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of almond sweets, laced in sugar coating. He graciously declined and instead took some grapes. I took note that he baffled at my high spirits especially given the tragic circumstances. How one could eat sweets at a time like this, was the question I read upon his face. It would be deemed more proper if I adopted a miserable countenance even when forced to work at this testimony. The ways of society are twisted indeed.
    Antonio da Parma, meet Lorenzo Contarini. Yes, I am a happy man. You will frown at my joyful disposition and you will judge me and scorn me and entreat me as my mother does to shun Carnivale and the merry happenings of this period while I am a mourning son.   But I tell you that from now, until the next year and the year after that, when this state of affairs is long forgotten and the soul of my sister is close to our Lord in Heaven, just as the memory of her angelic laughter brings a smile to my face whenever I think back to her, I will be a happy man.
    And you do well to ask me why, Signore, because I burst to tell you.
    Do you want to know why, Signor da Parma?
    Because I am a disciple of Petrarch. I am a man who loves.  I am passionately in love.  Courtship is all I think of, night and day and the scent of her enflames my soul, even when she is not by my side.  And this love, this dear treasure that I hold near, she who haunts my nights and delivers arrows to my bleeding heart, I would have had no recourse but to tear her own heart to shreds had my father, Giacomo Contarini, lived today.
    But this is all too much for you, Antonio, may I call you Antonio?  Your distant eyes tell me you are not a man who has loved the same way. What would you know of the passion burning in my blood? Forgive me, but you remind me of those priests who revile the flesh and expect women to lie still, waiting for their husband’s seed.  But what do I know of the signore? Forgive me. We, Veneziani, are a little coarse, at times, with our humor.
    I think you will need to understand how it has been for me–the heavy burden of being Lorenzo Contarini, the only son of Giacomo Contarini.
    For five years, this honorable merchant has plotted away my life to reap the profits of a marital alliance. He has betrothed me to a woman that I do not love.  What care I for her ample dowry and the rings on her fingers or the jewels that encrust her many silk dresses? What care I for the galley fortunes our alliance will secure? I do not even remember her name. Be her, Morosini, Canal, Contarini, or from another of our best patrician families– what care I?  It is my Daniela that I love. I would kiss her bare feet if she were destitute.
    What care I for the fortunes to be made from a marriage between a tedious patrician and my unfortunate self?  Must we breed children in a loveless marriage and squander this life for ducats?  I have seen enough of my mother’s tears to choose this same torment. Giacomo can forget the family ducats. His son will marry Daniela. And now there is nothing Giacomo can do to stop him. Because, when he lived, how he tried!
    “Lorenzo,” he once told me, “I allow you to further your education with the Moro girl”–this is what he called her–“but nothing more! This marriage will take place.”
    “It will never take place, Father,” I would answer, always quietly, but with an assurance that never failed to displease him.
    I dispensed retorts without a thought, because I knew how easily angered he was. 
    It was always the same. As I prepared for my night outings, perfumed with scented oils, a sonnet in my pocket for my beloved, Giacomo glowered at me. He knew where I spent my evenings.
    “Daniela Moro will never be a Contarini!” he thundered.
    And then at dinner, after a good meal, he would find other tortuous ways to dampen my devotion by sullying the very people I had learned to cherish.
    “Artisans,” he would say, as he fed morsels to his spoiled terriers. “I ask you. What do they do for the