And that was the dream. Nothing more. What was it about? I do not know. Why was it so vivid it stuck in my mind? There is no answer to that, either. And nothing to be done about it; dreams have no reason or explanation or meaning. The strange thing is that from then on I began to have a vague fear of heights – nothing too extreme, I did not become one of those poor souls who feel faint if they are more than a few feet off the ground, or who clutch at the railings halfway up the Eiffel Tower and become dizzy. No; I merely developed a tendency to feel uncomfortable, wary, whenever I was, say, on a balcony, or by an open window. It was a very annoying weakness which I tried not to indulge; the more so because it was so obviously foolish. But I could never shake it off and ended up by simply ensuring I was never in a position to make it appear.

The incident was all of a piece with how my life developed over the next few weeks; I became increasingly introspective. My life slowed down markedly; the urge to move on, which had afflicted me wherever I had been so far, quite left me. I still do not know why; I think it was the hypnotic effect of the sun on the water, such a constant feature of life in Venice, that slowly befuddled my mind and sapped my will. It is hard to think of normal life when it is so easy to watch the twinkling reflections of sunlight instead. Remarkably easy to spend a few seconds, then minutes, then even longer, studying without thought or conscious awareness the effect of light and shade on a wall of peeling stucco, or listen to the mixtures of sounds – people, waves, birds – that make Venice the strangest city in the world. A week went past, then two, then more, and I would only occasionally stir myself to do anything.

In retrospect, it is all very clear; I was uncertain of myself. I wished to do something grand in my life and had prepared myself well for it. But the days of apprenticeship under Cardano were at an end. He had no more to teach me, and I was now faced with a choice. I could, very easily, make more than enough money to keep me and mine in perfect comfort. It is, as I have said, not hard. But what was the point of that? Such a way of life did no more than fill out the space between cradle and grave. Agreeable and with its own little satisfactions, no doubt, but ultimately purposeless. I did not want power or wealth for themselves, and I did not in the slightest desire fame. But I wanted, on my death, to be able to expire feeling that my existence had made the world a different place. Preferably a better one, but even that, at the time, was not uppermost in my mind; I have never had any great desire to abolish poverty or save fallen women. I am, and always have been, deeply suspicious of those who do wish to do these things. They normally cause more harm than good and, in my experience, their desire for power, to control others, is very much greater than that of any businessman.

When I began to weary of my own company, I decided to take up Longman's invitation, made as I was leaving, to join him at dinner. I did not quite grasp what sort of an occasion this would be, but in effect Longman had been offering to induct me into his particular group of English exiles, for the men all ate together almost every night. This is common in Venice, where there is really only one meal a day, eaten in the evening. Breakfast consists of little more than bread and coffee, lunch of a bowl of broth bought from a cookshop, and so, come dinnertime, the entire population is both exceptionally hungry and, often, quite ill-tempered. Usually people eat in the same place every evening, and then go on to the same caffè, also every evening. There is a unchanging rhythm to Venetian life which all foreigners eventually adopt, if they stay long enough. There are advantages to being a regular customer: you tend to get better food, always get served more swiftly and, most importantly, the owner will set aside a table for you so you are not disappointed and have to go away hungry.

Longman and his group ate at Paolino's; not as grand as the establishments in the Piazza San Marco, which already earned their living mainly from visitors, as they had previously from the Austrian soldiers occupying the city. With its simple wooden chairs, cheap cutlery and roughly painted walls, Paolino's was for the poorer bracket of the respectable ranks, and Longman's friends were all of this type. I could dine in style, or I could dine in company; that was the choice that the city presented to me. I liked – have always liked – to eat well, but as there was no refined cooking in the city, or none that I had yet heard of, then I was prepared to compromise. Besides, there is a comradely sense among the genteelly impoverished which is often lacking among the wealthy; it was not a great sacrifice.

When I greeted the Consul, there were only two others sitting at a table prepared for six or more; periodically others drifted in as the evening wore on. There was, in fact, a group of ten or more who came there, but not every night; each evening there was a different combination, some of whom liked each other, others who plainly did not. Cort was one of those present that night, and he greeted me warmly; a quiet, softly spoken American was the other. This man spoke with the gentle, drawling tones of the South of his country, a strange accent and quite foreign until you got used to it. It is a way of speaking well-suited to a dry and lazy-sounding humour, which Mr Arnsley Drennan possessed in fine degree. He was rugged in appearance, and a few years older than I was, and spoke little until he was ready. When he did, he could be an entertaining conversationalist, delivering pithy observations in a voice which sounded as though he was half asleep, feigning a lack of interest in his own words that added greatly to the delivery. He was decidedly difficult to figure out; even Mr Longman, far more adept than I was, had failed to breach his walls of discretion and discover much about him. This, of course, added an air of mystery to his person which made him all the more cultivated by others.

'And is your wife to join us later?' I asked Longman.

'Oh, good heavens no,' he replied. 'She is at home. If you look around, you will see there are no women here. You will find few in any dining place, except for those in San Marco's. Mrs Cort also eats at home.'

'They must find that a little tedious,' I remarked.

Longman nodded. 'Perhaps. But what is to be done?'

Now I might have remarked that he could have eaten at home himself, or that perhaps the company of his wife might be preferable to that of friends, but I did not, and at the time it never occurred to me. A man must eat, and a man must have friends, or what of humanity is left in us? Longman's dilemma I found as insoluble as he did, but nevertheless my thoughts strayed briefly to consider how much his wife must pine for company. Then they paused briefly on the thought of Cort's wife in a similar purdah. They did not, however, then move on to considering how my own wife was faring without me.

'Where do you live, Mr Drennan? Do you have a lonely wife tending the hearth for you?'

It was a light-hearted question, but did not receive an equally facetious reply. 'I am a widower,' he said softly. 'My wife died some years back.'

'I am sorry for you,' I said, genuinely contrite at my faux pas.

'And I live on the Giudecca, some half hour's walk from here.'

'Mr Drennan has found the only inexpensive lodging in Venice,' Longman remarked.

'It is one room only, with no water and no maidservant,' he said with a smile. 'I live like most Venetians.'

'You are a long way from home, then,' I observed.

He regarded me intently. 'That I am, sir.'

He did not seem to find this line of conversation at all interesting, so he switched his gaze to the window and left matters to Longman, who was the impresario of dinner-table conversation.