Imprimatur

Day the Third

13th September, 1683

Through the window streamed the sun's friendly rays, flooding the chamber with whiteness and spreading a pure, blessed light even over the sweaty, suffering face of poor Signor Pellegrino, abandoned in his bed. The door opened and the smiling face of Abbot Melani peered around it.

"It is time to go, my boy."

"Where are the other guests?"

"They are all in the kitchen, listening to Devize play the trumpet."

How strange: I had not known that the guitarist was also a virtuoso on that resounding instrument; and why, then, was the silvery and penetrating sound of the brass not audible on the upper floors?

"Where are we going?"

"We must return down below, we did not search properly last time."

We again entered the closet, where the little door opened up behind the sideboard. I felt the damp on my face. I leaned over unwillingly, illuminating the mouth of the well with my lantern.

"Why not wait until nightfall? The others may discover us," I protested feebly.

The abbot did not reply. From his pocket he drew forth a ring, which he placed in the palm of my hand, closing my fingers around the jewel, as though to stress the importance of what he was giving me. I nodded my consent and began the downward journey.

We had only just reached the brick platform when I gave a start. In the darkness, a hand had clasped my right shoulder. Terror prevented me from either screaming or turning around. Obscurely, I understood that the abbot was telling me to remain calm. Overcoming with great difficulty the paralysis which gripped me, I turned to discover the face of the third explorer.

"Remember to honour the dead."

It was Signor Pellegrino, who with suffering mien was so solemnly warning me. I could find no words to express my discomfiture: who then was it that I had left sleeping in his bed? How had Pellegrino been able to transport himself instantly from our sunny chamber to this dark, damp tunnel? While these thoughts were forming in my mind, Pellegrino spoke again.

"I want more light."

I felt myself suddenly sliding backwards: the surface of the bricks was slimy and irresistibly slippery; I had lost my balance, perhaps when turning towards Pellegrino. I fell slowly, but with all my weight, towards the stairwell, with my back to the ground and my belly turned skywards (although down there, no sky seemed ever to have existed). I slid miraculously down the steps without meeting any resistance, although I felt as though I weighed more than a marble statue. The last thing that I saw was Atto Melani and Pellegrino watching my disappearance with phlegmatic indifference, almost as though life and death were the same to them. I fell, overcome by stupor and by desperation, as a lost soul falling into the Abyss becomes aware at last of his damnation.

What saved me was a scream that seemed to come from some unknowable fold in the Creation and awoke me, tearing me from my nightmare.

I had dreamed and, dreaming, I had screamed. I was in my bed and I turned towards that of my master who had clearly remained all the time just where I left him. Through the window came no fine white sunbeams, but that brightness tinged with red and blue which heralds sunrise. The sharp air of the early morning had chilled me and I covered myself, although I knew that I would not regain sleep easily. From the stairs came a distant sound of footsteps, and 1 listened intently, in case someone was approaching the door of the closet. I understood clearly that it was a group of guests, making their way down to the kitchen or to the first floor. In the distance, I could make out the voices of Stilone Priaso and Padre Robleda, who were asking Cristofano for news of Signor Pellegrino's health. I rose, foreseeing that the doctor would soon be arriving to visit my master. The first person to knock at my door was, however, Bedfordi.

On opening, I found myself looking into a pale face with great dark half-moons under the eyes. On his shoulders Bedfordi wore a warm cape. He was fully dressed, and yet he shivered, his whole back and his head convulsed by great trembling fits, which he strove fruitlessly to suppress. He at once begged me to let him in, almost certainly so as not to be seen by the other guests. I offered him a little water and the pills which Cristofano had given us. The Englishman declined the offer, being concerned (so he said) that there existed pills capable of driving a patient to his death. That reply took me by surprise; nevertheless, I felt bound to insist.

"Yet I tell you," said he in a voice suddenly grown feverish, "that opium and purgatives for the various humours can even cause death, and never forget that negroes keep hidden beneath their fingernails a poison that kills with a single scratch; and then there are rattlesnakes, yes, and I have read of a spider which squirts into the eye of its persecutor a poison so potent that for a long time it deprives him of his sight…"

He seemed delirious.

"But Doctor Cristofano will do nothing of the sort," I protested.

"… and these substances," he continued, almost as though he had not heard me, "act by occult virtues, but those occult virtues are none other than the mirror of our ignorance."

