The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano

no Pope existed, for Clement IV. was dead the year before, and no new election had taken place. So they went home to Venice to see how things stood there after their absence of so many years. The wife of Nicolo was no longer among the living, but he found his son Marco a fine lad of fifteen. The best and most authentic MSS. tell us no more than this. But one class of copies, consisting of the Latin version made by our Traveller’s contemporary, Francesco Pipino, and of the numerous editions based indirectly upon it, represents that Nicolo had left Venice when Marco was as yet unborn, and consequently had never seen him till his return from the East in 1269.[11] We have mentioned that Nicolo Polo had another legitimate son, by name Maffeo, and him we infer to have been younger than Marco, because he is named last (_Marcus et Matheus_) in the Testament of their uncle Marco the Elder. We do not know if they were by the same mother. They could not have been so if we are right in supposing Maffeo to have been the younger, and if Pipino’s version of the history be genuine. If however we reject the latter, as I incline to do, no ground remains for supposing that Nicolo went to the East much before we find him there viz., in 1260, and Maffeo may have been born of the same mother during the interval between 1254 and 1260. If on the other hand Pipino’s version be held to, we must suppose that Maffeo (who is named by his uncle in 1280, during his father’s second absence in the East) was born of a marriage contracted during Nicolo’s residence at home after his first journey, a residence which lasted from 1269 to 1271.[12] [Illustration: The Piazzetta at Venice. (From the Bodleian MS. of Polo.)] [Sidenote: Second Journey of the Polo Brothers, accompanied by Marco.]