He now resumed for a time his baptismal name, and traveled to a town on the Gulf of Genoa, where he taught youth and young gentlemen. Then he passed on to Turin and Venice, where he spent weeks in futile attempts to find work. But the schools and the printing houses were closed because of the plague. In Venice however he managed to print his first book on "The Signs of the Times;" or rather this was his first book to appear in print. It seems that before he left Naples he wrote "The Ark of Noah," a satirical allegory. In this he represented that the animals held a formal meeting in the Ark, to settle questions of precedence and rank, and that the presiding officer, the Ass, was in danger of losing his position and his influence, because his power lay rather in hoofs than horns. Throughout most of his life Bruno constantly scored and criticised Asinity; it was frequently the topic of his invective, and those who read between his lines were probably quite justified in regarding these frequent allusions as references to the ignorance, bigotry and credulity of the Monks. From Venice Bruno went to Padua, where some of the Dominican friars persuaded him to resume monastic costume, since it made travel easier and safer. Thence by way of Brescia and Milan he may be followed to Bergamo. At Milan he first heard of his future friend Sir Philip Sydney. From Bergamo he resolved to go to Lyons, but learning that he would find anything but welcome there he turned aside and crossed the Alps, arriving in Geneva in the Spring of 1579. Here he was visited by a distinguished Neapolitan exile, the Marquis De Vico, who persuaded him again to lay aside his clerical garb, and who gave him the dress of a gentleman, including a sword.