This oration draws more applause and cheers ("Bravo! Viva la faccia!" they shout: "Ipse dixit! Viva il Magnifico!") which the Count acknowledges by leaning back and raising his glitteringly decorated organ on high like a bejeweled flagpole, others in the assembly at the Accademia landing stage responding in kind as their constitutions permit, the monumental Madonna of the Organs for her part reaching into the scarlet folds of her glistening vagina with both hands and pulling out her ovaries which she proceeds to flick on their fallopian strings at the Count's shaft like little pink yo-yos. Her face, true, the professor has to admit, does, except for the hollow eyes and the fringe of ink-black beard peeking out from under her chin, resemble that of Giovanni Bellini's "Madonna of the Small Trees," but the rest of her is more like an oversized walking anatomy lesson, an elaboration of sorts upon the traditional Madonna of the Bleeding Heart, in that not just her heart (which is bright green) is outside her body, but all her glands and organs are dangling from her generous flesh like Christmas ornaments: her spleen, kidneys, liver, brains, bladder, stomach, larynx, pancreas, and all the rest, her lungs worn like water wings, her mammaries like shoulder pads, her intestines looping from her rear like a long spongy tail or a vacuum sweeper hose.
Il Conte Agnello Ziani-Ziani Orseolo's first act, upon the arrival of the emissaries from the Palazzo dei Balocchi, the exchange of greetings, the display of the deed, the windblown dissemination of the billion lire, and the Count's knighting, as it might be called, of the professor, was to present the Madonna as a gift to the city ("Urbi et orbi!" he'd cried, making the sign of the cross over her in the Byzantine fashion with his ithyphallic appendage, the genuflecting citizenry in the Campo della Caritŕ replying with a communal breaking of wind and a whooping ovation), observing that, as he pointed to her exuberant crimson-petaled gash: "Heroes have trod this spot! Poets have slept here and signed their ineffable names! Merchants have here lost all their earthly goods, philosophers their minds! Only a few intrepid explorers, venturing into its labyrinthine depths, have returned to tell the tale in their epistles and travel guides of the fatal gift of beauty, the very sight of which sets us afire with pain and longing and sends us plunging, lance hoisted, blind to dangers, into the awesome abyss! Ah, but roses, roses all the way, good friends and figsuckers, so loving and so lovely, nature herself shivers with ecstasy at the sight of this toothsome apparition! She walks the waters like a thing of life! Beauteous even where beauties most abound, she is the answer to our bedtime prayer that womankind have but one rosy mouth, to kiss them all at once from North to South!" Which is what they all did, lined up to lap, more to the south than to the north, at the Madonna's fluorescent lips, which some said exuded a dewy liquor not unlike zabaglione laced with rum and holy water and went eagerly back for seconds, the professor in his dark temper demurring, furious still at having been dragged away from his former student (he felt that some grave academic principle had been ruthlessly violated, but his threats and protests had gone unheeded) and subjected once more to the cruel abuse of the elements and the callous masses.
On their way here, as they came spanking up the blustery Grand Canal in the roaring motor launch, Truffaldino, Buffetto, and Francatrippa had driven him finally into a sullen silence with their breathless overlapping accounts of the triumphant arrival in Venice of the famous Count, descendant of at least thirteen doges ("No, no, fifteen!" cried Francatrippa vehemently: "Fifteen doges! And three popes!"), the splendor of his entourage, the undeniable authenticity of his deed to the Palazzo Ducale, attested to by 579 recognized doctors of law, living and dead, for which he had already received from Omino e figli, S.R.L., a preliminary down payment of a billion lire, and his gift to the city of the newly uncovered Bellini masterpiece, "The Madonna of the Organs," which they called "a living miracle." "Well, yes, it's sort of in the style of the 'Madonna of the Small Trees,' master, only more like a 'Madonna of the Stunted Kidneys,' as you might say!"
What they meant by this became clear when they rumbled up under the green steel frame and dark heavy timbers of the Accademia bridge to the vaporetto landing stage of the great museum and were met there by his onetime boatyard hostess Melampetta, serving as official watchdog in the absence of Alidoro, and now yapping out something between a joyful welcome and an angry scolding; a motley assemblage of hundreds of citizens, local or otherwise, many of them bearing or wearing gaudy organs of their own, together with a number of wild animals, demons, extraterrestrials, monsters, and plague victims, all cheering the new arrivals with grunts and roars and exposure of their backsides; a squadron of regally dressed attendants to the Count, standing at attention, their genitals where their faces should be and their faces between their legs, and each with a barrel of wine on a little cart in tow; the Count himself in the crimson cap, vest, and tight breeches of his ancestral dogeship, his flowing black gown lined in crimson satin and trimmed with sable, his yellow gloves and golden mules in the Turkish style, and his colossal erection emerging from the gaping money pouch hanging between his thighs; and finally, towering above them all, "The Madonna of the Organs" with all her insides on her outside, including her disproportionately small kidneys, sticking out at either side of her ample waist like shriveled tree-shaped little handles.
"Here he is!" Buffetto exclaimed, as Truffaldino and Francatrippa unloaded him from the boat and onto the landing, elements of the bearded Ladies' Marching Band beating out a drumroll as they disembarked. "L'Omino's dearest and oldest pal! Old Sticks himself! Un gran cultore! Winner of the No-Balls Prize and, as you see, a worthy challenge to any present! Make way! Make way! Largo per il Gran Nasone!"
He was paraded in his litter chair, with much pomp and swagger, past the ticket booth and up a kind of aisle beside a small garden, the scraggly bushes crowding up there like groundlings, a bank of outdoor phones standing in the front like spectators in the orchestra seats, to be deposited eventually, seething still with rage, mocking cheers and applause ringing in his defoliated tympanic cavities, in the middle of the broad campo under a massive yellow brick wall with tall dark windows, flat as a backdrop, a wall he recognized from the postcard pictures of Canaletto, prince of the vedutisti, to be that of the defrocked church become Venice's celebrated Temple of Art. His temple, too, alas, and there, in its scowling shadow, looked down upon, as it were, by those very masters to whom his own long life had been devoted, he was obliged to exchange his new felt borsalino for the tall conical sugar-loaf hat of someone called Il Zoppo, a red-tipped prophylactic device was slipped on over the end of his nose and unrolled to his cheeks, around his neck they hung a sign reading "ECCE NASUS," and then Count Ziani-Ziani tapped him on each shoulder with his huge phallus and declared him an Immortal Member in Firm Standing in the Great Privy Council of the Illustrious and Lubricious Republic of Venice.