I say still, since Dürer happened to be visiting in Venice at a time when Bellini was quite old.

On the other hand this would have been before Dürer himself became practically as mad as Piero di Cosimo, presumably. Or as Hugo van der Goes.

Well, or as Friedrich Nietzsche, for all that I was once extremely fond of one of Friedrich Nietzsche's sentences too.

As a matter of fact still another person I was once fond of a sentence by, meaning Pascal, could doubtless be added to this same list, what with refusing to sit on a chair without an additional chair at either side of him, so as not to fall into space.

In fact I now have to wonder if I did not mix up those two sentences as well, and that it was Pascal who wrote the one about wandering through an endless nothingness.

I have no explanation for my generally speaking of Pascal as Pascal, but of Friedrich Nietzsche as Friedrich Nietzsche, incidentally.

The question of the two dots over Dürer would appear to be basically the same as that of the two dots over Brontë, however.

In either case, that remark about Giovanni Bellini would have naturally also had to have been made before Dürer died from a fever he caught in a Dutch swamp, where he had gone to look at a stranded whale.

Although doubtless it was conversely made long after Bellini himself had become Andrea Mantegna's brother-in-law.

I am now perhaps showing off.

But where I truly did listen to Maria Callas singing Medea, on second thought, was in a Volkswagen van filled with picture postcards near a town called Savona, which is some distance from Florence although also in Italy.

I had not noticed the tape deck in the van either, as it happened, since it had not been playing while I was driving.

Only when the van went over an embankment and turned upside down in the Mediterranean did the tape deck begin to play.

I was not able to think of any explanation for why it did that.

Neither can I think of one now.

As a matter of fact the tape deck did not begin to play as soon as the van turned upside down either.

Actually I had already gotten out and was standing in the Mediterranean up to my waist before it started.

What I was doing was trying to get some of the dirt out of my hair, from where the rubber mat from the floor had fallen on top of me.

While I was doing that, I understood that my shoulder had gotten hurt.

Doubtless it was not until I became convinced that my shoulder had not gotten hurt badly, in fact, that I began to hear Maria Callas.

Which is to say that perhaps she had been singing before that after all.

Good heavens, here I have been driving a car which is now upside down in the Mediterranean and I am hardly injured at all, I was thinking, which is assuredly something else that would have kept me from hearing her more quickly.

In addition to which I was doubtless distressed over how wet I had gotten.

Perhaps I have not mentioned how wet I had gotten.

Well, doubtless I merely assumed it was unnecessary to mention that, already having mentioned being up to my bottom in the Mediterranean.

Too, I have never been on my hands and knees on the inside of the roof of a car before, being doubtless one more thing that I was thinking.

Though perhaps I had also noticed the sign by then, saying Savona.

I have no recollection as to whether the sign indicated that Savona was ahead of me or behind me, however.

As a matter of fact I have no recollection of ever having driven through any town with that name either, either in the vehicle which went over the embankment or in the one that I switched to subsequently.

Had I driven through it in the vehicle which went over the embankment, I would have had to have been there already, naturally.

Then again, considering how long the embankment appeared to have been deteriorating, perhaps there had been some sort of old detour around Savona altogether.

As a general rule I preferred to avoid detours, however.

Which is only to say that my sense of direction is sometimes less than extraordinary.

Given a choice between driving off immediately on a road which turned away from the embankment, for instance, or walking until it appeared safe to continue straight on, I would have walked.

Although as a matter of fact there was an identical Volkswagen van not a stone's throw from where I was standing.

That one was full of soccer equipment.

Some of the equipment turned out to be shirts, as it happened, with the name Savona on their fronts.

Being wet, as I have mentioned, I changed into one of those.

In fact I folded several others onto the seat, for the same reason.

Not that I would have been driving until this point without additional clothing of my own, of course, what with still possessing baggage in those days.

There it all was, upside down in the Mediterranean, however.

Along with the picture postcards.

Most of the postcards showed identical views of the Borghese Gallery, in Rome, incidentally.

Although some few happened to be of the Via Vittorio Veneto, which is almost directly below the Borghese Gallery.

The reverse of that statement being equally true, obviously.

Modigliani was only thirty-five, by the way.

Now that I think about it, I may have worn that soccer shirt all the way to Paris, even.

Doubtless I stopped sitting on the other shirts after the rest of my own garments dried, however.

As a matter of fact I waited for them to become partly dry before I started driving.

What I did was take off my wraparound denim skirt and my cotton jersey and my underpants and leave them in the sunshine, and then put on the shirt that said Savona while I was waiting.

While I was waiting I also continued to listen to Maria Callas singing Medea.

The shirt was much too large, incidentally, hanging almost to my knees.

Still, for some reason I enjoyed wearing it.

In fact the shirt also had a numeral on it, although I have forgotten what numeral.

Doubtless this was because the numeral was on its back.

Where the shirt said Savona was across my breasts.

Although where it actually said that was all the way from under one arm to the other, because of how much too large the shirt was.

None of which answers the question as to whether I drove through Savona or not, meanwhile.

The fact that I do not remember doing so is in no way a verification that I did not, I do not believe.

One can drive through any number of towns without knowing the names of those towns.

Well, and especially in Russia, as I have perhaps even said, where even Fyodor Dostoievski could have driven right past St.

Petersburg without knowing it was St. Petersburg.

For that matter I myself had once wished to stop at Corinth, in Greece, but only some time later discovered that I had already been through Corinth and gone.

This was on a morning when I was driving counterclockwise, among mountains, from Athens toward Sparta, as it happens.

Which is to say that it was on the very morning after I had believed that somebody had called my name, beneath the Acropolis, and not far at all from the intersection of Katharine Hepburn Avenue and Archimedes Road.

How I nearly felt, in the midst of all that looking.

It was only the Parthenon, however, so beautiful in the afternoon sun, that had touched a chord.

Still, for a time, I had almost wished to weep.

But then looked into a guide to the birds of Southern Connecticut and Long Island Sound, for what it might tell me about seagulls.

Why I had wished to stop at Corinth was because of Medea herself, as a matter of fact, even if the opera had nothing to do with that at the time.

Although one doubts that there is any longer any evidence of her little boys' graves in either case.