Life, the bird of Gold--he would not be tempted away. And in the end, he flew into the thorns and died content, all for love of the Rose." Prosper had closed the book, nodding. "Indeed," he had said, "how like the Nightingale we alchemists are! To succeed, we must turn away from the temptations of gold and eternal life. But our reward is the Rose, in the garden of love."

Rosamund had been baffled; she had thought his art dealt with the life eternal, the transmutation of gold--the very things he was repudiating. But then he had smiled kindly upon her, and said, "The true alchemist must turn from such illusions. Cinis, pulvis, nihil--as men write on tombs! If ever I find the Philosopher's Stone, you will see a marvel made, next to which the transmuting of lead to gold is ashes, dust, nothingness." Then he would read aloud of the hermetic lore, expounding many arcane matters and secret things. And Rosamund--knowing that in his philosophy, she was no more than a shadow flitting across a cavern wall--would lean her head on one hand and feel the wounds of the thorns in her breast.

Her husband loved her; he said so daily. In place of her withered rose he had made her a rose of pure gold; in place of her nightingale, he had made her a clockwork bird, more cunning that all the jewels of the Orient, which could open and close its wings, and even sing. It wound up with a key, and played several popular airs. You couldn't put a price on a thing like that, as Magister Philomenus himself said. But the rose had no perfume and never would, and the bird sang with the voice of man and not of Heaven.

Now, she told herself that she had enough of men half-mad with passion. But, at last, she asked her maids, "What do the street-peddlers say? Have you questioned them?"

"Oh, Madam, a scandal!" they assured her. "He has rented the entire bath-house, and turned all the other lodgers out of doors. Even the proprietress has had to move to her sister-in-law's. He says his afflictions are such that only solitude and meditation will mend them. Two of his friends from Bologna have come to be with him in his hour of need. He's never seen with anyone but them . . . The whole town is abuzz over the mystery. Only we know that he's deeply in love."

#

She waited for what seemed a lifetime.

But on the Feast of St Martin, her reply came. Giovanni looked her in the eye, and said, "I am dying--" But he did not finish--leaving her in suspense.

This time, Rosamund spent her week in a froth of mystification. On Sunday, impulsively, she pretended to drop the breviary, keeping him in place a moment longer. During it, she asked, "Why do you die?" and he replied, "I die of hunger."

The next week, she stammered, "For what do you hunger?" and he lowered his gaze and murmured, "Ask rather, for whom?"

The following Sunday she retreated: "I am not free to ask," she said, and he came back, ambiguously, "You yourself are both question and answer."

But by then, he was an open book to her. She knew just what he was after.

Upon St Andrew's day, she too spoke ambiguously: "What can I do about that?" and Giovanni came back with a bold demand. "Cure me!" was what he said.

Now hard and hot the question and answer came, week after giddy week; neither of the two strangers, both utterly enamored now, thought of anything but their snatched moment at holy services. Rosamund could not sleep, could not eat, and when she lay with jealous Prosper in bed of nights, it was with fantasies of Giovanni that she melted. (Meanwhile Prosper, thinking her passionate embraces a tribute to his own manhood, strutted like a rooster and vowed he'd guard his treasure even more closely.) But the very next Sunday, Giovanni spoke first: "I die of love and only love can save me," and she stammered, unsure of her own desires, "Whose love?" On the Feast of the Conception he said, "Yours alone," and she protested, "I am not yours," and he replied, even as she spoke, "You must be mine!" So on the following Sunday she riposted, "How?" and when she touched the breviary, she brushed his fingers with hers. He answered, "There is a way."

That week, she tossed and turned for hours every night, dreaming deliriously of Giovanni. But at last, she was close to him again.

From the heights of his pulpit, the priest gave a sermon concerning the iniquity of women, their sinfulness, their shamelessness, their temptations. "Beware," he cried to the men of the congregation, "beware these Eves, with their fashionable decolletages. They sing boldly in the streets to beguile men, they lay traps of sugar and honey. Take care--glances are messengers of love--men are prompt to deceive themselves by them." Then, softening, he leaned forward and addressed both the husbands of the parish and the good wives squirming in their seats: "But marital bliss is ordained by God. Men, love your wives and make them happy: a contented woman is halfway to an angel." And Rosamund, in the congregation, lifted her head a little and glanced, without realizing it, toward her own husband. "But do not think you'll make their restless feet grow still, by loading them down with costly shoes! What belongs to Caesar, is not the wages for them. Give to them of the coinage of Heaven."

The long sermon ended, the clerk brought her the breviary's blessing. This time, Rosamund let her hand rest over Giovanni's on the book . . . and if love is a sin, then she suffered delicious torments unprecedented. Still her mouth shaped the words like a kiss: "Take it," she said.