I noticed that his legs were trembling, and to retain his footing, he had to lean against the doorpost. His very words were a sign of delirium. Bedfordi sat on the bed and smiled sadly at me.

"Excrement desiccates the cornea," he recited, raising his index finger severely, like a master admonishing his pupils. "Worn around the neck, the groundsel herb is good for curing tertian fevers. But for hysteria, one must needs apply salt poultices several times to the feet. And to learn the art of medicine, tell this to Signor Cristofano when you call him, instead of Galen and Paracelsus, he should read Don Quixote."

Then he lay down, closed his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest to cover himself and began to tremble slightly. I rushed down the stairs to call for help.

The great bubo under his groin, together with another smaller one under the right armpit left few doubts in Cristofano's mind. This time, we were clearly faced with the pestilential distemper; and that inevitably cast dark shadows once more, both over the death of Signor di Mourai and the singular torpor which had overcome my master. I felt myself utterly at a loss: was there a skilled and obscure assassin at large in the hostelry or, more likely, the all-too notorious pestilence?

The news of Bedfordi's illness threw the whole company into the deepest disarray. Only one day remained to us before the return of the Bargello's men for the next roll-call. I noticed that many were avoiding me, since I was the first to have come into contact with Bedfordi when the distemper assailed him. Cristofano, however, pointed out that every one of us had spoken, eaten and even played cards with the Englishman the day before. None, therefore, could feel safe. Owing perhaps to a good dose of juvenile temerity, I was the only one not to give way at once to fear. However, I saw the most fearful of all, namely Padre Robleda and Stilone Priaso, run and gather a few victuals which I had left out in the kitchen, returning thus laden to their apartments. I stopped them, having remembered then that Extreme Unction should be administered to Bedfordi. This time, however, Padre Robleda would not hear reason: "He is English and I know that he is of the reformed religion; he is excommunicated, unbaptised," he replied excitedly, adding that the oil for the sick was reserved for baptised adults and was not to be administered to infants, madmen, those denounced as excommunicated, impenitent public sinners, those condemned to life imprisonment, or to mothers in childbirth; nor might it be offered to soldiers deployed in battle against the enemy or to sailors in danger of shipwreck.

Stilone Priaso, too, inveighed against me: "Did you not know that holy oil accelerates death, causes the hair to fall out, makes childbirth more painful and gives infants jaundice, kills bees flying around the sick man's house, and that all those who have received it will die if they dance during the remaining months of the year; that it is a sin to spin in the sickroom because the patient will die if one leaves off spinning or if the yarn breaks, nor can one wash one's feet until long after receiving Extreme Unction, and one must always keep a lamp or a candle burning in the sickroom for as long as the distemper lasts, otherwise the poor man may die?"

And leaving me standing there, both ran to lock themselves into their apartments.

Thus, about half an hour later, I returned to the small chamber on the first floor where Bedfordi lay, to see in what state he was. I thought that Cristofano, too, had returned there, for the unfortunate

Englishman was talking and appeared to be in company. I at once perceived, however, that I and the sick man were alone together and that he was in fact delirious. I found him terribly pale, a lock of hair glued to his perspiring forehead and his lips abnormally cracked, suggesting a burning, painful throat.

"In the tower… it is in the tower," he babbled hoarsely, turning his tired gaze towards me. He was talking nonsense.

Without any apparent reason, he listed a series of names unknown to me and these I was able to commit to memory only because he repeated them so many times, larded with incomprehensible expressions in his native language. He was constantly sighing the name of one William, a native of the city of Orange, whom I imagined to be a friend or acquaintance of his.

I was about to call Cristofano, fearing that the distemper might abruptly worsen and come to a fatal conclusion, when the physician arrived, drawn by the sick man's moans. He was accompanied by Brenozzi and Devize, who maintained a respectful distance.

Poor Bedfordi continued his mad monologue, mentioning the name of one Charles, whom Brenozzi later explained to be King Charles II of England; the Venetian, who thus showed himself to have an appreciable knowledge of the English language, explained that he thought Bedfordi had very recently traversed the United Dutch Provinces.

"And why did he go to Holland?" I asked.

"That I do not know," replied Brenozzi, silencing me while he again listened to the sick man's maunderings.

"You really do know the English language well," observed the physician.

