"Mancini."
"Yes, Your Majesty, Mancini," Vesalius said. "I was Mali Mancini's potions teacher, because my father also served the Mancini family."
"As I understand it, the Vesalius family came from Brussels."
"The Habsburg Netherlands, Your Majesty. The Vesalius family has been a family of physicians for generations. Jan Vesalius obtained his medical degree from the University of Pavia, then took up a professorship at the University of Leuven. His son Everard Vesalius was the personal physician of Maximilian I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. His son Andries inherited his great-grandfather's position, and later became Charles V's personal attendant. My great-grandfather was the Andreas Vesalius you mentioned. He had three sons; the youngest was a posthumous child, my grandfather. My father was also his youngest son. When he was six, it was discovered that he was a wizard. Fortunately, we were in Italy at the time, and a wizard was willing to become his teacher and bring him into the inner world."
"Then in the outer world..."
"Once he entered the inner world, he was a dead man as far as the outer world was concerned, Your Majesty. There is still a small place in the Vesalius family tomb, where a child who died young is buried."
"I understand. Go on, Vesalius."
"That wizard was a potioneer, and my father became his apprentice. For that reason, and because of the talent he inherited through his bloodline, he became more successful than his teacher. So his teacher recommended him to the Mancini family."
"What sort of family are the Mancinis?"
"In the inner world, the Mancinis are a very ancient family, traceable to the days of ancient Rome. Yet before the fifth century, there were records of them in the outer world as well, though those records are little known." At