They could not have said if they reached Passignano that evening, because if the first two days had rattled their bodies, the third, between Arezzo and Passignano, destroyed their souls, that is to say, first they became insensible, then later they revolted, namely, that with the cart continuously throwing them around here and there, at first they were despondent, then they announced things could not go on like this, this was not travel, but inhuman torture, and was strictly prohibited in letter and in spirit by the Republic of Florence: these two feelings alternated for hours on end, as all the while the road, without pause, tossed them about mercilessly, beat them, thrashed them, crushing their willpower completely, but then they rebelled again, and then again just resigned themselves to the whole thing, and gave themselves over to fate, because it was one and the same, for if rebellion was followed by acquiescence, then acquiescence was again followed by rebellion, so that at such times they stopped the coachman, but all they accomplished was that the cart stopped, which meant however that it did not move, namely that in a carriage that is not moving, there is no end of suffering, all four of them knew this, and the coachman kept repeating it too, so that then the whole thing just started again from the beginning, they piled back into the cart, got back into place moaning and groaning, hanging on, and let themselves be shaken, thrown, beaten again — until the next spell of acquiescence — but then after a while they couldn’t stand it anymore, and once again mutiny reared its head; the next time, they did not clamber down, but in the strictest sense of the word they fell off the cart, every bone in their bodies ached so much already, they couldn’t move a single limb, they lay in the fragrant grass like the dead, enumerating the wildest ideas, that they would proceed from now on by foot, that each one would sit upon the back of a bird, that altogether they would not go any further and stay here in the grass alongside the road, and they would all just die, but at this the coachman began to urge them on, really, stop this already, there’s just a little way left, they would be there right away, look at the horses, they are also properly worn out and they’re not lying down in the grass, so stop this already, really you’re all like children, get up right away, climb back into the cart and take the rest of the trip like men, later on in Passignano you can have a rest, so that Passignano became a variation of Paradise in their minds, Passignano, Passignano, they repeated before every turn in the road so that when the turn in the road did not reveal Passignano, they were thoroughly embittered, and they began to curse the coachman, then the two horses, then this rotten road, then the Romans who had built it, and then all the travelers of the past millennium who with their wheels had carved such deep ditches into the road, then the rains, the winters, and the sunshine, in a word everything and everyone that had ruined the Via Cassia to such a degree; finally, just as much as they could, they cursed the maestro, so that when evening came, and darkness descended upon them, and they were ready to nail the coachman up onto a cross — where the hell was this damned Passignano already — but just at that moment when the horses were being driven very quietly, and back there in the bed of the cart they had begun to talk in undertones about how Giannicola would now stab the coachman with a dagger, the coachman said, well, there’s Passignano already, but he said it so softly, that they really almost stabbed him by mistake, what’s that, they yelled out from behind, Passignano, I’m telling you, gentlemen, it’s Passignano, the coachman shouted out in a rage now too, because he had noticed the knife, and he gestured forward into the pitch-dark blackness, the knife was returned to its place, and they just stared fixedly ahead so they could finally see the end to this torture, to see that they had finally arrived just as the coachman had said, that they were in Passignano, and when the cart turned in they just motioned to the innkeeper, they motioned something, which could have meant anything, somehow they were led to their lodgings, there they collapsed, and immediately within the blink of an eye all four were asleep, so that when Aulista was startled awake after one hour, every molecule in his entire body was hurting so much, he was so exhausted, that he simply couldn’t bear to sleep, and after he had first seen Saint Bernard and Saint Francis, the maestro immediately appeared somewhere above his pallet, and that made him come to his senses somewhat, and he looked at the maestro above his pallet, and he tried somehow to fall back asleep, but couldn’t, then he was able to, but not even for a half hour, because his eyes sprung open again as if it were already dawn, it was, however, not dawn but still late evening and in addition he was starting to come back to normal consciousness, that is after the maestro, Saint Bernard, and Saint Francis had began to vanish, and the pallets had begun to regain their own true dimensions and form, there inside was one tiny little window, out of which Aulista watched the heavens playing into dark blue, he sensed a gentle breeze that occasionally blew across him toward the sleepers, and there suddenly came into his mind one of the panels under preparation, which, fastened to the back of the cart, was now being transported, that altarpiece, commissioned by the clerk of Perugia, Bernardino di ser Angelo Tezi, and which they had begun perhaps six years ago, and that inasmuch as it would be finished one day, would be placed in the church of Saint Augustine in Perugia in the Tezi family chapel named after Saint Nicolas of Tolentino, the commission of course had been arranged years ago, but they had gotten nearly nowhere with the picture, only the gesso and the imprimatura were ready, and they had finished the underdrawing a long time ago, that is the sketched-out composition of the painting was already recognizable, a predella below, above it in the middle of the picture a little ciborium, and as a matter of fact in the middle of the picture, above, was the Virgin Mother in the heavens as She was being held by three cherubinos, with little Jesus in her lap, and beside her to the left was San Nicola da Tolentino, to her right was Bernardino da Siena, and all those who were seeing this as a vision: down below, to the left of the ciborium, Saint Jerome was kneeling, and on the other side, Saint Sebastian, this picture now flashed through Aulista’s mind, as did that afternoon, when in the still sufficient light the maestro painted the lower garments of the Virgin Mother with ultramarine, but then suddenly stopped painting, and flung out the comment that they should daub a deep blue spot with azurite onto the edge of the sleeve, which was still just sketched out but not painted, and they should finely inscribe there MCCCCC, namely that according to the desire of the family this picture would be placed in the chapel exactly at the turning point of the quattrocento and the cinquecento — which of course did not occur, Aulista now thought — and with that the maestro left the workshop, and since then hadn’t even touched the picture, and here he was now lying awake from exhaustion, and instead of resting he was seeing the blue of the garments of the Virgin Mother, that glimmering, that wondrous, that inimitable blue, the likes of which he had never seen in any painting by any other Italian painter and this blue, now, as he lay almost completely awake in the sleeping quarters of the inn, made him think, and made all the maestro’s colors come into his mind, as the green and blue and crimson blinded him, indeed, in the strict sense of the word, what blinded him was the dreadful strength of these colors, as each picture was finished, and they stood around the panel, or the fresco, so as to look at it, to view it as a completed masterpiece, with a fresh eye, so that the entire workshop could look at it together, just to see if as a whole the work truly was satisfactory, and it could be said that it was final, that it could now be delivered, really, Aulista now remembered, he was nearly blinded by this extraordinary ability of the maestro to work with colors, because this was the secret focal point of his work and his talent, he now added to himself, and he looked through that narrow little window slit at the evening heavens above Passignano — the astonishing