"A distant cousin of mine, who was born in London, often writes to me about family matters. I myself am quick to learn and to memorise and I have travelled much on several kinds of business. Look, he seems to feel better."

The sick man's delirium seemed to have abated and Cristofano invited us with a nod of the head to remove to the corridor. There, we found most of the other lodgers waiting, anxious for news.

Cristofano spoke without mincing his words. The progress of the distemper was, he said, such as to make him doubt his own art. First, the far from clear circumstances of Monsieur de Mourai's death, then the accident which had befallen Signor Pellegrino, who was still reduced to a most piteous state, and now the obvious case of infection which had struck down Bedfordi: all this had discomfited the Tuscan doctor, who, faced with such a conjunction of ill-fortune, admitted that he did not know how to confront the situation. For several interminable moments, we looked at one another, pale and frightened.

Some gave way to desperate lamentations; others took refuge in their apartments. Some laid siege to the physician, hoping thus to assuage their own fears; some fell to the ground with their face in their hands. Cristofano himself hastened back to his own chamber, where he locked himself in, begging to be left awhile alone, in order to consult some books and to review our circumstances. His withdrawal did, however, seem more like an attempt to take shelter than to organise retaliatory action. Our enforced imprisonment had cast off the mask of comedy and donned that of tragedy.

Pale as death, Abbot Melani had assisted at the scene of collective desperation. But, more than anyone else, I was now a prey to authentic despair. Signor Pellegrino, I thought between sobs, had made the hostelry into his tomb and my own, as well as that of our guests. And already I imagined the scenes of distress that would ensue with his wife's arrival, when she discovered with her own eyes the cruel work of death in the apartments of the Donzello. The abbot found me slumped on the floor in the corridor outside Cristofano's chamber, where I had fallen to sobbing, hiding my tear-soaked face. Stroking my head, he murmured a plaintive song:

Piango, prego e sospiro, E nulla alfin mi giova…*

He waited for me to calm down, seeking gently to console me; but then, seeing the uselessness of those first attempts, he lifted me bodily to my feet and set me down energetically with my shoulders to the wall.

"I do not want to listen to you," I protested.

I repeated the doctor's words, to which I added that within a matter of days, perhaps only hours, we would all surely collapse in atrocious agony, like Bedfordi. Abbot Melani grasped me forcefully, dragging me up the stairs and into his apartment. Nothing, however, * I weep, I pray and sigh / and in the end, nothing cheers me. could calm me, so that the abbot had in the end to hit me hard with the back of his hand, which had the effect of arresting my sobs. For a few moments, I was peaceful.

Atto put a brotherly arm around my shoulders and tried with patient words to persuade me not to give in to despair. What mattered above all was that we should repeat the cleverly staged scene whereby we had hidden Pellegrino's illness from the men of the Bargello. To reveal the presence of one infected with the pestilence-and this time a real case-would certainly lead to closer and more frequent inspections; we would perhaps be deported to an improvised pest-house in a less populous quarter, perhaps the San Borromeo island where the hospital for the sick had been set up during the great visitation some thirty years before. We two could always attempt the escape route under the ground which we had discovered only the night before. To evade one's pursuers would always be difficult-that he did not conceal-but it would remain a practicable solution, if our plight should worsen. When I had almost recovered my calm, the abbot went over the situation, point by point: if Mourai had been poisoned, and if Pellegrino's presumed buboes were only the spotted fever or, even better, two simple bruises, the one and only certain case of the plague was Bedfordi.

Someone knocked at Atto's door: Cristofano was calling everyone to a meeting in the chambers on the ground floor. He said that he had an urgent announcement to make to us. In the hall, we found all the guests gathered at the foot of the stairs; although, after the latest events, they maintained a prudent distance from one another. Devize, in an alcove, sweetened the grave moment with the notes of his splendid and disquieting rondeau.

"Perhaps the young Englishman has expired?" ventured Brenozzi, without leaving off from plucking at his celery.

The physician shook his head and invited us to take our seats. Cristofano's frown stifled the last note under the musician's fingers.

I went into the kitchen, where I began to busy myself around the pots and pans and the stove, in order to prepare the next meal.

When all were seated, the doctor opened his bag and took out a handkerchief, with which he carefully wiped the perspiration from his brow (as was his wont before making a speech) and, finally, cleared his throat.

