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Night the Fifth

Between the 15th and 16th September, 1683

My mood was rather melancholy when the abbot called on me to descend yet again under the ground. The supper of cows' teats had given fresh heart to our lodgers; but not alas to me, weighed down as I was by the sequence of revelations and discoveries concerning Mourai and Fouquet, not to mention the gloomy judgements of Dulcibeni. Nor had the task of writing my diary improved matters.

The abbot must have sensed my state of mind, for while we went on our way, he made no effort to enliven the conversation. Nor was he in the best of moods, although visibly more tranquil by comparison with the desperate laments which I had heard him singing after dinner. He seemed to be suffering under the weight of some unspoken anxiety, which rendered him unusually taciturn. As might have been expected, Ugonio and Ciacconio did what they could to make the situation worse.

The two corpisantari had already been awaiting us for some time when we joined them under the Piazza Navona.

"Tonight, we must clarify our ideas a little concerning the underground city," announced Melani.

He produced a sheet of paper on which he had traced a series of lines schematically. DONZELLO

"Here is what I would have liked to obtain from these two wretches, instead of which we have to depend upon ourselves."

It was a rough map of the galleries which we had explored to date. On the first night, we had descended from the Donzello to the opening onto the Tiber, taking a gallery which Atto had marked with the letter A. In the roof of that gallery we had, later, discovered the trapdoor through which we had taken the passage which led to the ruins of Domitian's Stadium, under the Piazza Navona, corresponding to the letter B. From the Piazza Navona, through the narrow hole in which we had to bend double, we took passage C. From that point, there began a long curve (marked E) along which we had followed Stilone Priaso and which had led us to the space painted with frescoes, in all probability beneath the Palace of the Chancellery. Thence, we had emerged at the Arch of the Acetari. Finally, passage D branched out from the left-hand side of passage C.

"There are three galleries of which we know the beginning but not the end: B, C and D. It would be wise to explore them before undertaking any further pursuits. The first is the left-hand branch of the gallery which one takes upon emerging from the trapdoor. It goes in the general direction of the Tiber, but we know nothing else about it. The second gallery is that which turns off from the Piazza Navona and proceeds in a straight line. The third deviates from that gallery to the left. We shall begin with the third one, gallery D."

We advanced cautiously until we reached the point where Ugonio and Ciacconio had stationed themselves the night before when they assaulted Stiione Priaso. Atto made us stop there to check our position from the map.

"Gfrrrlubh," said Ciacconio, to catch our attention.

A few paces in front of us, an object lay on the ground. Abbot Melani ordered us all to halt and advanced first to examine our find. It was a small green glass phial from which there had spilled a (now dry) stream, then clear drops, of red blood.

"What miracle have we here?" sighed Abbot Melani with a tired voice.

It took no little time to calm down the corpisantari, who were convinced that the phial was one of the relics for which they were forever searching. Ciacconio had begun to patter around it, gurgling frenetically. Ugonio had attempted to seize the phial, and Atto had been compelled to thrust him back., without sparing him a few blows. In the end, the corpisantari ceased their agitation and we were all able to gather our ideas together. It was clearly not the blood of a martyr: gallery D, in which we had found the blood was neither a catacomb, a columbarium, nor indeed any ancient holy place, Abbot Melani reminded us, exhorting the two treasure hunters to calm down. Above all, however, the blood which it contained was hardly dry, and had even spilled onto the ground: therefore it belonged to a living being, or to one not long dead-not to a martyr who had lived centuries ago. Atto wrapped the phial in a fine piece of cloth and put it in the pocket of his doublet, erasing with one foot the blackish traces of liquid remaining on the ground. We decided to continue our exploration: perhaps the solution to the mystery would be found further on.

Melani said nothing, but it was all too easy to guess his thoughts: yet another unexpected find, yet another object whose provenance was hard to determine; and yet again, blood.

As on the night before, the underground passage appeared to turn gradually to the left.

"That, too, is strange," commented Abbot Melani. "It is what I least expected."

Finally, the gallery seemed to be leading back towards the surface. Rather than a stairway, this time we encountered a rather gentle incline. Suddenly, however, a spiral staircase appeared before our eyes, with stone steps skilfully set into the ground. The corpisantari seemed unwilling to go any further. Ugonio and Ciacconio were ill-tempered: after having to give up the page from the Bible, the phial, too, had been snatched from before their eyes.

"Very well, then, you are to remain here until our return," Melani reluctantly conceded.

As we were beginning our ascent, I asked the abbot why he was so surprised that gallery D, which we had just traversed, should curve to the left.

"It is quite simple: if you have carefully studied the map which I gave you, you will understand that we have returned almost to our point of departure, in other words, to the vicinity of our hostelry."

We climbed the stairs slowly, until I heard a muffled noise, followed by Abbot Melani's lamenting. He had struck his head against a trapdoor. I had to help him push until the wooden lid opened.

Thus we gained access to an enclosed space in which the air was acrid with urine and damp with the reek of animals. We were in a stable.

Standing there was a small two-wheeled carriage, which we briefly examined. It had a leather hood, protected by waxed canvas stretched over a metal framework embellished with smooth iron knobs. Inside, a rosy sky was painted on the roof, while the seats were made comfortable by a pair of cushions. Next to it stood a more ordinary but larger carriage, with four wheels, and again a cowhide hood; and nearby, silent, but somewhat perturbed by our presence, stood two rather old and neglected horses.

Taking advantage of the faint light of the lamp, I looked inside the coach. Hanging behind the back seat, I discovered a large crucifix. From the wooden cross there hung a little iron cage which contained a glass sphere, within which was visible a small, indistinct brownish mass.

Atto too had approached, to illuminate the interior of the carriage.

"It must be a relic," said he, bringing his lantern closer. "But we must not waste time."

All around us lay buckets for washing the carriages, and combs, currycombs and horse-brushes (which almost caused us to trip up noisily).

Without tarrying any longer than necessary, we identified a doorway which, in all probability, led into a house. I tried the door carefully. It was closed.

In disappointment, I turned towards Abbot Melani. He too seemed to be hesitating. We could certainly not dream of forcing the lock, thus risking being surprised by the house's inhabitants and perhaps facing a double sentence, for escaping and for attempted housebreaking.

I was just thinking how fortunate we had been not to chance upon anyone in the stables, when suddenly I saw a monstrous hooked hand clutch at Abbot Melani's shoulder. I somehow managed to stifle a scream, while Melani stiffened, preparing to confront the stranger who was attacking him from behind. He told me to grab something, a stick, a bucket, anything and to strike the attacker. Too late. The individual was between us.

