he had no solid culture, he was fascinated by the expectation of discovering some great secret.  It was the vice of the age to confound science with sorcery, and Bruno had lent himself to this delusion by his whimsical style.  Perhaps the booksellers, who then played a part scarcely less prominent than that of the barbers in diffusing gossip, inflamed Mocenigo’s curiosity by painting the author of the puzzling volume in seductive colors.  Any how this man sent two letters, one through Ciotto, and one direct to Bruno, praying him to visit Venice, professing his desire for instruction, and offering him an honorable place of residence.

[Footnote 101:  Sarpi mentions the return of Ciotto from the fair (Lettere, vol. i. p. 527).]

[Footnote 102:  Ciotto, before the Inquisition, called the book De Minimo Magno et Mensura.  It may therefore have been the De Triplici Minimo et Mensura, and not the De Monade (Vita di G.B. p. 334).]

[Footnote 103:  Mocenigo told Ciotto:  I wish first to see what I can get from him of those things which he promised me, so as not wholly to lose what I have given him, and afterwards I mean to surrender him to the censure of the Holy Office’ (Berti, p. 335).]

In an evil hour Bruno accepted this invitation.  No doubt he longed to see Italy again after so many years of exile.  Certainly he had the right to believe that he would find hospitality and a safe refuge in Venice.  Had not a Venetian noble pledged his word for the former?  Was not the latter a privilege which S. Mark extended to all suppliants?  The Republic professed to shield even the outlaws of the Inquisition, if they claimed her jurisdiction.  There was therefore no palpable imprudence in the step which Bruno now took.  Yet he took it under circumstances which would have made a cautious man mistrustful.  Of Mocenigo he knew merely nothing.  But he did know that writs from the Holy Office had been out against himself in Italy for many years, during which he had spent his time in conversing with heretics and printing works of more than questionable orthodoxy.[104] Nothing proves the force of the vagrant’s impulse which possessed Bruno, more than his light and ready consent to Giovanni Mocenigo’s proposal.

He set off at once from Frankfort, leaving the MS. of one of his metaphysical poems in Wechel’s hands to print, and found himself at the end of 1591 a guest of his unknown patron.  I have already described what Mocenigo hoped to gain from Bruno—­the arts of memory and invention, together with glimpses into occult science.[105] We know how little Bruno was able to satisfy an in satiable curiosity in such matters.  One of his main weaknesses was a habit of boasting and exaggerating his own powers, which at first imposed upon a vulgar audience and then left them under the impression that he was a charlatan.  The bookseller Ciotto learned from students who had conversed with him at Frankfort, that ’he professed an art of memory and other secrets in the sciences, but that all the persons who had dealt with him in such matters, had left him discontinued.’[106]