d blossoming in my breast and heart,
as though they were an enchanted garden wherein fountains were leaping,
and roses and tulips and golden apples and grapes were blooming and
ripening among pine-trees and ivy-wreaths.

Nevertheless I lost no word of his speech, and could have listened to
him till morning should dawn again. And while we thus sat, or paced
the room arm-in-arm, I heard many matters, and yet not enough of Gotz's
adventurous fate, and of the happy turn my brothers' concerns had taken
with his good help. And what we now learned from his clear and plain
report, answering our much questioning, was that, after separating from
his home, he had taken service as a soldier of the Venice Republic, and
had done great deeds under the name of Silvestri, which is to say "of
the Woods." Of all the fine things he had done before Salonica and
elsewhere, fighting against Sultan Mourad and the Osmanli, yea, and in
many fights against other infidels, thereby winning the favor of his
general, the great Pietro Loredano--of all this he would tell us at
great length another day. Not long since he had been placed as chief,
at the head of the armed force on board the fleet sent forth by the
Republic to Alexandria to treat with the Sultan as concerning the King
of Cyprus, who was held a prisoner. With him likewise, on the greatest
of the galleys, were there sundry great gentlemen of the most famous
families of Venice, and chief of them all, Marino Cavallo, Procurator of
Saint Mark; inasmuch as that the Council desired to ransom the King of
Cyprus with Venice gold, and to that end had sent Angelo Michieli with
the embassy, he being the Senior of one of the most powerful and wealthy
merchants' houses in the East.

With all of these Gotz, as a hero in war, was on right friendly terms,
and when they landed at Alexandria, Anselmo Giustiniani, the Consul, had
given them all fine quarters in the Fondaco.

Here, then, my new lover had met Ursula; howbeit, he made not himself
known to her, by reason that already he had heard an evil report of her
husband's dealings as Consul, and of her deeds and demeanors. Yet was
there one man dwelling in the Fondaco to whom he confessed his true
name, and that was Hartmann Knorr, a son of Nuremberg and of good
family, who, after gaining his doctor's degree at Padua, had taken the
post of leech to the Consul, provided and paid by the Republic. In this,
his fellow countryman's chamber, the two, who had b