"Most honourable gentlemen, I beg your pardon for having deserted your company a while ago. It was, however, necessary for me to reflect upon our present plight, and I have concluded," he declared, while all fell silent, "… and I have concluded…" repeated Cristofano, with one hand making a ball of his handkerchief, "that if we do not wish to die, we must bury ourselves alive."

The time had come, he explained, for us to cease once and for all wandering around the Donzello as though all was well. No longer would we be able to converse amiably with one another, in despite of the recommendations which he had been imparting to us for several days now. Hitherto, destiny had been all too kind to us, and the misadventures which had befallen Monsieur de Mourai and Pellegrino had proven to have no connection with any infection; but now, matters had taken a turn for the worse, and the plague, which had previously been evoked misleadingly, had truly struck at the Donzello. There was no point in counting how many minutes this or that guest had spent in the company of poor Bedfordi: that would serve only to nourish suspicion. Our one remaining hope of salvation was voluntary segregation, each in his own apartment, so as to avoid inhaling others' humours or coming into contact with the clothing of other guests, etc. etc. We were all to anoint and massage our bodies regularly with purifying oils and balsams which the physician would prepare, and we were to meet only on the occasion of the men-at-arms' roll-calls, the next of which was due on the morrow.

"Lord Jesus," baulked Padre Robleda, "are we to await death crouching on a corner of the floor, next to our own dejecta? If I may be permitted," he continued, softening his tone, "I have heard tell that my honourable brother Don Guzman de Zamora carried out a remarkable work of preservation for himself and his fellow Jesuit missionaries during the Plague of Perpignan in the Kingdom of Catalonia with a remedium that was quite pleasant to the palate: excellent white wine to be consumed freely, in which had been dissolved one drachm of couperose and half a drachm of Dictamnus albus. He had everyone anointed with Oil of Scorpions and made them all eat well. And none fell ill. Would it not be advisable to try that, before immuring ourselves alive?"

Abbot Melani, whose inquiries would be severely hampered by such seclusion, nodded vigorously in support of Robleda's words: "I too know that white wine of the best quality is regarded as an excellent ingredient against the plague and putrid fevers," said he, forcefully, "and even better are spirits and Malmsey wine. In Pistoia, we have the renowned water which Master Anselmo Ricci adopted with great success to preserve the Pistoiesi from the infection. My father told me and my brothers that all the bishops who had succeeded one another in the pastoral administration consumed this liberally, and not only as a cure. The recipe consisted of five pounds of spirits aromatised with medicinal herbs, to be laid down in the cathedral for twenty-four hours in a hermetically sealed jar. After that, six pounds of the best Malmsey were added. This gave an excellent liquor of which Monsignor the Bishop of Pistoia drank two ounces every morning, with one ounce of honey."

The Jesuit clicked his tongue meaningfully, while Cristofano shook his head sceptically and endeavoured in vain to resume speaking.

"It seems to me undeniable that such remedies gladden the spirits," warned Dulcibeni, "but I doubt whether they can produce other, more important effects. I, too, know of a delicious electuary formulated by Ludovico Giglio of Cremona during the pestilence in Lom- bardy. It consisted of an excellent condiment of which four drachms were to be spread on toasted bread every morning before breaking one's fast: honey with rose water and a little vinegary syrup made into a paste with agarics, scammony, turbiths and saffron. But everyone died and Giglio avoided being killed only because the survivors were too few and too weak." Thus concluded the aged gentleman from the Marches, leaving it to be understood that, in his opinion, our chances of salvation were indeed few.

"Ah, yes," resumed Cristofano, "like the much-acclaimed cordial and stomach medicine of Tiberio Giarotto of Faenza. A master confectioner's folly: rose-water sugar, aromatised spirits, cinnamon, saffron, sandalwood and red coral, mixed with four ounces of citron juice and left to marinate for fourteen hours. The whole was then mixed with boiling skimmed honey. And to that he added as much musk as was needed to perfume it. He, however, was torn to pieces by the populace. Have trust in me, our only hope is to do as I have said; indeed…"

But Devize would not allow him to complete his sentence. "Monsieur Pompeo and our chirurgeon are right: Jean Gutierrez, physician to Charles II of France, likewise held that what pleases the palate cannot purify the humours. Nevertheless, Gutierrez did prepare an electuary which it might well be worth trying. Bear in mind that the King was so seized with the virtues of this preparation that he gave

Gutierrez a very great living in the Duchy of Lorraine. Now, in his electuary, that physician incorporated sweetmeats such as cooked and skimmed honey, twenty walnuts and fifteen figs, also a great quantity of rue, wormwood, terrasigillata and gemmated salt. He prescribed this to be taken morning and evening, two ounces at a time, to be followed soon after by an ounce of very strong white vinegar, to augment the disgust."

