For which we stand

From the foot of the Great Khan's throne a majolica pavement extended.

Marco Polo, mute informant, spread out on it his samples of the wares he had brought back from his journeys to the ends of the empire:

a helmet,
a seashell,
a coconut,
a fan.



Arranging the objects in a certain order...
and occasionally shifting them with studied moves,
the ambassador tried to depict for the monarch's eyes the vicissitudes of his travels, the conditions of the empire, the perogatives of the distant provincial seats...



To each piece, in turn, they could give an appropriate meaning:

a knight could stand for a real horseman, or for a procession of coaches, an army on the march, an equestrian monument:

a queen could be a lady looking down from her balcony, a fountain, a church with a painted dome, a quince tree.


Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (again)