EIGHT
Father Paolo Sarpi sat on the hard wooden stool in the small, windowless stone chamber that served as his home in the monastery of the Servite friars. It was stark and cold—no art graced its walls, no rug warmed its floor. The thick and heavy scent of incense slithered under the door and between the cracks of the old wood door. As Venice’s Official Senate Counselor, any one of the lavish rooms in the Doge’s Palace were always at his disposal, some of which he made use of on many occasions when he needed to confer with senators or with La Serenissima himself. Today he needed these indistinct surroundings and the lack of distraction afforded by the bareness of this room.
He sat in the middle of two towers, mountains of papers—one beside each hand—that rose higher above the desk than
