The Alchemist's Code Read Online Free PDF

will be daughter, daughter, daughter…”
    â€œYou swear this?”
    â€œThe stars never lie. Now, please, I must go. See the master is not disturbed.” I made my escape, knowing from Mama’s rapturous smile that the news of many future grandsons would be down at the wellhead in the campo in no time and all over the parish by evening—all over Venice, very likely, for the Angeli clan forms a substantial part of the population.
    The reason the Maestro had not ordered me to try the crystal with him is that it never shows me anything other than my next encounter with Violetta. This is a problem of youth, he says, but youth has its compensations. Furthermore, tarot works well for me, although it lacks the detail of clairvoyance. My deck’s great age makes it extremely sensitive. The cards are shabby and dog-eared, the inks of the drawings almost rubbed away in places. I retrieved it from under my pillow and laid the spread out on my dressing table, a quick five-card cross.
    The face-up card in the center defines the subject or question, and this time it amply confirmed my suspicions, for it showed Love, number VI of the major arcana, a couple holding hands with Eros aiming his arrows. I dealt the other four facedown and turned them over in sequence. The one below, representing the problem, was the king of coins. On my left, which is the subject’s right, the helper or path was the Pope, Trump V. The objective or solution, at the top, was another trump, the World, number XXI. And, finally, the danger to be avoided was the knave of swords. With the possible and worrisome exception of that one, the reading was as straightforward as any I had ever seen. The presence of three of the major arcana made it powerful, but it could not tell me where Grazia Sanudo was at the moment.
    Having tucked my deck away, I went to peek out at Number 96, the smaller house next-door. The leaded panes of my windows bear colored or prismatic glass so no one can see in, but I can peer out through a few clear gaps, and much pleasure I have of them. Number 96 is a bawdy house and on sunny afternoons the inhabitants gather on the rooftop deck, the altana , to bleach their hair. They are fully dressed, you understand, even to hats with no crowns, only wide brims to shade their faces and spread out their hair. The view is admirable all the same, and that day there were fifteen shapely nymphs gathered there. To my joy, fourteen of them were outshone by the radiant beauty of Violetta.
    The calle dividing the buildings is very narrow, so my preferred way of visiting her is to remove a couple of loose window bars, squeeze through, and just jump. That saves me having to walk down forty-eight steps and back up sixteen to her apartment. I haven’t died yet, although a couple of times the results have been in doubt for a freezing fraction of a second. I would not try it before witnesses.
    I opened the casement. “Damsels!” I cried. “I am available to the highest bidder.”
    Were I to record their replies, the Vatican would add this book to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum .
    â€œYour ribaldry fails to conceal your lust for my incredible virility,” I said. “Just ask Violetta!”
    â€œWe did,” they replied in chorus, as if they had been rehearsing.
    Abandoning the unequal struggle, I quit the field and went down the conventional way to the watergate, where a lighter was tied up, either half-loaded or half-unloaded, but deserted during the midday break by all save a youthful Marciana watch-boy. There is no pedestrian fondamenta flanking the Via San Remo on our side, only a narrow ledge, along which an agile young man can work his way crabwise as far as the watersteps at the end of the calle . Another ledge beyond that took me to the watergate of 96, where I was admitted by Milana, Violetta’s maid. Milana is tiny and has a twisted back, but she is ever cheerful and devoted to her