It was Ugonio. I saw Atto blanch with terror, so much so that he suffered a fit of dizziness and had to sit down for a few minutes.

"Idiot, you almost killed me with fright. I told you to remain down below."

"Ciacconio has scented a presence. He desiderates to be commandeered."

"Very well, let us return down the stairs and… but what have you in your hand?"

Ugonio held out both his forearms and looked questioningly at both his hands, as though he did not know what Atto was referring to. In his right hand, however, he grasped the crucifix with the relic which we had seen hanging inside the carriage.

"Put it straight back," ordered Abbot Melani. "No one must know that we have entered this place."

After grudgingly returning the crucifix to its place, Ugonio approached the closed door and brought his face close to the keyhole, examining the lock.

"What are you wasting time with, animal? Can you not see that it is closed and that there is no light on the other side?" Atto rebuked him.

"It may be that the portal can be unclavitated. To obtain, of course, more benefice than malefice," replied Ugonio, without losing his composure. And from his filthy overcoat he produced as though by enchantment an enormous iron ring to which were tied dozens, indeed hundreds of keys of the most varied styles and dimensions.

Atto and I were astounded. At once, Ugonio began with feline rapidity to sort through that clinking mass. In a few moments, his claws stopped at an old half-rusted key.

"Now Ugonio unclavitates and, if one is not to be a rustic physician, by fulfilling one's obligations the Christian's jubilations are increased," said he, cackling with laughter as he turned the key in the lock. The mechanism opened with a click.

Later, the two corpisantari would explain this last surprise of theirs. To gain access to the underground city, they often needed to make their way through cellars, store-rooms or doors which were locked or padlocked. In order to resolve the problem (and, as Ugonio insisted, "by decreasing the scrupules rather than increasing the scruples") the pair had dedicated themselves to the methodical corruption of dozens of servants, serving-maids and menservants. Well aware that the owners of the houses and villas who possessed the keys would never, but never, allow them to lay their hands on them, the two corp- isantari had haggled with servants to obtain copies of those keys. In exchange, they passed some of their precious relics to the servants. They had, of course, made sure that in the course of such trafficking, they did not release the best items of their collection. At times, however, they had been constrained to make painful sacrifices; for the key to a garden through which one obtained access to catacombs near the Via Appia, they had, for instance, had to give up a fragment of Saint Peter's shoulder-blade. It was less than obvious how they succeeded in such bargaining, what with Ciacconio's garglings and Ugonio's circumlocutions, yet it was clear that they possessed the keys to the cellars and palace foundations of a goodly part of the city. And those doors for which they did not possess the keys could often be opened with one of the many other more or less similar ones in their possession.

Therefore, once the door from the stable had been opened with Ugonio's key, we could be sure that we were in an inhabited house. Muffled by distance, we could hear sounds and voices drifting down from the upper floors. Before extinguishing the only lantern that we still had lit, a few seconds remained in which to take in our surroundings. We had entered a great kitchen, full of dishes, with a huge cauldron, three smaller ones, iron pans, basins large and small, copper cooking pots, moulds with iron handles, various stoves, kettles, jugs and coffee pots. All the kitchen equipment was hanging on the wall or kept in a sideboard of silver poplar wood or in a small cupboard, and almost all were of the best quality, as I would have wished the few utensils at my disposal in the kitchen of the Donzello to be. We crossed the room, taking care not to make any noise by tripping over one of the cooking pots that lay on the floor.

At the opposite end of the kitchen, there was another door; and through this we entered the next room. We were forced to light the lantern for a moment, but I covered it prudently with my hand.

We found ourselves facing a four-poster bed with a striped yellow and red satin cover. On either side stood a pair of little wooden tables and, in a corner, a simple chair, covered in worn stamped leather. Judging by the old furnishings, and by a certain stale and stuffy odour, the chamber must have been in disuse.

We gestured to Ugonio to go back and wait for us in the stable: in the event of our having to beat a rapid retreat, two intruders might perhaps succeed in escaping, but with three, we should certainly be in worse trouble.

The chamber which we had just visited also had a second door. After again extinguishing the lantern, we listened carefully at that doorway. The residents' voices seemed distant enough for us to risk opening it, which we did most delicately, entering another, fourth, space. We were now in the entrance-hall of the house. The front door, as we could sense despite the almost complete darkness, was to our left. In front of us, at the end of a little corridor, began a spiral staircase, set into the wall and leading to the upper storey. From the top of the stairs, there filtered an uncertain glimmer which just enabled us to find our way.

With extreme caution, we approached the stairs. The noises and speech which we had first heard in the distance now seemed to have almost died out. Mad and foolhardy though the idea seemed to me, Atto began to climb the stairs, and I behind him.

Halfway up the stairs, between the ground and the first floor, we found a little room lit by a candelabrum, with various fine objects in it which we stopped briefly to examine. 1 was astounded by the wealth of the furnishings, the like of which I had never seen before: we must be in the house of a well-to-do gentleman. The abbot approached a little inlaid walnut table covered with a green cloth. He raised his eyes and discovered a number of fine paintings: an Annunciation, a Pieta, a Saint Francis with Angels in a gold-bordered walnut frame, another picture representing John the Baptist, a little picture on paper with a tortoiseshell and gilt frame and, lastly, a plaster octagon bas-relief representing Mary Magdalene. I saw a wash-stand which seemed to me to be in pear-wood, turned with great art and skill. Above it, there hung a small copper and gold crucifix with a cross fashioned from ebony. Completing the little parlour, there was a little table in light-coloured wood with its fine little drawers, and two chairs.

In a few more steps, we reached the first floor, which seemed at first to be deserted and enveloped in gloom. Atto Melani pointed out to me the next flight, leading even higher, and on which the light fell clearer and stronger. We craned our necks and saw that on the wall by the stairs was a sconce with four large candles, beyond which one came to the second floor, where, in all probability, the people of the house were at that moment.

We remained briefly immobile on the stairs, listening intently. There was not a sound; we continued to climb. Suddenly, however, a loud noise startled us. A door on the first floor had been opened and then roughly slammed, and in the interval we heard two men's voices, too confused to be intelligible. Gradually, we heard steps approaching the stairs from the chambers. Atto and I looked at one another in confusion; hurriedly, we rushed up the four or five remaining stairs. Beyond the sconce, we found a second little room halfway up, and there we halted, hoping that the footsteps would not continue up the stairs, in the direction of our temporary hiding place. We were lucky. We heard one door close, and then another, until we could hear neither footsteps nor the two men's voices.

