CHAPTER I 



HE garden in Venice whose 

 story I would tell was once 

 a bank of mud. Uncon- 

 scious of its sweet destiny 

 for thousands of years it 

 lay inert in the lap of Adri- 

 atic waters. The south 

 wind blew then as it blows 

 now across the Libian Desert, and hurried on to 

 quench its thirst in the Mediterranean Sea. Across 