There followed a most heated discussion between those, led by Robleda, who favoured remedies pleasing to the palate and those who saw disgust as providing the best therapy. I followed the discussion in a state approaching amusement (despite the gravity of the moment) at the fact that every single one of our guests seemed always to have been carrying in his pocket a remedy against the infection.

Only Cristofano continued to shake his head: "If you so desire, try all these remedies, but do not come looking for my help when next the distemper strikes!"

"Could we not opt for partial segregation?" proposed Brenozzi shyly. "It is well known that there was an analogous case in Venice during the Plague of 1556: one was allowed to circulate freely in the city's alleyways only if one held in one's hand certain odoriferous balls prepared by the philosopher and poet Girolamo Ruscelli. Unlike the stomach, the nose enjoys perfumes, but may be contaminated by stinks: musk from the Levant, calami, carnations, cloves, nutmeg, spikenard and oil of liquid amber orientalis, kneaded into paste. The philosopher made balls the size of walnuts from this and these balls were to be held in both hands at all times, day and night, for as many months as the infection lasted. They were infallible, but only for whoever did not let go of them one single moment, and I do not know how many those were."

Here, Cristofano grew impatient and, rising to his feet, proclaimed with the gravest and most vibrant accents that he cared little whether or not we desired to be secluded in our apartments: this was, however, the last possible remedy and, if we did not consent to it, then he personally would lock himself into his own chamber, begging me to bring him food, nor would he leave it until he knew that all the others were dead-and that would not take long.

There followed a sepulchral silence. Cristofano then continued, announcing that-if we were finally willing to follow his prescriptions- he alone, as our physician, would move freely through the hostelry to assist the sick and regularly to visit the other guests; at the same time, he would need an assistant, whose duty would be to take care of the guests' food and hygiene, as well as to anoint all and to ensure the correct penetration of the balms with which to preserve us from the distemper. Now, he dared not ask any one of us to incur such risks. We could, however, count ourselves fortunate in our misfortune, in that we had in our midst one who-and here, he glanced at me as I moved about the kitchen-according to his long medical experience, was certainly of a fibre well able to resist diseases. All looks turned towards me: the physician had appointed me to assist him.

"The particular condition of this little prentice," continued the chirurgeon from Siena, "renders him, and all those like him, almost immune to the infection."

And, while the listeners' faces all showed signs of astonishment, Cristofano began to enumerate the cases of absolute immunity in times of pestilence recorded by the greatest authors. The mirabilia succeeded one another in ascending order, and proved that one like myself could even drink the pus from buboes (as, it seemed, had actually happened during the Black Death three centuries earlier) without suffering anything worse than a little heartburn.

"Fortunius Licetus compares their astounding properties to those of the monopods, the baboons, the Satyrs, the Cyclops, the Tritons and the Sirens. According to the classifications of Father Caspar Schott, the better proportioned their members, the greater is their immunity to infection with the pestilence," concluded Cristofano. "Very well, we can all see that this lad is, as his type goes, rather well formed: solid shoulders, straight legs, a regular visage and healthy teeth. He is fortunate enough to be one of the mediocres of his race, and not one of the more unfortunate minores or, God forbid, one of the wretched minimi. So we may rest in all tranquillity. According to Nierembergius, those like him are born with the teeth, hair and organs of generation of an adult. By the age of seven, they already have a beard, at ten, they have the strength of giants and can generate children. Johannes Eusebius tells of having seen one who at four years of age already had the most elegant locks and a beard. Not to mention the legendary Popobawa who assails and, with his enormous attributes, sodomises in their sleep the robust men of an island in Africa; while they, in their vain struggles, also suffer bruises and fractures."

The first to side with the physician, who sat trembling and again covered in perspiration, was Padre Robleda. The absence of other solutions, together with the fear of being abandoned by Cristofano led the others meekly to resign themselves to claustration. Abbot Melani uttered not a word.

