However, the consequence was that I, who had been a vagabond as carefree and wandersome and willful as any wind, now found my once wide horizons narrowed down to daily attendance at the company counting house and warehouse, with twice-a-day intervals of conviviality and gossip on the Rialto. It was my obligation; somebody had to keep up the Compagnia Polo; my father had in effect retired from it, and Zio Mafìo was still and forever a housebound invalid. In Constantinople, my eldest uncle also gradually edged out of the business (and died, I think of boredom, not long after). So there my cousin Nicolò and here myself found ourselves inheriting the full responsibility of our separate branches of the company. Cuzìn Nico actually seemed to enjoy being a merchant prince. And I? Well, it was honest and useful and not onerous work I was doing, and I had not yet got bored with the humdrum sameness of it day after day, and I had more or less resigned myself to this being all of my life. But then two new things happened.

The first was your sending me, Luigi, my copy of your just-completed Description of the World. I immediately gave over every spare moment to reading our book and savoring it and, as I finished each sheet, giving it to a copyist to make additional manuscripts. I found it in all ways admirable, with only a few errors, which were no doubt to be blamed on my pace of narration while you set down the words, and my neglect to read over your original draft with a critical eye.

The errors consisted only in an occasional misdating of this or that event, an occasional adventure set down out of sequence, an occasional one of the difficult Eastern place-names misheard or misspelled—your writing Saianfu, for example, where it should have been Yun-nan-fu, and Yang-zho for Hang-zho (which would have put me and my Manzi tax-collector career in a quite different city and distant from the one where I actually served). However, I never earlier bothered to point out those minor errors to you, and I hope my doing so now does not distress you. They could mean nothing to anyone but me—who else in this Western world would know there is any difference between Yang-zho and Hang-zho? —and I did not even trouble to have my scribe correct them while making his copies.

I made formal presentation of one of the copies to the Doge Gradenigo, and he must immediately have circulated it among his Council of nobles, and they to all their families and even servants. I presented another copy to the priest of our new parish of San Zuàne Grisostomo, and he must have circulated it among all his clergy and congregation, because in no time I was famous again. With even more avidity than they had shown when I first came home from Kithai, people began seeking to scrape my acquaintance, accosting me at public functions, pointing at me in the street, on the Rialto, from passing gòndole. And your own copies, Luigi, must have proliferated and scattered like dandelion seeds, for merchants and travelers visiting Venice from abroad said they came as much for a look at me as to see the San Marco Basilica and other notable sights of the city. If I received them, many told me they had read the Description of the World in their home country, already translated into their native language.

As I have said, Luigi, it did us little good to omit from that narrative many things we thought too marvelous to be believed. Some of the enthusiasts seeking to meet me were seeking to meet what they properly considered a Far Journeyer, but a great many wished to meet a man they mistakenly considered Un Grand Romancier, author of an imaginative and entertaining fiction, and others clearly wished only to ogle a Prodigious Liar, as they might have flocked to watch the frusta of some eminent criminal at the piazzetta pillars. It seemed that the more I protested—“I told nothing but the truth!”—the less I was believed, and the more humorously (but fondly) I was regarded. I could hardly complain of being the cynosure of all eyes, and all those eyes warmly admiring, but I should have preferred that they admired me as something other than a fablemaker.

I earlier said that our family’s new Ca’ Polo was situated in the Corte Sabionera. It was, yes, and of course it still is, physically, and I suppose even the latest street map of Venice gives the official name of that little square as Ships-Ballast Court. But no resident of the city called it that any more. It was known to everybody as the Corte del Milione—in my honor—for I was now known as Marco Milione, man of the million lies and fictions and exaggerations. I had become both famous and notorious.

In time, I learned to live with my new and peculiar reputation, and even to disregard the troops of urchins who sometimes followed me on my walks from the Corte to the Compagnia or the Rialto. They would brandish stick swords and prance in a sort of gallop gait, and spank their own behinds while they did so, and shout things like “Come hither, great princes!” and “The orda will get you!” Such constant attention was a nuisance, and enabled even strangers to recognize me and greet me at times when I might have preferred anonymity. But it was partly on account of my being now conspicuous that another new thing occurred.

I forget where I was walking that day, but, on the street, I came face to face with the little girl Doris who had been my childhood playmate and had in those days so much adored me. I was astonished. By rights, Doris should have been nearly as old as I was—in her early forties—and probably, she being of the lower class, already a gray and wrinkled and worn-out drudge of a maràntega. But here she was, grown only to young womanhood—in her middle twenties, no more—and decently attired, not in the shapeless black of old street women, and just as golden blonde and fresh-faced and pretty as she had been when I last saw her. I was more than astonished, I was thunderstruck. I so far forgot my manners as to blurt her name, right there on the street, but at least I thought to address her respectfully:

“Damìna Doris Tagiabue!”

She might have bridled at my effrontery and swept her skirts aside and stalked on past me. But she saw my trailing retinue of urchins playing Mongols, and she had to suppress a smile, and she said amiably enough:

“You are Messer Marco of the—I mean—”

“Marco of the Millions. You can say it, Doris. Everyone does. And you used to call me worse things. Marcolfo and such.”

“Messere, I fear you have mistaken me. I assume you must once have known my mother, whose maiden name was Doris Tagiabue.”

“Your mother!” For a moment I forgot that Doris must by now be a matron, if not a crone. Perhaps because this girl was so like my memory of her, I remembered only the unformed and untamed little zuzzurrullona I had known. “But she was just a child!”

“Children grow up, Messere,” she said, and added mischievously, “Even yours will,” and she indicated my half-dozen miniature Mongols.

“Those are not mine. Beat the retreat, men!” I shouted at them, and with much rearing and wheeling of their imaginary steeds they retired to a distance.

“I was but jesting, Messere,” said the so-familiar stranger, smiling openly now, and even more resembling the merry sprite of my recollection. “Among the things well-known in Venice is that the Messer Marco Polo is still a bachelor. My mother, however, grew up and married. I am her daughter and my name is Donata.”

“A pretty name for a pretty young lady: the given one, the gift.” I bowed as if we had been formally introduced. “Dona Donata, I would be grateful if you would tell me where your mother lives now. I should like to see her again. We were once—close friends.”

“Almèi, Messere. Then I regret to tell you that she died of an influenza di febbre some years ago.”

“Gramo mi! I lament to hear it. She was a dear person. My condolences, Dona Donata.”