Crouching awkwardly in the little room halfway up the stairs, Atto and I exchanged looks of relief. Here too, a candelabrum afforded us sufficient light. Once we had recovered our breath and allowed our panic to subside, we took a look around us. Around the walls of the second small room, we discovered tall and well-stocked bookshelves, with many volumes placed in good order. Abbot Melani took one in his hand and examined the frontispiece.

It was a Life of the Blessed Margaret of Cortona, by an unknown author. Atto closed the book and returned it to its place. There then passed through his hands: the first of an eight-volume Theatrum Vitae Humanae, a Life of Saint Philip Neri, a Fundamentum Doctrinae motus gravium Vitali Iordani, a Tractatus de Ordine Iudiciorum, a fine edition of the Institutiones ac meditationes in Graecam linguam, a French grammar, and lastly, a book which explained The Art of Learning to Die a Good Death.

After rapidly leafing through this last curious volume of moral reflections, Atto shook his head in irritation.

"What are you looking for?" I asked him in the lowest voice of which I was capable.

"Is it not obvious? The owner. These days, everyone marks their books, at least those of value, with their name."

So I assisted Atto and there soon passed through my hands the De arte Gimnastica of Gerolamo Mercuriale, a Vocabularium Ecclesiasticum and a Pharetra divini Amoris, while Atto set aside with a snort the Works of Plato and a Theatre of Mankynde by Gaspare de Villa Lobos, before greeting with surprise a copy of Bacchus in Tuscany by his beloved Francesco Redi.

"I do not understand it," he whispered impatiently at the end of the search. "There is everything here: history, philosophy, Christian doctrine, languages ancient and modern, devotional works, various curiosities and even a little astrology. Here, take a look: The Arcana of the Stars by a certain Antonio Carnevale and the Ephemerides Andreae Argoli. Yet in no book is there the owner's name."

Seeing that fortune had thus far remained on our side, and that we had avoided only by a hair's-breadth being surprised by the master of the house, I was about to suggest to Atto that we should be on our way when, for the first time, I came across a book on medicine.

I had in fact been searching on another shelf, where I came across a volume by Vallesius, then the Medicina Septentrionalis and Practical Anatomy by Bonetus, a Booke of Roman Antidotes, a Liber observationum medicarum Ioannes Chenchi, a De Mali Ipocondriaci by Paolo Tacchia, a Commentarium Ioannis Casimiri in Hippocratis Aphorismos, an Enciclopedia Chirurgica Rationalis by Giovanni Doleo and many other precious texts on medicine, chirurgie and anatomy. I was, among other things, struck by four volumes of a seven-volume edition of the works of Galen, all rather finely bound, in vermilion leather with golden lettering; the three others were not in their place. I picked one up, enjoying the feel of the precious binding, and opened it. A small inscription, at the foot of the frontispiece and on the right-hand side read: Ioannis Tiracordae. The same thing, I rapidly established, was to be found in all the other books on medicine.

"I know!" I whispered excitedly. "I know where we are."

I was about to share my discovery when we were again surprised by the sound of a door opening on the first floor, and by an old man's voice:

"Paradisa! Come down, our friend is about to take his leave of us."

A woman's voice replied from the second floor that she would be coming at once.

So we were about to be caught between two fires: the woman descending from the second floor and the master of the house awaiting her on the first. There was no door to the little room and it was, moreover, too small for us to crouch in unseen. We should be discovered.

Hearing, understanding and acting came together in a single movement. Like lizards hunted by. a hawk, we scuttled down the stairs in furtive desperation, hoping to reach the first floor before the two men. Otherwise, there would be no escape.

In less than a second came the moment of truth: we had just come down a few stairs when we heard the voice of the master of the house.

"And tomorrow, do not forget to bring me your little liqueur!" said he, under his breath but in a rather jovial tone of voice, obviously addressing his guest, while they approached the foot of the stairs. There was no more time: we were lost.

Whenever I think back on those moments of terror, I tell myself that only divine mercy saved us from many punishments, which we doubtless deserved. I also reflect that, if Abbot Melani had not had recourse to one of his ploys, matters would have gone very differently.

Atto had a flash of inspiration and energetically blew out the four candles which illuminated this flight of stairs. We again took refuge in the little room where, this time in unison, we puffed up our chests and blew out the candelabrum. When the master of the house looked up the stairs, he was confronted with pitch darkness and heard the woman's voice begging him to light the candles again. This had the double effect of not giving us away and making the two men return, bearing a single oil lamp, in order to fetch a candle. In that brief lapse of time, we groped our way swiftly down the stairs.

Hardly had we reached the ground floor than we rushed into the abandoned bedchamber, then into the kitchen and, thence, to the coach-house. There, in my haste, I tripped and fell headlong on the fine layer of hay, making one of the nags nervous. Atto rapidly closed the door behind us, and Ugonio had no difficulty in locking it in time.

We remained motionless in the dark, panting, with our ears glued to the door. We thought that we could hear two or more people descending into the courtyard. Footsteps moved over the cobbles in the direction of the doorway to the street. We heard the heavy door open, then slam shut. Other footsteps turned back until they were lost on the stairs. For two or three minutes, we remained in sepulchral silence. The peril seemed to have passed.

We then lit a lantern and went through the trapdoor. As soon as the heavy wooden lid had closed on us, I was at last able to inform Abbot Melani of my discovery. We had entered the house of Giovanni Tiracorda, the old court physician to the Pope.

"Are you certain of that?" asked Abbot Melani as we again descended into the subterranean city.

"Of course I am," I replied.

"Tiracorda, what a coincidence," commented Atto with a little laugh.

"Do you know him?"

"It is an extraordinary coincidence. Tiracorda was physician to the conclave in which my fellow-citizen Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi was elected. I was present, too."

I, however, had never addressed a word to the old Archiater. Tiracorda, having been chief physician to two popes, was honoured in the quarter, so much so that he was still addressed as Archiater, although in reality his office was now that of locum. He lived in a little palazzo belonging to Duke Salviati, situated in the Via dell'Orso, only a few houses beyond the Donzello, on the corner of the Via della Stufa delle Donne. The map of the underground galleries which Atto Melani had drawn had proven to be accurate: moving from one gallery to another and coming to Tiracorda's stable, we had almost arrived back at our point of departure. I knew little, indeed very little indeed, about Tiracorda: that he had a wife (perhaps the Paradisa whose name we had heard him call not long before), and that in their large and fine house there also lived two or three maidservants who helped with the work of the household, and that he practised his art at the Arcispedale di Santo Spirito, at Sassia.

