“I think he suspected I was lying; but it was the sort of large-scale, flamboyant lie that appealed to him. As he told me later, only pettiness annoyed him. He delighted in color and movement, and in the protean appearance of things. In this respect, he told me, he was a true Venetian. Like many other subjects of the Serenissima, he believed in style over content, art over life, appearance over reality, and form over substance. He believed simultaneously in fate and free will. He viewed life as a sort of Renaissance melodrama, complete with unexpected appearances and disappearances, heartrending confrontations, preposterous coincidences, disguises and doubles, switched twins and mysteries of birth; all revolving around an obscure and melancholy point of honor. And, of course, he was perfectly right.”
RS