turned up, finally, right thumb and middle finger, stolen from his corpse, from the basilica those three hundred years ago. A tooth, a bit of spine, too, hidden in a cup, blown glass and passed generation to generation of a marquis’ family, passed like a birthright, like a surname, like titles and deeds to houses and walls, locked in a vault, only revealed in the whispers of death, until the whispers lost words, and no one even knew what the cup held anymore. When poverty bent the marquis’ wild heirs, centuries into no longer noble, a collector of glass bid at auction and won the small cup, a vessel he bought for its crystalline globe, never knowing its gently curved bowl held the light touch of genius, the pulse of all time.