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painting the Sistine ceiling, probably. Or my father. He’s doing a ceiling for Cardinal Borghese.”
    â€œJust as hard, only with olives you have to do it all over again every year.”
    I was pleased whenever I could make him smile, even though I was still suspicious of his honorable gesture of marrying me. To ask him what his reasons were seemed crass. Could gratitude be the seed of love?
    While we rode, we ate salami, bread, green apples, and fresh pecorino , sheep cheese that the innkeeper had wrapped in a cloth. Simple enough. I could surely make meals like that.
    I noticed a slim, square tower lifting its crenellated crown as if on a slender neck above a row of cypress trees. “What is the most beautiful thing in Florence?” I asked, thinking I might get a painter’s description of a graceful church spire or a marble figure or a fresco.
    He thought a moment, cut an apple wedge, and held it out to me on the sharp tip of his knife. “The women.”
    â€œYou might as well have used the blade on my bare breast.” I laughed softly to show I felt no injury, though my words were closer to the truth. Being careful of the blade in the jostling coach, I picked off the fruit.
    He winced when he noticed the raw pink flesh at the base of my fingers and some deep scabs still there. “I’m sorry,” he said, still looking. “Giovanni told me.”
    â€œDo you think the marks will ever disappear?”
    â€œI don’t want to say.” With a wry expression, he pointed his knife toward the rolled-up canvases. “If you paint like that and earn lots of money, you can cover them with rings. Or if you had married a rich man.”
    â€œI’d rather marry a good man.”
    He smiled in an abashed way, cut another wedge of apple, held it with his fingers up to my lips, and watched me take it between my teeth.

    In the afternoon two days later, the clouds broke apart and sunlight brushed with a light sienna the stone arches and crenellations of Porta Romana, the southern entrance to the city of Florence. Ochre buildings with red tiled roofs and shutters the color of cinnamon or basil lined the road. I felt myself getting as excited as Paola had been for me. Florence!
    â€œThis is Palazzo Pitti,” Pietro said, pushing out his chest as we passed a stone palace, strikingly different from tradition because each of the three stories was the same height and had the same rough-hewn stone. It made the building look more formidable than graceful. “Il granduca Cosimo de’ Medici lives here. Magnificent, yes?”
    I nodded. “It’s a beautiful color, so creamy. An impressive palace.” It gained its impressiveness not with decoration or carvings, but simply by the repetition of its arched windows. To me, it looked austere, but I didn’t dare say so. It was endearing that Pietro wanted me to be impressed.
    â€œHave you ever been inside?”
    â€œNo.” He shrugged. “The Medici are not what they used to be. This is Cosimo II, a far sight from his namesake.”
    We crossed a bridge into the city proper. Buildings taller than those in Rome squeezed the streets into tight corridors clogged with mule carts and fruit and fish stands. Paving stones sent up a racket of horses’ hooves that echoed off stone walls, and chickens flew out from under carriage wheels.
    Pietro asked the coachman to make one trip around the cathedral, the Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. When I caught my first sight of its ribbed terracotta dome, I forgave the palace for being so plain. “Someday I’ll tell you the story of how Brunelleschi built the dome,” he said, as full of pride as if he had been Brunelleschi’s workman.
    â€œThe bell tower is a separate building,” I said, astounded at its self-standing height. I craned my neck out the coach window to get a look at the top, which made Pietro laugh. The smooth green, rose, and white marble