#

Eight times a day the church bells pealed, marking time in a city innocent of clocks: matins and laud, and prime at the break of dawn; tierce at midmorning and sext at midday and none in the middle of the afternoon; then vespers and compline, the evening bells. Time crawled. The offices of the bells passed like eons for Rosamund; she imagined herself growing old, dying, going into the tomb and crumbling to dry frustrated dust, all in the endless space between one bell-stroke and the next. Time crept. The carillons played on, and their bronze tongues regulated all work in the city--they played for sea-captains and gondoliers, soldiers and scoundrels, masters and apprentices alike; for the master mason in the cathedral, creating Heaven from dull stones, and the farmer outside the wall, leading the bull to the cow. Never did seven days pass so slowly! Rosamund fidgeted. She prayed for the bells to speed, for an understanding God to deliver her from the torment of time's passage. Every moment stretched to eternity, each day seemed longer than the previous day. She could not wait to deceive her husband.

Upon Monday, Giovanni's friends were seen loitering outside her house. On Tuesday, Rosamund's maids sallied out of doors. On Wednesday, men and maids met--oh, such a surprise!--completely by happenstance, and finding they liked each others' company, they stood conversing for almost an hour. Rosamund, leaning her ear to the solar window, heard their whole flirtation. The waxed paper might keep her from looking out, but not a single word escaped her. Poor imprisoned Rosamund! Her heart burned with envy; tears rolled down her cheeks, and her eyelids became so red that her husband sent for the doctor, alarmed. But the doctor was mystified. On Thursday, she received a love-letter, and walked on air till bedtime. On Friday, blushing all over, she sent a reply.

On Saturday, her maids brought her a demand.

It was an innocent sheet of vellum, sealed with plain wax. Rosamund flew at it and ripped it open in a trice. Lucia and Isabella crowded close, reading over her shoulders; then they supported her as she sagged, letting the message fall, and clapped the back of her hand dramatically to her forehead. "Burn it!" she hissed. "Oh, if the Magister so much as sees a single sentence--"

Isabella whisked the sheet into the fire, not without regrets. If pen and ink could combust and scorch the page like cinders--

"What did it say?" Lucia was quavering. "I barely got halfway through the salutation--"

"I have to feign sickness," Rosamund said in a dead-calm voice. "When my husband inquires, I have to tell him I am very ill indeed. For the good of my health, I need to take a course of bathing. I have to ask him to take me to the baths. If I w-want to be with Giovanni." She threw off her maids' hands. "Giovanni asks me to give him an answer at Sunday mass."

"What will you say?" they demanded, agog.

Rosamund seemed to become very small. "I should pray for this temptation to be taken from me. Dash the cup from my lips--but oh, if I do, I shall live out my life between these walls, and always regret what I might have had. I can't do that. No, I can. If I was less weak--if I was more virtuous--oh, my husband is right! I am an evil woman, an incitement to sin and riot!"

She was breathing in pants, sweat had broken out on her forehead. It would have been easy for her to feign a fever--she felt hot all over. Irresistibly, her gaze was drawn toward the mechanical nightingale, all a-glitter in its gilded cage. It was infinitely more costly than the drab dun bird that had been hers; it was feathered with seed pearls, set with garnet eyes and a topaz beak. Suddenly she scurried over, wrenched the pin out of the fastening and let the cage-door swing open; she shoved wildly at the whole thing, and the cage rocked to and fro on its stand. The nightingale spun on its perch and hung upside-down. "It's not a real bird!" Rosamund cried, distraught. "If it was real, it would fly away--it would go out through the window--I would make a hole in the paper--"

Looking up, she saw her maids watching her with what seemed suspiciously like pity.

"I will answer yes," she said at last, "for if I do not take this chance, I will certainly die." Then she swooned and when her husband (alerted by the shrieks of alarm from the room above) came rushing up the stair, he found his darling Rosamund prone on the solar floor, with Lucia and Isabella sprinkling water on her. Prosper pushed them aside in horror and cradled his wife in his arms.

"Beloved!" he babbled. "Lambkin--flower--bambina--my one sweet bit of candy--"

"I feel sick," said Rosamund faintly. "Very sick indeed."

The next day was Sunday. The good men and loving wives of her congregation eyed her compassionately as she followed her husband into church, head down and face hidden as ever behind her thick and stifling veil; her gloved hands shook perceptibly. However when Giovanni (muted triumph already hanging over him like trumpet music) advanced to hold out the breviary, her answer came perfectly clear. She put back her veil, looked him in the eye, and said, "Yes."

