sharpness of the colors, he thought, and with what overpowering strength, the green and the yellow and blue and crimson, placed next to each other, for example, on four draperies loosely thrown upon each other, the viewer was raised into the heavens, that is, Aulista noted to himself, the maestro ravished people with his colors, well, but the maestro can still create these colors even today, the thought wracked him, and sleep finally deserted him, for surely that unfinished picture back there, tied up there to the back shaft of the cart, that blue piece of fabric in it, as it spilled across the knee of the Virgin Mary, that was the same blue, that was the same color that was in the Santa Maddalena and Madonna della Consolazione and the altarpiece in Pavia and on the Madonna painted for the Pala dei Decemviri, and in the Lamentation over the Dead Christ for the Order of the Poor Clares and all the other innumerable depictions of the Christ and the Madonna and Jerome, but if that’s where things stand, Aulista thought amid his snoring colleagues, if the problem is not with the proof of the greatest ornament of the maestro’s talent, with his colors, then with what, that is the question, he said to himself, speaking aloud now, because although he wasn’t conscious of it, he clasped his hands underneath his head, and fixed his gaze onto the ceiling, then in a single moment complete wakefulness was succeeded by the deepest sleep, although even the next morning he had not forgotten his nighttime thoughts, so when after a mutual attempt on the part of the coachman and the innkeeper to awanen them — lengthy yet in the end yielding results — and the assistants finally succeeded in shaking themselves into their pantaloons, and had consumed some warm panada and climbed back up onto the readied cart, like martyrs onto their stakes, starting off for Perugia, Aulista even brought up the topic; however, there wasn’t really anyone to mention it to, for the others were still so badly off from the trials of yesterday and the day before, that they shouted him down just as much as they could, just as rudely as they could, only much later on, when after a while the road became somewhat better on the bank of the lake, and the last flask was brought out, which made them a bit more cheerful, they thought of Aulista and immediately began pestering him, what is it, Aulista, are you delirious, are you so worn out, that you can no longer bear the tortures, and you spend all night thinking about the maestro’s colors? — you’re looking kind of feeble, pretty boy, Francesco said to him sneering maliciously, and he took a swig from the flask, I don’t even know how the maestro let you leave his side, and why you didn’t travel on horseback with him, he should have made an exception for you, and so on, right up until the old injurious accusation, with which his colleagues had badgered him ever since he had shown up at the workshop, that namely he was the maestro’s particular, very own favorite, and only because he was the one who posed as a model of Saint Sebastian for the maestro one time back then, and this crude banter, as so many times already, if they wanted to get out of some kind of difficult rut, led to their just not being able to stop, and the jeering just went on and on; the cart, however, shook and tumbled and swerved just like before, but their attention was absorbed by the subject of Aulista’s relationship with the maestro, so that this time too he wasn’t spared, they just kept on talking, the jibes, each one more malicious, more crude than the last, just kept on coming and there was nothing that could stop them, they were simply not capable of getting off this topic; he however was aching all over just as they were, he was just as eviscerated as they were by the sufferings of the last three days, so that he asked them, just asked them, and in the end weeping he asked them to leave him alone already, well but it was exactly this, the sight of a man bursting into tears that threw more oil onto the fire, and they attacked him, causing even deeper wounds, calling him a feeble woman, and the only help for Aulista, as always in such cases, was that he suddenly closed himself off, sunk into himself to such an extent as to become unapproachable, he spoke not a single word to them, he no longer took any notice of them, he wedged himself between two rolled-up carpets, and just waited for them to stop already, as eventually happened, because after a while there was no more pleasure in the thing, and Francesco, pointing at the Trasimeno, told the tale, related already at least a hundred times, about his adventure with some whore from Florence, who sometimes was called Pantassilea, and sometimes Pomona, and sometimes Antea, thus they went along the northern shore of the Trasimeno, and as they passed beyond it, everything began to be a little more easy, because they knew that now Perugia would follow, that there in the distance Perugia was waiting for them and the coachman said to the horses that surely it was very good, and if the gentleman assistants were finally in such a good mood, but that it would be good for them to conserve some energy for the last stretch as well, and he was really right, because in the falling twilight when they truly had reached the base of Perugia, perhaps the most difficult part of the journey followed, namely that they had to somehow get the cart up to the Porta Trasimeno on the notoriously steep route, accordingly they all had to get down, the coachman held and jerked the reins from the ground, while the others, putting their shoulders to the sides of the cart pushed the entire thing up, because this upward route toward the gate was not only very difficult for the two horses, who were nearly totally enervated, but even going on foot alone would have worked up a proper sweat in the travelers returning home; the coachman was worried about the horses, and the assistants were worried about the load on the cart, which until now had escaped damage; then their strength gave out, and it became increasingly obvious that they were hardly pushing the cart, the coachman yelled, because he was afraid, with good reason, that the exhausted company and the weakened animals would suddenly just give up, and then the entire thing would plummet back down, back down to the foot of the city, and then not only would the cart burst apart into matchsticks, not only the load, but his two beloved horses would be finished off as well, which he would not be able to bear; so he just yelled at the assistants to start pushing already, for God’s sake, they were already almost halfway up, but it seemed nearly a hopeless task for these five and the two horses to get the cart up to the gate, so the coachman could do nothing else then to commandeer the company with some incredible luck up to the big turn in the road, where he then wedged stones behind the wheels of the cart, and ordered them to take a rest, the assistants, gasping for breath, collapsed onto their knees, the horses’ legs trembled, no one spoke a single word, there they rested for perhaps a quarter of an hour, until the assistants looked at each other, and then at the coachman, then at the horses, and as if in some mute pantomime, they agreed all at once, fine, the last stretch would somehow have to be made in one go; the coachman positioned the four assistants next to the supporting stones, then he cracked the whip above the two horses just as much as he could, he tugged at the reins, and at the same time the assistants grabbed the stones from underneath the wheels, so that the wheels would turn more easily in the right direction; the horses just pulled the cart, the coachman yelled, the whip cracked, although the coachman was very careful to make sure that the strap didn’t even touch the haunches of the two horses, and in that way they finally reached the gates of Perugia, and they finally stepped through the Porta Trasimeno, and when at last, gasping for breath they stood, beyond the gate, on the beautifully paved Via dei Priori, Francesco simply could not stop, he just kept saying, just saying, well, my friends, I wouldn’t have believed it possible, I wouldn’t have believed it at all.