A mandolin from the madhouse was calling the lunatics to prayer. Mr. Beasely’s Portuguese was improving by the hour. Little pissing brats just freed from school threw rotten eggs and wild chrysanthemums, and the gondolier was getting edgy. Mrs. Beasely promptly ruled that the trip to the Great Cloud Hermitage must begin, and the boatman blazed on past the little tombs with their fuddy-duddies. Oratorios by Handel and Haydn bounced out of buildings with a random elegance that subtly flustered their direction. A pyromaniac lit the lamps that shown the way past pillars which ignited like the soul of the architect who built them, past villas with delicate shadows. Mr. Beasely remembered his mother’s music-room, touchy as wet paint. The current lady of his life slapped him awake, “I swear, Mr. Beasely, your past is a perilous irrelevance today. Biscuits and dried peaches, if you ask me. And soggy to boot! This decisive and dynamic driver of our vehicle shows more stamina, just look at his fangs!” He felt the early riddles of a language stir inside—a mandolin calling the lunatics to prayer. They carried sacred fires to hermaphroditic dieties at the end of Canal Street. Mr. Beasely closed his eyes and thought to himself: I close my eyes to this civilized vista. And what she says is news, is news: ‘Even the darkest night is really dark blue.’