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take. With luck, the ride would take him an hour, and if his mule did not slip on a sheet of ice, he would reach his home with the midday sun.
    “The man we need,” he said as if announcing something of momentous importance, “is you, Father Agostino. None other would solve the matter with greater efficacy.”
    “I?” I was astonished. He had pronounced my name with morbid delectation while searching for something in his saddlebags. “But you are aware of the fact that I have work to do here, commitments—”
    “None like this one!”
    And pulling out a thick wad of documents sealed with his personal ring, he handed it over with to me with one last command:
    “You will leave for Milan without delay. Even today, if possible. And with that”—he looked toward the wad I now held in my hands—“you will identify our informer, find out what truth lies in this new danger and attempt to discover a remedy for it.”
    The Master General pointed to a sheet of parchment placed on top of the wad. On it, in large characters written in red ink, was the puzzle with the signature of our correspondent. I had seen the signature many times, since it appeared in Latin at the end of each of the Soothsayer’s letters, but until now I had given it little attention.
    I felt my eyes cloud over as they fell on those seven lines, which would henceforth become my principal concern.
    They read:
    Oculos jus inumera,
    ed noli voltum dspicere.
    In latere nominis
    mei notam rinvenies.
    Contemplari et contemplata
    aliis radere.
    Veritas
    Though the text itself was simple, I had no idea what it meant.
    Count its eyes
    but look not on its face.
    The number of my name
    you shall find on its side.
    Observe and give to others
    the result of your observation.
    Truth.

7
    Of course, I obeyed. What else could I have done?
    I arrived in Milan after Twelfth Night. It was one of those January mornings in which the glitter of the snow blinds the eyes and the clean air freezes the innards without pity. To reach my destination, I had ridden almost without stopping, except for three or four hours of sleep in filthy inns, and I was stiff and wet after a three-day journey in the midst of the cruelest winter in memory. But all that was of no importance. Milan, capital of Lombardy, the hub of court intrigues and of territorial squabbles with France and the neighboring counties, the city I had so thoroughly studied, lay now before me.
    It was an impressive metropolis. The city of the Sforza, the largest south of the Alps, occupied twice the space of Rome; eight large gates guarded an impenetrable wall around a circular plan that, seen from above, must have resembled the shield of a giant warrior. And yet it was not its defenses that awed me but its newness and cleanliness that gave the city a profound sense of order. Its citizens did not relieve themselves in every corner, as they did in Rome, nor were visitors incessantly assailed by prostitutes. Here, every angle, every house, every public building seemed conceived for some superior function. Even its proud cathedral—in appearance fragile and skeletal, in contrast with the massive bulks of those in the south—poured its soothing influences over the entire valley. Seen from the hills, Milan looked liked the last place on earth to breed sin and disorder.
    Some distance before reaching Porta Ticinese, the city’s noblest entrance, a kind merchant offered to accompany me to the Tower of Filarete, the main gate into Ludovico il Moro’s fortress. Built on one of the corners of the urban shield, the Sforza castle seemed like a miniature replica of the city walls. The merchant laughed at the look of surprise on my face. He said he was a tanner from Cremona, and a good Catholic, to boot, who would gladly accompany me into the fortress in exchange for a blessing for himself and his family. I accepted the bargain.
    The good man left me by the duke’s castle exactly at the ninth hour. The site was even more magnificent