The rest of the tour was relatively uneventful. In the Medieval galleries, Formosus recounted his tales of stealing into monastic scriptoria to pour over the preserved and copied ancient texts and leave his "little surprises," the illuminated manuscripts he prepared purely for the sake of historic preservation.

As they moved on through the museum's vast collections, eventually Formosus had to admit that he was getting to the point where things were becoming unfamiliar; he had gone into the ground in almost exactly A.D. 1,000, and after that he knew nothing.

By the time they reached the galleries of the Renaissance, Formosus was thoroughly absorbed in trying to comprehend the spirit of what for him was a new age. His eyes danced as he eyed the sculptures, the paintings, the gilded saltcellars, church altars.

"I envy you, Marius, truly I do," he remarked at one point. "This appears to have been a lovely time, at least for art."

Marius nodded. "I lived in the thick of it, or at least I tried." He pointed to a painting by El Greco. "See the date on the card?" It read 1599. "That is the date my world changed."

No more was said on the matter. Formosus knew that that was the year Marius had been routed out by Santino's coven, the year Armand had been ripped from his arms, the beginning of a long and painful recovery… and a long and painful period of loneliness.

As they progressed they began to move more quickly. The night would be over in a few hours and there was no way that Formosus could possibly absorb all of it anyway, so Marius let him examine those things which struck his fancy and pointed out pieces of particular interest. The furniture galleries amazed him. The change in painting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries astounded him. To Marius' surprise, cubism struck Formosus as particularly delightful - "strange but perfect" he called it.

At last they were through with the museum. They exited through a door at the rear of the building, Marius taking care to quiet any alarms, and walked directly into the sprawling, lush greenery of Central Park. This was the way they had arrived, Marius flying Formosus the blocks from the hotel.

On the way out, Marius wanted to show Formosus a bit more of the park, and so he took him by Cleopatra's needle, the great Egyptian obelisk, with its rows of faded hieroglyphics, symbols that had survived millennia but hadn't been able to withstand a century of New York's polluted air. By the light of the moon, they entered the park's many garden and groves, walked on the shores of the Reservoir, climbed the steps of the "Castle" and gazed at the skyline.

When they had crossed the park and reached Central Park West, Marius had a surprise. He stood on the sidewalk by a stone entrance gate, a mischievous look on his face. "Now, Formosus, tell me how are we going to get home."

Formosus was puzzled. "We are not going to fly again? Could we walk? Or do we get inside one of those yellow automobiles?"

"Ah, you're close, so close! Formosus, I believe it's time I stop sheltering you from this modern city. We're not going to take a 'cab,' as they're called - we're going to take the subway!"

Now Formosus was quite befuddled. "Sub-way. Under-way. Under… ground way? What way?" Suddenly he caught the image from Marius' mind. His eyes widened. "Oh! A… train?! Going under the street? Oh, yes, I remember that now. I had been doing a lot of reading, I have even watched some television, and now I remember. Oh. I see."

Formosus looked around absently, trying to seem more worldly wise than he was but not still not knowing exactly what would come next. Marius took his hand and said, "As the phrase goes, don't worry your pretty little head. There is a station just around the corner."

A few moments later Marius was putting money in the token machine and feeding the tokens into the turnstiles. As they took the stairs down to the platform, Formosus' expression was that of man watching an erupting volcano's lava swallow his home. The darkness, the poor air quality, the sound of the fans and machinery… it was clearly very hard for him to deal with, although evidently he was trying.

When the train arrived, Marius tugged on Formosus' arm and there they were, two not-so-ordinary passengers riding south at 4 a.m. The car was almost empty. Near them, at the end of the car, a handsome but ragged beggar with a violin had fallen asleep after a night of playing the evening crowds. Marius went into his wallet and slipped a $100 bill into the inside of the man's jacket. Meanwhile Formosus was looking out the windows into the blackness, wincing with every squeal of the breaks.

"This is interesting," he remarked half-way to their destination. "I am glad you took me on this trip. I need to 'get out more' as it is said today."

Marius laughed, just as he always did when Formosus attempted to use modern day English or, as was the case often, attempted to translate modern day English into Latin. "Yes, you should go explore. We will do it together. But for now, there is the hotel, and then tomorrow night, another surprise."

Formosus turned away from the window looking disgusted. "We are not going home on one of those flying machines, are we?"

A shake of the head. "No, I would never subject you to that. Easier for me to fly on my own. No, this is a different surprise altogether."