While all were rising to make their way to the upper storeys, the physician said that they could make a halt in the kitchen, where I would distribute a hot meal and toasted bread. He warned me to serve wine only after watering it well down, so that it should pass the more easily through the stomach.

I was all too well aware of the relief which our unhappy guests would have obtained from the culinary assistance of Signor Pellegrino. Instead, the entire administration of the inn now lay upon my shoulders and, despite the fact that I gave my all, I found myself reduced to serving up meals prepared from marinated seeds and whatever else I could find in the old wooden sideboard, while taking practically nothing from the well-stocked pantry in the cellar. I usually added to this some fruit or green vegetables and some of the bread which had been left to us, together with the goatskins of water. Thus, I consoled myself, I was at least saving my master's provisions, already exposed to Cristofano's continual plundering for his electuaries, balsams, oils, lozenges, elixirs and curative balls.

That evening, however, in order to comfort the guests in their misfortune, I made a special effort and prepared a little broth with eggs poached in bain-marie, together with vetchlings; to which I added an accompaniment of croquettes of soft bread and a few salt pilchards minced together with herbs and raisins; and, to complete the meal, chicory roots, boiled with cooked must and vinegar. The whole I sprinkled with a pinch of cinnamon; the precious spice of the wealthy would surprise the palates and refresh the spirits.

"It is very hot," I announced with forced good humour to Dulcibeni and Padre Robleda who sat down with lugubrious mien to examine the chicory roots. But I obtained no comments, nor did I remark any sign of cheer in the guests' dark, frowning faces.

The prospect that my special condition might, in the doctor's opinion, become an arm against the assaults of the disease gave my life its first taste of Pride's inebriating vapours. Although a number of details had left me in some perplexity (at the age of seven I had, of course, been beardless, nor was I born with a set of teeth or with gigantic attributes), I suddenly felt myself a step above the others. And what, said 1 to myself, thinking over Cristofano's decision, what if I really did have these powers? They, the guests, depended on me. So that was why the physician had so lightly allowed me to sleep in the same chamber as my master, when he was still unconscious! Thus I recovered my good humour, while respectfully containing it.

A chi vive ogn'or contento ogni mese e primavera…* sang a lilting voice beside me. It was Abbot Melani.

"What a happy little face," he joked. "Keep it that way until tomorrow, for we shall be needing it."

The reminder of the imminent roll-call brought my feet back down to earth.

"Would you like to accompany me to my sad cloister?" he asked with a little smile after finishing his meal.

"You will return to your apartments alone," exclaimed Cristofano impatiently. "I need the boy's services; and I need them now."

After thus rudely dismissing Atto Melani, the physician ordered me to wash the guests' dishes and the pots and pans. From that moment on, he said, I was to do this at least once a day. He sent me to look for two large basins, clean cloths, walnut shells, pure water and white wine, and brought me with him to visit Bedfordi. He then went into his own chamber to fetch his chirurgeon's equipment and a few bags.

When he returned, I helped him to undress the young Englishman, who was as hot as a cauldron in the fireplace and from time to time launched again into his bouts of logorrhoea.

"The tokens are too hot," observed Cristofano anxiously. "They may require interment."

"I beg your pardon?"

"This is a great and miraculous secret left on his deathbed by the Cavalier Marco Leonardo Fioravanti, the illustrious physician from Bologna, to obtain a rapid cure from the plague: he who already has the tokens is to have himself completely buried in a trench, except * For whoso lives content every hour / Every month will be Spring. for the neck and the head and is to remain thus for twelve or fourteen hours, and then to be dug out. This is a secret which may be applied anywhere in the world, without incurring interest or expense."

"And how does it work?"

"The earth is mother and purifies all things: it removes all stains from cloths, it softens tough meat upon burial for four or six hours; nor should we forget that in Padua there are mud baths which heal many infirmities. Another remedy of great authority would be to lie from three to twelve hours in the briny waters of the sea. But we, unfortunately, are sequestered and so can do none of those things. The only remedy that remains to us is therefore to practise blood-letting on poor Bedfordi so as to chill his tokens. First, however, we must appease the spoiled humours."

He pulled out a wooden bowl.

"These are my imperial musk tablets, most attractive for the stomach."

"What does that mean?"

