The Master of Verona

I take it as quite the compliment, I must say. For hundreds of years it has been thought that Virgil was a magician. He was said to have possessed a horse of bronze that, by its very existence, prevented all the horses of Naples from becoming swaybacked; a bronzed fly that, as long as it rested on his doorsill, kept the city free of flies; and an enchanted storeroom that would keep meat for six weeks without spoiling. It was said too that he had made a statue of an archer with bow drawn and ready. As long as the arrow in the statue's grip was kept pointed at Vesuvius it would not erupt. It would be interesting to learn, therefore, the position of that statue in 79 AD, would it not?

It was related to me by a local priest that my master, the noble Virgil, built the Castel dell'Ovo upon an egg. The castle will stand until the egg is broken. It was when I heard that tale I knew my sojourn in pretty Lucca must end.

That, and I can no longer bear living so close to the fetid city, the cancer of Italy, which houses but one pearl — you yourself. Since my return from France I have lived too close to the country of my birth, and the stench of that befouled place burns my nostrils. The single product of Florence that goes uncorrupted is my Beatrice.

Returning to the subject of magic, I have stated publicly my abhorrence of these rumours that persist about my person. I have done this both in love of all that is true and in hatred of all that is false. I am, after all, a loyal servant of God above. Yet it amazes me how superstitions persist in the minds of men. Pliny the Elder tells us that men in his day who bit the wood of a tree struck by lightning would not suffer from the toothache. He wrote those words before the explosion of the volcano, after the arrow was shifted. Yet the practice continues to this day! What creatures are men that they believe such things? Someday I will make a study of this phenomenon, to expose the roots of this idiocy.

Yet there is magic in this world — no one knows this better than I. Except, perhaps, Philip the Fair. But since he is no longer of this world, he offers no competition.

Speaking as I am of curses, one may be brewing in my new home. I wrote to you of Cangrande's little bastard. Il veltro del Veltro, as it were. The child adopted by Donna Katerina Nogarola. Well, a witch's hex lies over him like the sword of Damocles.