He was more rotund than tall, with rounded shoulders and almost no neck, and a great prominent stomach on which he often rested his joined hands, as though he incarnated the virtues of patience and tolerance. All this suggested a phlegmatic and pusillanimous character. Sometimes I had seen him from a window walking down the Via dell'Orso, trotting along in a garment that reached almost to his feet; oft had I observed him, smoothing his mustachios and the goatee on his chin, in lively conversation with some shopkeeper. Caring little for periwigs despite his baldness, with his hat constantly in hand, his slightly bumpy pate, crowning a low, wrinkled forehead and pointed ears, shone in the sun. Crossing his path, I had once been struck by how rosy his cheeks were and how kindly his expression: with eyebrows that screened the deep-set eyes and the tired eyelids of a physician accustomed, yet never resigned, to looking upon the suffering of others.

When we had covered the most difficult portion of the return journey, Abbot Melani asked Ugonio if he could procure him a copy of the key which he had used to open the stable door.

"I assure your most worshipful decisionality that I shall not emit to execute your desideration; and that, upon the earliest importunity. However, to be more padre than parricide, it would have been more perfectly ameliorating to have had it fabricated upon the past nocturn."

"Are you telling me that it would have been better to have the copy of the key made last night?"

Ugonio appeared to be surprised by the question.

"Indubiously, in the street of the chiavari, the key-facturers, where Komarek impresses."

Atto's forehead creased. He plunged a hand into his pocket and drew out the page from the Bible. Several times, he passed the palm of his hand over it, then held it up to the light of the lantern which he held in his hand. I saw him carefully examine the shadows which the folds cast in the lamplight.

"Confound it, how can I have allowed that to escape me?" cursed Abbot Melani.

And he pointed out with his finger a form which I only then seemed able to detect in the middle of the. paper: "If you observe carefully, despite the precarious condition of this piece of paper," he began explaining to me, "you will be able to find more or less in the middle of the paper the outline of a large key with an oblong head, exactly like that of the closet. Look, just here, where the paper has remained smoother, while on either side it is crumpled."

"So this piece of paper is just the wrapping of a key?" I concluded, in surprise.

"Precisely. And it was indeed in the Via dei Chiavari, where all the locksmiths and makers of keys have their shops, that we found the clandestine workshop of Komarek, the printer used by Stilone Priaso."

"Ah, then I understand," I deduced. "Stilone Priaso stole the key and then went to have a copy made in the Via dei Chiavari, near Komarek's place."

"No, dear boy. Some of the guests-you yourself told me this, do you not remember? — said that they had stayed at the Locanda del Donzello previously."

"That is true: Stilone Priaso, Bedfordi and Angiolo Brenozzi," I recalled, "in the days of the late lamented Signora Luigia."

"Good. That means that Stilone most probably already had a copy of the key to the little room that leads from the inn to the underground galleries. Moreover, he already had sufficient reason to visit Komarek, in order to have some clandestine gazettes and almanacks printed. No, we need not look for one of Komarek's clients, but simply one of our own guests. The person who briefly removed Master Pellegrino's bunch of keys needed to have a copy made of the key to the closet."

"And then the thief is Padre Robleda! He mentioned Malachi to see how I would react: perhaps he realised that he had lost the sheet of paper with the prophecy of Malachi underground and thought up a trick worthy of the best spies to unmask me, just as Dulcibeni says," I exclaimed, after which I told Atto of Dulcibeni's harangue about the Jesuits' vocation for spying.

"Ah yes. Perhaps the thief is none other than Padre Robleda, also because…"

"Gfrrrlubh," interrupted Ciacconio politely.

"Errorific and fellatious argumentations," translated Ugonio.

"How, pray?" asked Abbot Melani incredulously.

"Ciacconio assures that the provenance of the foliables is not Malachi: this, with all due circumspect for your decisionality, and, of course, decreasing the scrupules rather than increasing one's scruples."

At the same time, from under his clothing Ciacconio produced a little Bible, worn and filthy, but still legible.

"Do you always keep it on you?" I asked.

"Gfrrrlubh."

"He is exceedingly religious: a bigot, almost a trigot," explained Ugonio.

We looked in the index for the Book of Malachi. It was the last of the twelve books of the minor prophets, and so was to be found among the last pages of the Old Testament. I turned the pages rapidly until I found the title and, with some difficulty because of the microscopic characters, began reading:

PROPHETHIA MALACHITE

CAPVT I.

Onus verbi Domini ad Israel in manu Malachiae.

Dilexi vos, dicit Dominus, amp; dixistis: in quo dilexisti nos? Nonne frater erat Esau Iacob, dicit Dominus, amp; dilexi Iacob, Esau autem odio habui? amp; posui montes ejus in solitudinem, amp; hereditatem ejus in dracones deserti.

Quod si dixerit Idumaea: Destructi sumus, sed revertentes aedificabimus quae destructa sunt: Haec dicit Dominus exercituum: Isti aedificabunt, amp; ego destruam: amp; vocabuntur terminis impietatis, amp; populus cui iratus est Dominus usque in aeternum.

Et oculi vestri videbunt: amp; vos dicetis: Magnificetur Dominus super terminum Israel.

Filius honorat patrem, amp; servus dominum suum: si ergo Pater ergo sum, ubi est honor meus? amp; si Dominus ego sum, ubi est timor meus? dicit Dominus exercituum ad vos, amp; sacerdotes, qui despicitis nomen meum, amp; dixitis: In quo despeximus nomen tuum?…

I broke off: Abbot Melani had taken from his pocket the sheet of paper found by Ugonio and Ciacconio. We compared the two. Although mutilated, one could read in it the names Ochozias, Accaron and Beelzebub, all of which were absent. Not a single word corresponded. "So… it is another text of Malachi," I observed hesitantly. "Gfrrrlubh," retorted Ciacconio, shaking his head. "To be more auspicious than haruspicious and more medicinal than mendacious, the foliable is, as Ciacconio suggested and ingested, with all deference to the sagacity of your decisionality, from the secondesimal Book of Kings."

And he explained that "Malachi", the truncated word which could be read on the scrap of Bible, was not "Malachia", the Latin name of the prophet, but what remained of the word "Malachim", which in Hebrew means "Kings". This is because, Ugonio explained patiently, in many Bibles, the title is written according to the version of the Hebrews, which does not always correspond to the Christian one. The Christians do not, for example, admit among the Holy Scriptures, the two books of the Maccabees. Consequently, the complete title, mutilated and masked by the bloodstains, originally read, according to the corpisantari:

Carattere Lettura Tonda.