#

It had been quite easy to convince Prosper that she was ill. A course of medicinal bathing was just the thing, and what could be more harmless--with a bath-house on their very street? So on Monday, off they went in procession to the bath-house: the maids bustling round their mistress, afire with a secret excitement that Prosper failed to see; Prosper himself, all puffed up with concern and distress, supporting his beloved in his arms; and Rosamund advancing with a slow and faltering step. She looked more like a felon going to the gallows than an adulteress sallying forth to sin. As always, Prosper left her at the bath-house door, while he went in ahead to search the place for rapists and assassins; as always, he gave her maids so many instructions, you would think he was embarking for Jerusalem. "Hold her arms, lest she should be taken faint again--is her hat on tightly enough, she might catch cold--guard her from dogs and drafts--"

"Will she go through with it?" Isabella whispered into Lucia's ear. "She looks half-dead."

"Pish-tush!" Lucia answered. "It's for her own good."

Here was Prosper back again. Scared silly, Rosamund peeped at him through her veil, and was astonished when he took her hands in his and cradled them against his chest. Then he lifted her face to his, brushing the veil aside. "If you die, then I die too," he said with a lubrigious sigh, and his long pointed nose twitched with emotion. "My child! My heart! Rosamund, you are my rosa munda, and I am the nightingale--doomed to drive myself to perdition, all for the love of you. I think you will never know just how much I love you."

"Oh--Sire Prosper--indeed, Prosper--"

"Time to go in!" interrupted Isabella brightly, whisking her mistress out of her master's embrace. "Sire Prosper, don't bother waiting for us. We might be quite a while."

Prosper only heaved another rattling sigh. "I will stand guard," he answered, with great dignity, "no matter how long it takes."

Now time slowed to a standstill indeed. Rosamund, anticipating a dreadful fate, was frantically wondering whether Prosper would beat her when he found out her sins, and perhaps the delights to come would be worth it--that is, if unfaithfulness was all it was said to be . . . ? The unknown beckoned. Of course it would be wonderful beyond description. Her feet were leaden, her fingers so cold that they ached, and no matter how she tried, she seemed unable to look higher than the tiles beneath her pattens.

A swirl of warm air from the bath-house vestibule enveloped her momentarily. Isabella was speaking but Rosamund was too agitated to understand. Step by slow step she advanced toward her doom. And with every step, her heart yearned backward, toward her husband; with every step, her traitor heart sang like the nightingale. In the warm steamy bathing-chamber, she stood with her head hanging, and her maids deprived her of her cloak and hat and veil.

Now a voice was speaking--a well-known voice--his voice. He was introducing her to his friends, very courteously; he was saying that his two friends seemed to be getting along very well with her gentle maids-in-waiting. That this was an excellent thing, and perhaps she might be pleased to come this way?

Amazed beyond words, Rosamund raised her head. She barely saw Giovanni; all she saw was that a section of the wall had swung open, and he was holding it for her--as if it was a door--and bowing her through with the air of a conjuror. She barely heard his voice, explaining this trick: he and his friends had cleverly cut the wall between the rooms they had rented and the baths themselves, and hidden their work with such craft that no one suspected. Once she and her maids were alone in the bath-house, they could come and go with impunity. That here was his humble chamber, which she must consider her own. All this, pressing her hand in his. "And here, madonna," he said, "a small surprise."

Giovanni kissed her hand, and released it with a flourish. "Your new mantle," he said. "Your new hat. Your choice of masks!"

She gasped, her fears forgotten . . . for there on his bed were a lady's cloak and feathered hat. And carnival masks, a round dozen of them. There was a marvel in sequins, made in the fashion of a moon-white face with lips of smiling scarlet, a crystal teardrop sparkling beneath one eye; there was a golden visor fashioned entirely from real Venetian ducats. There was a bewhiskered kitten mask, whose soft fur she brushed with wonder. Next a domino of shimmering silk caught her eye; then a porcelain doll's visage, the eyebrows and lips painted on with a solution of gold, and lavish curls of real hair framing the whole, to stream down and mingle with its wearer's own coiffure. Rosamund picked up and discarded wonder after wonder. Lucia and Isabella were jostling forward to look, both of them singing the Giovanni's praises--that he had prepared this treat! And meanwhile Giovanni was explaining with great urbanity that today was the Vigil of the Nativity, and tomorrow the first day of carnival. In this disguise, she would be able to walk the streets of Venice unrecognized even by her own husband, and he thought perhaps she might enjoy this small adventure? If she did, they could go out every day. In fact she could wear a different mask every day . . . if she liked?

