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By Root 333 0

this difference of doors, revealed much about the city - Venice owed everything to the water. The Lagoon was all. It was on the water, those shifting but faithful tides, that Venice had built her supremacy and her empire - how fitting, therefore, that the waterways of Venice were given precedence in this way. Corradino's gondola, on that fateful day, was waved to the water entrance. The great silver palace enveloped him and he was shown to the main apartments by a deferential liveried servant. As Corradino, in the humble leathers of a soffiature di vetro entered the beautiful salons looking out onto the water he realized that all had been done for him in deference to his rare talent. The Prince, a man with the long features and silver hair of nobility, received him as he would a kinsman. Corradino's place in the world seemed assured.

A servant was sent to fetch the Principessa Angelina, and the dress. The Prince discussed the pigments and their prices with Corradino over a fine Valpolicella, then as the old man looked up and said `there you are my dear,' Corradino heard no more.

She was a revelation.

Blonde hair like filaments of gold. Green eyes like leaves in spring rain. And the countenance of a goddess. She was a vision in blue - the silks of her wedding dress seemed to have a hundred hues in the morning light and the dappled reflections of the canal.

As for the Principessa, she knew of Corradino by repute, and had longed to see the artist that all spoke of. She was surprised to find him so young - not more than twenty, she guessed. She was pleased to find him handsome, although not unusually so, with the dark eyes and curls of the region. His face - perpetually tanned by the furnaces - recalled the stern, dark, eastern icons that looked down from their jewel encrusted frames in the Basilica at Mass. In his person, he looked quite commonplace. But he was not. He was as priceless, she knew, as those icons themselves with all their jewels.

Angelina remembered being among the privileged company that had gone, the year before, to see an exhibition of a fabled creature at the Doge's Palace, the Palazzo Ducale. They called the creature a Camelopard, the fabled Giraffa catnelopardalis, and it had been loaned by a King of the Africas. The name meant nothing to the Principessa. But when she saw the animal she felt an almost feral excitement as she watched from behind her mask. Enormously tall, chequered like a Harlequin, and with an impossibly long neck, the creature strode slowly around; its form slicing through the sunlight shafts that flooded in through the palazzo's windows.The great chamber of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, cavernous, gorgeously painted in red and gold frescoes and with the highest ceilings in Venice, seemed the only room fitting for the display of this fantastical beast. From the ceiling, seventy-six past Doges ofVenice, rendered by the great Veronese, looked down unmoved at the sight. Their living successor looked on in wonder from his throne, crowned with his corno hat, whispering to his consort from behind his beringed hand. Meanwhile, the alien silent creature paused to examine a high scarlet drapery with a snakelike black tongue, eliciting delighted gasps from the audience. It lifted its tail and expelled a pile of neat droppings onto the priceless floors, treading in its own excrement. The ladies giggled and squealed while the men guffawed, and Angelina pressed a floral posy to her nose. But her excitement remained. She felt herself in the presence of something truly unusual, something unique. She did not ask herself if the Camelopard were beautiful or not. That question was an irrelevance. If the beast had been for sale she would have had her father buy it.

She looked now at Corradino and felt the same sensations. It mattered not if he was young and handsome, only that he was truly unusual, something unique. She felt the need to possess him. When Angelina del Vescovi smiled at him all thought of the pigments went out of Corradino's head. He soon remembered them though, oh yes. In fact, he