LIBER REGUM.

Secundus Malachim.

Caput Primum.

"Liber Regum" meant "Book of Kings", while "Secundus Malachim" stood for the "Second Book of Kings" and not for "Malachi". We looked up the Second Book of Kings in the Bible of the corpisantari. And indeed, the title and text corresponded perfectly both with the scrap of paper and with the explanation of Ugonio and Ciacconio. Abbot Melani's face darkened.

"I have but one question: why did you not say so before?" he asked, and I could already imagine the reply which the corpisantari would utter in unison.

"We had not the honorarium to be bequested."

"Gfrrrlubh," confirmed Ciacconio.

So, Robleda had not stolen the keys and the little pearls, nor had he entered the underground galleries, he had not lost the loose page from the Bible, nor did he know anything of the Via dei Chiavari or Komarek. And even less of Signor di Mourai, that is Nicolas Fouquet. Or to put it more precisely, there was no reason to suspect him more than anyone else, and his long discourse concerning Saint Malachy had been purely coincidental. In other words, we were back to our starting point.

In compensation, we had discovered that gallery D led to a great and spacious dwelling, the owner of which was chief physician to the Pope. But another mystery had arisen that night. To the discovery of the Bible had been added our finding the phial of blood which someone had inadvertently (or perhaps deliberately) mislaid in the gallery leading to the house of Tiracorda.

"Do you think that the phial was lost by the thief?" I asked Abbot Melani.

At that moment, the abbot tripped on a stone protruding from the ground and fell heavily. We helped him to his feet, although he refused all assistance; he dusted himself down hurriedly, most put out by what had happened, and uttered many imprecations against the builders of the gallery, the plague, physicians, the quarantine and, finally, against the blameless corpisantari who, overwhelmed by so many unmerited insults, exchanged glances full of humiliation.

I was thus able, thanks to that apparently insignificant incident, to measure clearly the unexpected change which had, for some time, come over Abbot Melani. While, on the first days, his eyes had sparkled, now they were often lost in thought. His proud bearing had taken on a more cautious aspect, his once confident gestures had grown hesitant. His acute and perspicacious reasoning sometimes gave way to doubts and reticence. True, we had successfully penetrated the house of Tiracorda, exposing ourselves to the gravest risks. True, we had boldly explored new passages almost blindly, guided more by Ciacconio's nose than by our lanterns. Yet Abbot Melani's hand seemed from time to time to tremble slightly, while his eyes would close in a mute prayer for salvation.

This new state of mind, which for the time being surfaced just occasionally like a half-submerged wreck from the past, had become manifest only recently, indeed very recently. It was difficult to tell exactly when it had begun. It had, indeed, arisen from no particular event, but from occurrences both old and new, which were now settling awkwardly into one single form: a form which, however, remained undefined. Its substance was, however, black and bloody, like the fear which, I was now certain, troubled Abbot Melani's thoughts.

From gallery D, we had returned to gallery C, which we would doubtless need now to explore thoroughly. This time, however, leaving to our right branch E, which led to the Palace of the Chancery, we went straight on.

I noted the absorbed expression of Abbot Melani and above all his silence. I guessed that he must be meditating upon our discoveries, and therefore decided to question him with the curiosity which he himself had instilled in me only a few hours before.

"You said that Louis XIV never hated anyone more than Superintendent Fouquet."

"Yes."

"And that, supposing he had discovered that Fouquet had not died at Pinerol but was here in Rome, alive and free, his wrath would certainly have been unleashed anew."

"Precisely."

"But why such implacable rage?"

"That is nothing compared to the Sovereign's brooding fury at the time of the arrest and during the trial."

"Was it not enough for the King that he had been dismissed?"

"You are not the only one to have asked such questions. And you must not be surprised, for no one has ever found an answer to that. Not even I. At least, not yet."

The mystery of Louis XIV's hatred for Fouquet, explained Abbot Melani, was a matter of endless discussion in Paris.

"There are things which, for lack of time, I have not yet been able to tell you."

I pretended to accept this excuse. But I now knew that, because of his new state of mind, Atto was prepared to confide in me many things which he had hitherto kept to himself. It was thus that he again evoked those terrible days in which the noose of the conspiracy tightened around the Superintendent's neck.

Colbert began to spin his web from the day when Cardinal Mazarin died. He knew that he must act under cover of the state's interests and the glory of the monarchy. He also knew that he did not have much time: he must act quickly while the King was still inexpert in financial matters. Louis was unaware of what had really been going on under the government of Mazarin, whose machinations escaped him. The only one with access to the Cardinal's papers was Colbert, the master of a thousand secrets. And, while he was already tampering with the documents and falsifying evidence, the Serpent lost no opportunity to instil in the Sovereign, like a subtle poison, mistrust for the Superintendent. In the meanwhile, he soothed the latter with pledges of loyalty. The plot was working perfectly: three months before the festivities at the Chateau de Vaux, the King was already meditating on how to bring down his Superintendent of Finances. There remained, however, a final obstacle: Fouquet, who still held the office of Procurator-General, enjoyed parliamentary immunity. The Coluber, adducing the pretext of the King's urgent need for money, persuaded the Squirrel to sell his office.

Poor Nicolas fell headlong into the trap: he earned one million four hundred thousand livres from the transaction and as soon as he received an advance of a million livres, donated it to the King.

"And when he received the money, the King said, 'He is putting his own hands in irons,' Atto remembered bitterly, brushing a little dirt from his sleeves and then examining his still soiled cuffs with disappointment.

"How horrible!" I could not restrain myself from exclaiming.

"Not as much as you think, my boy. The young King was tasting his power for the first time. He could do this only by imposing his royal prerogative, and therefore injustice. What proof of power would it have been to favour the best, those whose qualities already destined them for the highest honours? He is powerful who can elevate the mediocre and the cunning over the wise and the good, by his sole caprice subverting the natural course of events."

"But did Fouquet suspect nothing?"

"That is a mystery. He was warned from several sides that something was being plotted behind his back. But he felt that his conscience was clear. I recall that he would respond with a smile, quoting the words of a predecessor: 'Superintendents are made to be hated.' Hated by kings, with their ever increasing demands for money for battles and ballets; and hated by the people, who have to pay the taxes."