"They attract all that there is in the stomach and draw it out, exhausting in the patient that bad resistance which he might put up to the physician's operations."

And between two fingers he took a lozenge, one of those dried preparations of various forms which apothecaries prepare. Not without effort, we succeeded in making Bedfordi swallow this, following which he fell silent and soon seemed on the point of suffocating: he was shaken by trembling and by coughing, and began to foam at the mouth, until he threw up a quantity of malodorous stuff into the basin which I placed just in time under his nose.

Cristofano scrutinised and sniffed at the liquid with an air of satisfaction.

"Prodigious, these musk tablets of mine, do you not find them so? Yet, nothing could be simpler: one ounce of violet candied sugar, five of iris and as many of powdered eggshell, a drachm of musk, one of ambergris, and gum tragacanth and rose water, all dried in the sun," recited Cristofano with an air of satisfaction while he busied himself with collecting the patient's vomit.

"In the healthy, however, they combat loss of appetite, although they are less powerful than aromaticum," he added. "Indeed, remind me to give you some to take with you when you distribute meals, in case any should refuse to eat."

Cleaned and rearranged, the poor Englishman now remained silent, with half-closed eyes, while the physician began to prick him with his instruments.

"As Master Eusebio Scaglione from Castello a Mare in the Kingdom of Naples so well teaches, blood is to be extracted from the veins which have their origin in the places where buboes (or tokens, as we call them) have appeared. The vein of the head corresponds to the tokens on the neck and the common vein to those on the back, but not in this instance. Here, we shall bleed the vein of the wrist which starts from the token under his armpit. And then the vein of the foot, which corresponds to the great token in the groin. Pass me the clean basin."

He commanded me to search among his bags for the little jars labelled Burning Bush and Tormentil; he made me take two pinches of each and mix them with three fingers of white wine and then ordered me to administer them to Bedfordi. He then made me pound in the mortar a herb called crowsfoot, with which I was to fill two half walnut shells which the doctor used, once he had completed his blood-letting, to seal the holes in the wrist and the ankle of his unfortunate patient.

"Bandage the walnuts tight. We shall change them twice a day, until blisters appear, which we shall then break in order to squeeze out the poisoned water."

Bedfordi began to tremble.

"May we not have bled him too much?"

"Of course not. It is the pestilence which chills the blood in the veins. I foresaw this: I have prepared a mixture of stinging nettles, mallow, agrimony, centaury, oregano, penny-royal, gentian, laurel, liquid amber, benzoin and aromatico for a most health-giving steam bath."

And from a black felt coverlet, he drew forth a glass vessel. We descended again to the kitchen, where he made me boil the contents of the glass jar with much water in the hostelry's largest cauldron. He in the meanwhile attended to boiling a porridge of fenugreek flour, linseeds and marsh mallow roots, into which I saw him mix pig's lard taken from Signor Pellegrino's stores.

After returning to the sick room, we wrapped Bedfordi in five blankets and placed him above the steaming cauldron which we had carried there at great effort and the risk of severe scalding.

"He must sweat as much as he can: perspiration refines the humours, opens the pores and warms chilled blood, thus preventing the corruption of the skin from causing sudden death."

The unfortunate Englishman did not, however, seem to be of the same opinion. He began to groan more and more, sighing and coughing, reaching out with his hands and splaying his toes in spasms of suffering. Suddenly, he became calm. He seemed to have fainted. Still over the cauldron, Cristofano began to lance the buboes with a three- or four-pointed lancet, after which he applied a poultice of pig's lard. Upon completing the operation, we put the patient back to bed. He did not make a single movement, but he was breathing. What a quirk of destiny, I thought, that precisely his bitterest detractor should be the subject of Cristofano's medical treatment.

"Now, let us leave him to rest, and trust in God," said the doctor gravely.

He led me to his apartment, where he handed me a bag with a number of unguents, syrups and fumigants already prepared for the other guests. He showed me their therapeutic use and purpose, and also furnished a number of notes. Some remedia were more effective with certain complexions than with others. Padre Robleda, for example, being ever anxious, risked the most mortal pestilence in the heart or the brain. It would, however, be less grave if he were affected in the liver, which could be relieved by the tokens. I was, urged Cristofano, to begin as soon as possible.

