"I know where you're going," he said, after we had exchanged a few friendly words, and then, when I had learned that he too had only just arrived: "You asked for the address of a bookseller, and you were given that of Apostolo Capoduro who resides in the strada dei Schiavoni. I'm going there too, but I don't hold out much hope, for I've visited his shop twice in ten years and never found books older than the novels of Abbot Chiari. That old bookshop has died the death, been ruined and sacked by barbarians. But did you have in mind something in particular to ask him for?" "I'll admit to you," I answered, "that it would pain me to leave Northern Italy without taking with me 'The Dream of Poliphilus', of which I have heard it said that it is a most curious object and is to be found in Treviso if it is to be found anywhere." "If it is to be found anywhere," he exclaimed, "is, to be sure, a prudent rider, for 'The Dream of Poliphilus', or, better still, Friar Francesco Colonna's 'Hypnerotomachia' is a book that old bibliographers call by the epithet: Albo corvo rarior. All I can say for sure is that if this white crow is to be found in any aviary, as we cannot but assume, it will definitely not be in Apostolo's. I think I'm sure enough of my facts to swear here by the household gods of Aldus Manutius the Elder (God keep him haloed in an everlasting glory) that, if this scamp Apostolo succeeds in providing you with a copy of the book in question in the 1499 first edition, for the second edition belongs, more or less, to the run-of-the-mill type of book, I hereby affirm that I'll make you a present of it out of my own purse, the contents of which this generous action on my part would cause to weigh considerably less."