Fouquet, Atto continued, even realised that something important was to take place in Nantes, where he was soon to end up in irons, but he would not look reality in the face: he convinced himself that the King was about to arrest Colbert, not him. Once in Nantes, his friends persuaded him to take up lodgings in a house which had a secret underground passage. This was an ancient conduit leading to the beach, where a fully equipped boat was kept at the ready, to bear him to safety. In the days that followed, Fouquet saw that the streets surrounding the house were full of musketeers. He began to open his eyes, but told his family that he would never run away: "I must run the risk: I cannot believe that the King means to ruin me."

"That was a fatal error!" exclaimed Atto. "The Superintendent knew only the politics of confidence. He could not see that those had had their day and been displaced by the crude politics of suspicion. Mazarin was dead, all was changed."

"And how was France before the death of Mazarin?"

Abbot Melani sighed. "How was it?… Ah, it was the good old France of Louis XIII: a world-how could I put it? — both more open and more mobile, in which speech and thought were free, and gay originality, bold attitudes and moral equilibrium seemed set to reign forever. So it appeared: in the circles of the Precieuses, Madame de Sevigne and her friend Madame de la Fayette, in the maxims of the Sieur de la Rochefoucauld and in the verses of Jean de la Fontaine. None could foresee the glacial, absolute domination of the new King."

Six months were all the Serpent needed to ruin the Squirrel. After his arrest, Fouquet languished in gaol for three months before obtaining a trial. At last, in December 1661, the Chamber of Justice which was to judge him was constituted. It consisted of Chancellor Pierre Seguier, President Lamoignon and twenty-six members appointed from the regional parlements and from among the referendaries.

President Lamoignon opened the first session by describing with tragic grandiloquence the wretched condition of the people of France, crushed each year under the weight of fresh taxes and beset by hunger, disease and desperation. To make matters worse, their plight had of late been aggravated by several years of bad harvests. In many provinces, people were literally dying of hunger; yet the rapacious hand of the tax collectors knew no pity and preyed upon the poor villagers with ever greater avidity.

"What had the misery of the people to do with Fouquet?"

"It had much to do with him. It served to introduce and to illustrate a theorem: in the countryside, the peasants were dying of hunger because he had enriched himself scandalously at the expense of the state."

"And was that true?"

"Of course not. In the first place, Fouquet was not really wealthy. And, secondly, after his imprisonment at Pinerol, the wretched condition of France's villages became considerably worse. But listen to what followed."

At the opening of the trial, a notice was read out in all the churches of the realm in which citizens were invited to denounce all collectors of the salt tax and tax farmers, collectors and financiers who had committed financial abuses. In a second edict, those accused of such misdeeds were forbidden to leave their cities. Any who did so would at once be arraigned on charges of embezzlement, a crime punishable by death.

This had an enormous effect. All financiers, tax farmers and collectors were immediately denounced to the people as criminals; the immensely wealthy Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, was thus depicted as the head of a band of brigands which terrorised the peasantry and had reduced it to famine.

"Nothing could have been more false: Fouquet had always pointed out to the Crown, but in vain, the danger of imposing excessively high taxes. When he was sent to the Dauphine as Intendant for Finances, for the purpose of squeezing more taxes out of those refractory people, he had even succeeded in getting himself dismissed by Mazarin. After thorough inquiries, Fouquet had in fact concluded that the taxes levied in that region were intolerably high and he had even made so bold as to present in Paris an official request for exemption. The members of the Parlement of Dauphine had all mobilised in his defence."

Those times seemed, however, to have been forgotten. At the beginning of the Superintendent's trial, no fewer than ninety-six charges were read out, which the rapporteur of the Bench sensibly reduced to about ten: above all, he was accused of having made the King bogus loans, on which he had unjustly charged interest; secondly, of illicitly confusing the King's money with his own, and using it for private purposes; thirdly, of receiving from subcontractors more than three hundred thousand livres in exchange for granting them favourable conditions; and of having personally encashed the revenue from this operation, using false names; fourthly, he was charged with having given the state expired bills of exchange in return for cash.

When the hearing opened, the people's hatred for Fouquet was most violent. In the days following the arrest, the guards took care to avoid certain villages in which the mob was ready to tear him to pieces.

Locked in his tiny cell, isolated from everything and from everyone, the Superintendent was unable fully to grasp into what an abyss he had been cast. His health declined and he asked to be sent a confessor; he sent memoranda to the King in his defence; four times, he begged him in vain for an audience; he had letters circulated in which he proudly pleaded his cause; he cherished the illusion that the incident could be concluded honourably. All his requests were rejected, and he began to realise that there was no breach in the wall of hostility raised against him by the King and Colbert.

In the meantime, Colbert was manoeuvring behind the scenes: he summoned the members of the Chamber of Justice in the King's presence and subjected them to innuendo, coercion and threats. He did worse with the witnesses, many of whom were investigated in their turn.

We were interrupted by Ugonio. He showed us a trapdoor through which he and Ciacconio had lowered themselves a few weeks earlier, thus discovering the gallery which we were now moving along.

"Where does the trapdoor lead?"

"To the hinder part of the Subpantheon."

"Bear this in mind, my boy," Atto said to me. "If I have understood correctly, this trapdoor leads to some underground chambers behind the Pantheon. Thence, one finds one's way into some private courtyard and, finally, we can use one of your keys to open the gate and go out into the street, is that not so?"

Ugonio nodded, with a coarse, self-satisfied smile, adding that there was no need for any key, as the gate was always left open. Having taken in that news, we all continued our march, and Abbot Melani, his narration.

At the trial, Fouquet defended himself alone, without any lawyers. His eloquence was prodigious, his reflexes ever prompt, his argumentation, subtle and insinuating, his memory, infallible. His papers had all been requisitioned and probably purged of anything that might be used in his defence; but the Superintendent defended himself as no one else could. For every challenge he had a ready answer. It was impossible to catch him out.

"As I have already mentioned, the counterfeiting of certain documentary proofs by one Berryer, Colbert's man, was discovered. And, in the end, all the documents in the case, a veritable mountain of paper, did not suffice to prove a single one of the charges against Fouquet! What did, however, tend to emerge was the responsibility and involvement of Mazarin, whose memory must, however, remain immaculate."

Colbert and the King, who had trusted in a swift, utterly servile and merciless judiciary, had not foreseen that many of the judges of the Chamber of Justice, who were old admirers of Fouquet, might refuse to treat the trial as a mere formality.

