I was 67 when a terrible plague epidemic broke out in the middle of summer, killing one in three Venetians. 
 
After a year, the Senate decides to invoke divine help by voting for a new church. 
 
A few years ago I had succeeded Sansovino in the position of Proto della Serenissima, or chief architect of the Republic: I was designing inspired, relentlessly, an intertwining of floors and volumes of white marble, bricks and marmorino that grew quickly, for the first procession on the pontoon bridge that I had time to see, the church still under construction, on the threshold of my seventies. 
 
The plague was over.