Leave, Richard, Taft instructs from the podium. Don't return.

We all follow Curry's slow progress toward the exit. The sophomore at the door watches with wide, fearful eyes. In a moment he passes across the threshold, into the anteroom, and is gone from sight.

Intense murmuring seizes the lecture hall as soon as he has vanished. What the hell was that? I ask, looking back at the exit. In our corner, Gil steps over toward Paul. Are you okay?

Paul is fumbling. I don't understand… Gil places an arm over his shoulder. What did you say to him?

Nothing, Paul says. I have to go after him. His hands are shaking, the diary still tucked between them. I need to talk to him.

Charlie begins to protest, but Paul is too upset to argue. Before any of us can insist otherwise, he turns and heads for the door.

I'll go with him, I say to Charlie.

He nods. Taft's voice has begun to roll again in the background, and when I look up at the stage on the way out, the giant seems to be staring directly at me. From her seat, Katie catches my attention. She mouths a question about Paul, but I can't understand what she's saying. Zipping my coat, I head out of the auditorium.

In the courtyard, canopies lurch like skeletons in the dark, dancing on their peg legs. The wind has softened, but the snow continues, thicker than before. Around the corner I hear Paul's voice.

Are you okay?

I turn the corner. Not ten feet away is Richard Curry, jacket fluttering in the wind.

What's wrong? Paul asks.

Get back inside, Curry says.

I step forward to hear more, but snow crunches beneath my feet. Curry looks over, and their conversation halts. I expect some spark of recognition in his eyes, but find none. After putting his hand on Paul's shoulder, Curry slowly backs away.

Richard! Can't we talk somewhere? Paul calls out.

But the old man distances himself quickly, slipping his arms into his suit jacket. He doesn't answer.

It takes me a second to regain my wits and go to Paul's side. Together we watch Curry disappear into the shadow of the chapel.

I need to find out where Bill got the diary, he says.

Right now?

Paul nods.

Where is he?

Taft's office at the Institute.

I look out across the courtyard. Paul's only transportation is an old Datsun he bought with his stipend from Curry. The Institute is a long way from here.

Why'd yow leave the lecture? he asks.

I thought you might need some help.

My bottom lip is shivering. Snow is gathering in Paul's hair.

I'll be okay, he says.

But he's the one without a coat.

Come on. We can drive out there together.

He looks down at his shoes. I have to talk to him alone.

You're sure?

He nods.

At least take this, I offer, unzipping the peacoat.

He smiles. Thanks.

Call us if you need anything.

Paul puts on the coat and slips the diary under his arm. After a second he begins walking off into the snow.

You're sure you don't want help? I shout before he's out of earshot.

He turns back, but only to nod.

Good luck, I say, almost to myself.

And as the cold plunges below the neckline of my shirt, I know there's nothing left to do. When Paul vanishes into the distance, I head back inside.

On my way up to the auditorium I pass by the blonde without a word and find that Charlie and Gil haven't moved from their spot in the rear of the lecture hall. They pay me no attention; Taft has won their interest. His voice is hypnotic.

Everything okay? Gil whispers.

I nod, not wanting to get into the details.

Certain modern interpreters, Taft is saying, have been content to accept that the book conforms to many conventions of an old Renaissance genre, the bucolic romance. But if the Hypnerotomachia is just a conventional love story, then why are only thirty pages devoted to the romance between Poliphilo and Polia? Why do the other three hundred and forty pages form a maze of subplots, strange encounters with mythological figures, dissertations on esoteric subjects? If only one out of every ten words pertains to the romance itself, then how do we explain the other ninety percent of the book?

Charlie turns to me again. Do you know all this stuff?

Yeah. I've heard the same lecture a dozen times over the dinner table at home.

In short, it is no mere love story. Poliphilo's 'struggle for love in a dream'-as the Latin title would have it-is much more complex than boy-meets-girl. For five hundred years scholars have exposed the book to the most powerful interpretive tools of their day, and not one of them has found a way out of the labyrinth.

How difficult is the Hypnerotomachia'? Consider how its translators have fared. The first French translator condensed the opening sentence, which was originally more than seventy words long, into less than a dozen. Robert Dallington, a contemporary of Shakespeare's who attempted a closer translation, simply despaired. He gave up before he was halfway through. No English translation has been attempted since. Western intellectuals have considered the book a byword for obscurity almost since it was published. Rabelais made fun of it. Castiglione warned Renaissance men not to speak like Poliphilo when wooing women.

Why, then, is it so difficult to understand? Because it contains not only Latin and Italian, but also Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The author wrote in several of them at once, sometimes interchangeably. When those languages were not enough, he invented words of his own.

In addition, there are mysteries surrounding the book. To begin with, until very recently no one knew who wrote it. The secret of the author's identity was so closely guarded that not even the great Aldus himself, its publisher, knew who'd composed his most famous work. One of the Hypnerotomachia editors wrote an introduction to it in which he asks the Muses to reveal the author's name. The Muses refuse. They explain that 'it is better to be cautious, to keep divine things from being devoured by vengeful jealousy'

My question to you, then, is this: Why would the author have gone to such trouble if he were writing nothing more than a bucolic romance? Why so many languages? Why two hundred pages on architecture? Why eighteen pages on a temple of Venus, or twelve on an underwater labyrinth? Why fifty on a pyramid? Or another hundred and forty on gems and metals, ballet and music, food and table settings, flora and fauna?

Perhaps more important, what Roman could have learned so much about so many subjects, mastered so many languages, and convinced the greatest printer in Italy to publish his mysterious book without so much as mentioning his name?

Above all, what were the 'divine things' alluded to in the introduction, which the Muses refused to divulge? What was the vengeful jealousy they feared these things might inspire?

The answer is that this is no romance. The author must have intended something else-something that we scholars have as yet failed to understand. But where do we begin searching for it?

I do not intend to answer that question for you. Instead, I will leave you with a puzzle of your own to muse over. Solve this, and you are one step closer to understanding what the Hypnerotomachia means.

With that, Taft triggers the slide machine with a pump of his palm on the remote. Three images appear over the screen, disarming in their stark black and white.

These are three prints from the Hypnerotomachia, depicting a nightmare that Polia suffers late in the story. As she relates, the first shows a child riding a burning chariot into a forest, drawn by two naked women whom he whips like beasts. Polia looks on from her hiding place in the woods.