Time passed quickly: from one hearing to another, three long years had soon gone by. Fouquet's passionate harangues had become an attraction for all Paris. The people, who, at the time of his arrest, would have torn him apart, had come gradually to feel pity for him. Colbert had stopped at nothing to raise ever greater taxes, which were to serve for the pursuit of more wars and the completion of the Palace of Versailles. More than ever, the peasants had been tormented, abused, even summarily hanged. The Serpent had increased the pressure of taxation far beyond anything that Fouquet had ever dared impose. Moreover, the inventory of all the property owned by Fouquet at the time of his arrest proved that the Superintendent's accounts were in deficit. All the splendour with which he had surrounded himself had been no more than dust thrown in the eyes of creditors, with whom he had personally exposed himself, not knowing how otherwise to meet the costs of France's wars. He had thus contracted personal debts amounting to sixteen million livres, against a fortune in land, houses and offices valued at no more than fifteen million livres.

"Nothing when compared with the thirty-three million livres net which Mazarin left to his nephews in his will."

"Then Fouquet should have been able to obtain an acquittal," I observed.

"Yes and no," replied the abbot, while we stopped to replenish the oil in one of the lanterns. "In the first place, Colbert succeeded in preventing the judges from seeing the inventory of Fouquet's property. In vain, the Superintendent requested that it be placed among the documents before the court. And then, immediately after the arrest, came the discovery that was to bring about his downfall."

This was the last of the charges levelled against him, which had nothing to do with financial malpractice or any other question involving money. This was a document which was found hidden behind a mirror when Fouquet's house at Saint-Mande was searched. It was a letter to friends and relatives, dated 1657, four years before his arrest. In it, he expressed his anxiety at the growing mistrust which he sensed on the part of Mazarin and the intrigues whereby his enemies sought to ruin him. Fouquet then gave instructions concerning the action to be taken in the event of Mazarin's ordering his incarceration. This was no plan for an insurrection but for subtle political agitation, destined to alarm the Cardinal and lead him to negotiate, in full awareness of Mazarin's inclination to back off when faced with an awkward situation.

Notwithstanding the fact that there was no word in the document of any uprising against the Crown, the procurer presented this as a plan for a coup d'etat; in other words, something like the Fronde, which all the French remembered only too well. Again, according to the procurer, the rebels were to take refuge in the isolated fortress of Belle-Ile, which belonged to Fouquet. Emissaries of the investigators were sent to Belle-Ile, off the coast of Brittany, and these did their best to present as proofs of guilt the work on the fortifications, the cannons and the stocks of gunpowder and ammunition laid up there.

"But why had Fouquet fortified the island?"

"He was a genius of the sea and of marine strategy and he planned to use Belle-Ile as a support base against England. He had even thought of building a city in that place with its excellent natural harbour and particularly favourable position, so as to divert from Amsterdam all the commercial traffic of the North, thus rendering a great service to the King of France."

Thus, Fouquet, who had been arrested for embezzlement, found himself tried for fomenting sedition. Nor was that all. At Saint-Mande, a padlocked wooden box had been found containing the secret correspondence of the Superintendent. The King's representatives found therein the names of all the accused's most faithful friends, and many trembled at this. Most of the letters were sent to the King and in the end they were all entrusted to Colbert's care. He kept many of them, being well aware of their potential usefulness as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon those involved. Only a few letters, which Colbert was able to select in his own good time, were burned so as not to compromise some illustrious personage.

"Do you then think," I interrupted, "that the letters from Kircher which you discovered in Colbert's study were found in that box?"

"Perhaps."

"And how did the trial end?"

Fouquet had requested that several judges should be challenged on grounds of partiality: for instance, Pussort, Colbert's uncle, who persistently referred to the Serpent his nephew as "my party". Pussort attacked Fouquet so coarsely as even to prevent him from responding, thus upsetting all the other judges.

Chancellor Seguier also sat in the court, yet during the Fronde he had been among the insurgents against the Crown. Fouquet observed: how could Seguier judge a state crime? The next day, all Paris applauded the brilliant counter-attack of the accused, but the challenge was rejected.

The public began to murmur: not a day passed without some new accusation being levelled against Fouquet. His accusers had made the rope so thick that it was becoming too unwieldy to strangle him with.

So, the decisive moment drew nigh. Some judges were requested by the King in person no longer to take an interest in the trial. Talon himself, who in his speeches for the prosecution had showed great zeal without obtaining much success, had to make way for another Procurator-General, Chamillart. It was he who, on 14th November, 1664, set out his own conclusions before the Chamber of Justice. Chamillart called for Fouquet to be condemned to death, and for the restitution of all sums illicitly taken from the state. It then fell to the rapporteurs of the trial to make their concluding speeches. Judge Olivier d'Ormesson, vainly subjected to Colbert's attempts at intimidation, spoke passionately for five whole days, unleashing his fury against Berryer and his men. He concluded by calling for a sentence of exile: the best possible solution for Fouquet.

The second rapporteur, Sainte-Helene, spoke in more languid and tranquil tones, but called for the death sentence. Then each judge had to utter his own verdict.

The ceremony was long-drawn-out, agonising and ruinous for some. Judge Massenau had himself carried into court, despite a grave indisposition, murmuring: "Better to die here." He voted for exile. Pontchartrain had resisted Colbert's allurements and his threats: he too voted for exile, thus ruining his own career and that of his son. As for judge Roquesante, he ended his own career in exile, for not having voted in favour of a death sentence.

In the end, only nine out of the twenty-six commissaries opted for the death sentence. Fouquet's head was saved.

As soon as it became known, the verdict which saved Fouquet's life and gave him back his freedom-albeit outside France-met with great relief and was greeted by much rejoicing.

It was here that Louis XIV entered the scene. Overcome by wrath, he resolutely opposed exile. He annulled the sentence of the Chamber of Justice, thus rendering utterly pointless the three long years of the trial. In a decision unique in the annals of the Kingdom of France, the Most Christian King reversed the royal right to commute sentences, hitherto used only to pardon, and condemned Fouquet to life imprisonment, in solitary confinement, in the distant fortress of Pinerol.

"Paris was utterly shocked. None could comprehend the reasons behind that gesture. It was as though he nurtured a secret and implacable hatred for Fouquet," said Abbot Melani.

It was not enough that Louis XIV should dismiss him, humiliate him, despoil him of all his property and have him imprisoned on the faraway borders of France. The King himself sacked the Chateau de Vaux and his residence at Saint-Mande, decorating his own palace with Fouquet's furniture, his collections, carpets, gold services and tapestries and incorporating into the Royal Library the thirteen thousand precious volumes lovingly chosen by the Superintendent in the course of years of study and research. The whole was valued at no less than forty thousand livres.