Rosamund turned impulsively to him. In her right hand was a face all sewn from pink silk rose-petals: a flower mask. In her left hand was a bird-mask; a thousand feathers in a thousand shades of cream and orange and brown covered it, but the beak was wrought from brass like gold, and the eyes were ornamented with diamante.

"I like," she said.

#

Now time flew. Time fled--astonishing, delightful time--time played, time danced, time made merry with music and song. Rosamund was in the thick of it. Every day--for her health's sake!--she and her maids must be off to the baths, and they spent hours there . . . while her husband drooped in his self-appointed guard-post, leaning against the lintel of the bath-house door, sagging sometimes and snoring, with his mouth wide open. He dreamed of the Philosopher's Stone, while his wife footed it all over Venice. Anonymous, she let herself be courted by simply dozens of men. Lucia and Isabella made sport with Giovanni's friends. Giovanni himself, utterly besotted, chased her all through the streets, the stairs, the canals of Venice; and Rosamund swore she had never had such fun in her life. Time passed in a dazzle, like an explosion of fireworks.

Throughout the days of the carnival the six lovers met. Perfect bliss was theirs--the better for being perfectly secret. And time was Rosamund's friend at last--too slow for her when she had waited, too tardy when she had feared; too long, while she lived in hunger, and too short now, while she rejoiced. And her husband? Her husband loved her; for him, time crept like eternity.

Little children pointed at him on the street, and their elders laughed behind their hands. Prosper became disgruntled, he grumbled in his beard, he knew himself the laughingstock of Venice; besides, Rosamund seemed entirely too eager to take her medicine. Finally he had to give in to the little devil whispering in his ear. To make a long story short, one day he opened the door and went looking for his wife.

After he had searched the whole building, he stormed out again. His rage knew no bounds. He stood in the street and tore his hair, he gnashed his teeth and stamped his feet . . . and of course, no one noticed any difference. Finally, drooping, he walked home. His house was an empty cage, his bride had flown the coop; there in the solar were the rose and the nightingale, mockeries of life. They were symbolic of his marriage, a mockery of love. He would drive false Rosamund from his threshold, live solitary all his days; begone, the cruel world that could not be mastered with philosophy! Prosper groaned out loud.

In a fit of fury, he stamped the false rose under his heel. Then he snatched up the nightingale's cage and hurled it at the solar window. The paper tore, the wind blew in; Prosper rushed to the window and leaned out; there below on the cobbles lay the toy rose and the clockwork bird. Both were smashed to pieces. He could barely look at them. Just as he smashed them, he would smash her--he would punish her--oh, she would be sorry-- He fell to his knees, words burst from his lips. "Evil woman! Animal of darkness," he cried. "Be accursed, damned, and eternally reproved; may you find no repose by night nor by day, not for a single moment of time!"

When he opened his eyes, there was Rosamund standing on the threshold, with some fragments of precious metal in her hand. "Prosper?" she said, and blushed all over her face: like a living woman, not the golden doll he had married.

Her lips were the coral of the rose, her voice as melodious as the nightingale's. She had been transformed, and not by him. Prosper blinked and realized she never been so beautiful before. He loved her hopelessly; he could never hurt her, he would never send her away.

#

. . . What can we say about Rosamund?

She has become confident at last. Transmuted, she has appeared before her husband. "I'll go where I please and do as I will," she has told him, with a fine wifely firmness. "So long as we both are happy, there is no reason why." He protested, of course, but his wits were scattered and his arguments weak. She has made him wash his head and lay aside his jealous ways; now his neighbors no longer laugh when his name is mentioned. He is convivial again, a fine fellow.

At last, he has discovered the secret of alchemy. The hermetic art brings a man the good life: the earthly garden where love resides, so perfect that he who has it wants nothing else--not gold, or eternal youth, or Heaven itself. Lead turns to gold and girls into women; loneliness becomes love, houses become homes, and man and wife are made one flesh. He who masters this power can make the Philosopher's Stone, and put it to the use it is intended for . . . as Prosper has. He mended the rose and the nightingale. Then he brought them to life--transmuting gold to living matter, as is the alchemist's magic--and gave them to Rosamund.

She is a free woman--the liveliest, folk say, in all Italy. Her name is on every man's lips. When she walks aboard at carnival with all the other lovely women, hers is the voice that sets them all to laughter. No woman was ever so popular. Why, she never goes anywhere, except to the sound of merriment.

And Giovanni? Oh, Giovanni, Giovanni . . . so popular is his inamorata that she is always surrounded by gentlemen and ladies, and finds it impossible to visit the baths without at least seven women-friends accompanying her.

So she has sent Giovanni away.

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