Bruno, who resumed for the time his baptismal name of Filippo, journeyed first to the picturesque little town of Noli, in the Gulf of Genoa, whither a more famous exile, Dante, had also come. There he lived for four or five months, teaching grammar to boys, and "the Sphere"--that is, astronomy and cosmography, with a dash of metaphysics,--to certain gentlemen. Thence he came to Savona, to Turin,[21] and to Venice. In Venice six weeks were spent, probably in the vain attempt to find work--the printing offices and the schools were closed on account of the plague which was carrying off thousands of the inhabitants; but the time was utilised in printing the first of his books--no longer extant--on the _Signs of the Times_,[22] written, like so many other works of other people, to put together a few "danari." It was shown to a reverend Father Remigio of Florence, therefore was probably orthodox, or its unorthodoxy was veiled. This work may have been the first of Bruno's writings on the art of memory or on Lully's art of knowing. Another work belonging to this early period was the _Ark of Noah_. It was probably written before he left Naples, and was dedicated to Pope Pius V., but is not known to have been published: its title is that of a mystical writing of Hugo of St. Victor, but according to the account in the _Cena_,[23] it was an allegorical and probably satirical work, somewhat after the fashion of Bruno's _Cabala_:--The animals had assembled to settle a disputed question of rank, and the ass was in great danger of losing his pre-eminent post,--in the poop of the Ark,--because his power lay in hoofs rather than in horns; when we consider Bruno's frequent and bitter invocations of Asinity, we can hardly avoid seeing in the work an allusion to the credulity and ignorance of the monkhood. [Sidenote: Padua.] [Sidenote: Brescia.] [Sidenote: Milan.] [Sidenote: Bergamo.] [Sidenote: Chambéry.] [Sidenote: Geneva.] [Sidenote: May 1579.] [Sidenote: Did Bruno adopt Calvinism?] [Sidenote: Freedom of speech.] [Sidenote: De la Faye.]