To Fouquet's creditors, who suddenly emerged on all sides, there remained: the crumbs. One of them, an ironmonger named Jolly, forced his way into Vaux and the other residences, furiously tearing off with his bare hands all the padding and wall-coverings of precious leather; he then dug up and carried off the exceedingly modern lead pipes and hydraulic conduits, thus almost reducing to nothing the value of the parks and gardens of Vaux. Stucco decorations, ornaments and lamps were hurriedly stripped away by a hundred angry hands. When the pillage came to an end, the glorious residences of Nicolas Fouquet resembled nothing so much as two empty shells: the proof of the wonders which they contained rests only in the inventories of his persecutors. Fouquet's possessions in the Antilles were meanwhile plundered by the Superintendent's overseas dependents.

"Was the Chateau de Vaux as fine as the Palace of Versailles?" I stupidly asked Atto Melani.

"Vaux anticipated Versailles by a good five years," said Atto with calculated bombast, "and in many ways it was the inspiration behind it. If only you knew how heart-rending it is for those who frequented Fouquet, when moving through the Palace of Versailles, to recognise the paintings, the statues and the other marvels that belonged to the Superintendent and which still have the savour of his refined and sure taste…"

I said nothing and even wondered whether he was about to give way to tears.

"A few years ago, Madame de Sevigne made a pilgrimage to the Chateau de Vaux," Atto resumed. "And there she was seen to weep for a long time at the ruin of all those treasures and their great patron."

The torment was compounded by the system of incarceration. The King gave orders that at Pinerol Nicolas Fouquet was to be forbidden to write or to speak with anyone, apart from his gaolers.

Whatever the prisoner had in his head or on his tongue was to remain his and his alone. The only one entitled to hear his voice, through the ears of his keepers, was the King. And if Fouquet did not desire to speak with his tormentor, he had but to keep silence.

Many in Paris began to guess at an explanation. If Louis XIV wished to silence his prisoner for all eternity, he had only to arrange for him to be served a soup with suitable condiments…

But time passed, and Fouquet was still living. Perhaps the question was more complicated. Perhaps the King wanted to know something which the prisoner, in the cold silence of his cell, was keeping to himself. One day, they imagined, the rigours of prison would convince him to talk.

Ugonio called for our attention. Distracted by our conversation, we had forgotten that, while we were in the house of Tiracorda, Ciacconio had smelled a foreign presence. Now the corpisantaro' s nose had again scented something.

"Gfrrrlubh."

"Presence, perspiraceous, antiquated, scarified," explained Ugonio.

"Can you perhaps tell us what he ate for luncheon?" asked Atto Melani derisively.

I feared that the corpisantaro might take this amiss, for his exceedingly fine sense of smell had been useful to us and would probably continue to be so.

"Gfrrrlubh," came Ciacconio's calm response, after he had again sampled the air with his deformed and carbuncle-encrusted nose.

"Ciacconio has scented cow's udderlings," translated his companion, "with a probability of hen-fruit, hamon and white vino, mayhap with broth and saccar."

Atto and I exchanged astonished glances. This was exactly the dish which I had taken such great pains to prepare for the guests at the Donzello. Ciacconio could know nothing about that; yet he was able to discern from the odorous traces left by the stranger not only the smell of cows' teats but even the aroma of a number of the ingredients which I had added to the dish. If the corpisantaro'' s sense of smell was accurate, we concluded incredulously, we must be following a lodger at the Donzello.

The narration of Fouquet's trial had lasted quite a while and during that time we had explored a fairly lengthy portion of gallery C. It was hard to say how far we had come from beneath the Piazza Navona and where we now were; but, apart from some very slight bends, our trajectory had involved no deviation whatever: we had therefore followed the only direction possible. Hardly had we made that observation, when all changed.

The ground became damp and slippery, the air denser and heavier, and in the gloomy silence of the gallery a distant rustling sound could be heard. We advanced cautiously, while Ciacconio's head rocked from side to side, as though he were suffering. A nauseating odour could be detected, which was, I knew, familiar, but could not as yet identify.

"Sewers," said Atto Melani.

"Gfrrrlubh," confirmed Ciacconio.

Ugonio explained that the sewage was disturbing his colleague no little, and making it impossible for him to identify other odours clearly.

A little further on we found ourselves walking through real puddles. The stink, which had at first been indistinct, grew intense. At last we found the cause of all this. In the wall to the left, there was a wide and deep opening, through which poured a flood of black, fetid water. The rivulet followed the slope in the gallery, partly flowing along the sides, partly ending up in the seemingly endless darkness of the passageway. I touched the opposite wall: it was damp and left a fine coating of slime on my fingertips. Our attention was attracted by a detail. On its back in the water before us, and indifferent to our presence, lay a large rat.

"Mortified," proclaimed Ugonio, nudging it with one foot.

Ciacconio took the rat by the tail with his two clawed fingers and let it hang. From the rat's mouth into the greyish water there ran a fine stream of blood. Ciacconio lowered his head, observing the unexpected phenomenon with an air of surprise.

"Gfrrrlubh," he commented thoughtfully.

"Mortified, bloodified, maldistempered," explained Ugonio.

"How does he know that it was ill?" I asked.

"Ciacconio loves these little animals very much, is that not so?" intervened Abbot Melani.

Ciacconio nodded affirmatively, showing with an ingenuous and bestial smile his horrible yellow teeth.

We continued on our way, moving beyond the stretch of gallery soaked by the flood from the sewers. Everything suggested that the leakage was recent and that normally we should have found there no trace of water. As for the rat, this was no lone discovery. We soon came across three more dead rodents, more or less of the same dimensions as the first one. Ciacconio inspected them: all bled abundantly from the mouth because, said the corpisantari, of some undefined illness. Here was yet another encounter with blood: first, the bloodstained page from the Bible, then the phial, now these rats.

Our exploration was interrupted by yet another surprise. This time we found no infiltration, however copious, but a veritable watercourse, which rushed rapidly through a gallery perpendicular to our own and appeared to be fairly deep. This was in all probability an underground river, whose waters were perhaps mixed with some of the waste materials normally borne by the sewers. There was, however, no bad smell like that which had so upset Ciacconio.

With no little disappointment, we had to admit defeat. We could go no further, and a long time had passed since we left the Donzello. It would not do to remain any longer outside the inn, given the risk that our absence might be discovered. Thus, tired and worn, we decided to turn back.

While we turned around, Ciacconio once more sniffed the air suspiciously.

Atto Melani sneezed.