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After preparing two or three petri dishes, Hedy suddenly realized a problem.
How would she first eliminate the other bacterial colonies in the dishes?
What if she spent all that time cultivating, only to have the glass vessels filled with unrelated colonies, making all her efforts useless?
The culture medium needed to be sterilized and sealed first, but clearly, boiling water wasn’t the solution.
Alcohol?
But there wasn’t any alcohol, was there? Wine didn’t seem to work either.
Dechio watched as Hedy froze in the middle of her work, and he thought she might have been possessed. Cautiously, he reached out and poked her.
Hedy snapped out of her thoughts, instinctively asking, “Do you have a steamer?”
Boiling water wouldn’t work, but steaming with high-temperature steam should do the trick.
The maid followed her to the kitchen.
The three servings of beef broth had solidified into jelly and were placed into the steamer, steamed over high heat for twenty minutes. Afterward, they were immediately sealed.
Three petri dishes: one with mold from the orange peel, another with the pus, and the third was set aside in a cool, clean place to be preserved until the first two bacterial colonies had developed.
Once she had finished with all that, Hedy found some time to visit Da Vinci.
Her residence was quite far from his, and though she had spent seventy or eighty euros in the past to visit, now that she actually lived in the Palazzo Vecchio, she still couldn’t navigate thestreets properly.
During this break, she spotted many beautiful paintings and faintly heard the sound of a violin playing.
Da Vinci was sitting in a wicker chair in the backyard, flipping through a contract.
The moment he heard her footsteps, he knew it was Hedy and waved his hand, saying, “I washed my hands, three times.”
Hedy raised an eyebrow and nodded, acknowledging his efforts.
“What are you working on?”
“The monastery contract,” Da Vinci said, stroking his chin. “This one really tests my math skills.”
Although he was sponsored by the Medici family as a painter, this title only provided him with a fixed residence and investment.
Like Botticelli, he could still independently run his own workshop, taking on various sculpture, portrait, and even bronze statue commissions.
Today, Piero da Vinci had come to see him, holding two chickens as a bribe for this contract.
Once he signed it, he would have to decorate the monastery’s clock face and paint an entire Adoration of the Magi.
“This contract sounds pretty good,” Da Vinci said, raising an eyebrow, ready to sign.
“Wait—” Hedy reached out and took the contract away, her expression showing clear concern. “I’ll read it first.”
Her former employer seemed a bit dissatisfied: “I understand things very well.”
Hedy silently read through all the terms, frowning as she looked at him.
“How did you decide this was ‘pretty good’ from what’s written here?”
CHAPTER 5