I could bear it no more. I climbed the stairs, carrying those little jars which I already detested, heading for my bed under the eaves. When I reached the second floor, I was, however, hailed in a loud whisper by Abbot Melani. He was waiting for me, glancing circumspectly out from the half-open door of his chamber. I approached. Without giving me time so much as to open my mouth, he whispered in my ear that the bizarre behaviour of several guests during the past few hours had given him occasion to reflect no little upon our plight.

"Do you perhaps fear for the life of another of us?" I at once murmured in alarm.

"Perhaps, my boy, perhaps," replied Melani hastily, pulling me by the arm into his chamber.

Once he had locked the door, he explained to me that Bedfordi's delirium, which the abbot himself had overheard from behind the door of the sick man's chamber, revealed without the shadow of a doubt that the Englishman was a fugitive.

"A fugitive? Fleeing what?"

"An exile, awaiting better days to return to his country," the abbot pronounced with an impertinent air, tapping the dimple on his chin with his index finger.

It was thus that Atto recounted to me a series of events and circumstances which were to assume great importance in the days that followed. The mysterious William whose name Bedfordi had mentioned was the Prince of Orange, a claimant to the throne of England.

Our interview showed signs of being long-drawn-out: I felt my apprehensions, so strong only moments before, dissipate.

The problem, explained Atto, was that the present king had no legitimate children. He had therefore chosen his brother to succeed him; but the latter was a Catholic and would thus restore the True Religion to the throne of England.

"So, what then is the problem?" I interrupted, overcome by a yawn.

"It is that the English nobility, who follow the reformed religion, do not wish to have a Catholic king and are therefore plotting in favour of William, who is an ardent Protestant. Do lie down on my bed, boy," added the abbot with a voice grown gentler, as he pointed to his couch.

"But then England might remain heretical forever!" I exclaimed, putting down Cristofano's bag and lying down without further ado, while Atto moved to the mirror.

"Right. So in England there are now two factions: one Protestant and Orangist and the other Catholic. Even if he will never admit it, our Bedfordi must belong to the former," he explained, while the acute arching of one eyebrow, which I descried reflected in the mirror, betrayed the scant satisfaction which the abbot was obtaining from the examination of his own reflection.

"And how do you deduce that?" I asked, growing curious.

"From what I could gather, Bedfordi stayed awhile in Holland, a land of Calvinists."

"In Holland there are also Catholics: I know this from our guests who have sojourned long there, and they are surely faithful to the Church of Rome…"

"Of course. But the United Provinces are also William's country. Some ten years ago, the Prince of Orange defeated the invading army of Louis XIV And now Holland is the stronghold of the Orangist conspirators," retorted Atto as, with a snort of impatience, he pulled out a little brush and a small box and rouged his rather prominent cheeks.

"In other words, you think that Bedfordi went to Holland in order to conspire in favour of the Prince of Orange," I commented, trying not to stare too hard at him.

"No, no, let us not exaggerate," he replied, turning to me after taking one last satisfied look in the mirror. "I believe that Bedfordi is simply one of those who would like to see William on the throne, also because-do not forget this-in England the heretics are very numerous. He will be one of many messengers moving back and forth across the English Channel, at the risk of being arrested sooner or later and imprisoned in the Tower of London…"

He paused, drew up a chair and sat down by the bedside.

"You see then that we are not far from the truth."

"It is incredible," I commented, while all sleepiness receded.

I was both intimidated and agitated by these marvellous and suggestive accounts. Remote and powerful conflicts between the reigning powers of Europe were materialising before my eyes, in this hostelry where I was but a poor apprentice.

"But who is this Prince William of Orange, Signor Atto?" I asked.

"Oh, a great soldier, overwhelmed with debts. That is all," replied the abbot drily. "For the rest, his life is absolutely flat and colourless, as are his person and his spirit."

"A penniless prince?" I asked incredulously.

"Indeed. And if he were not always short of money, who knows what he might not have achieved?"

I remained pensive and silent.

"Of course, never, but never would I ever have suspected that Bedfordi might be a fugitive," I resumed after a moment.

"We have another fugitive too. One who hails from a distant maritime city," added Melani with a little smile, while his face, which had drawn gradually nearer and nearer, looked down on me.

"Brenozzi the Venetian?!" I exclaimed, raising my head from the bed with a start and involuntarily striking the snub nose of the abbot, who let out a groan. "Precisely him, of course," he confirmed, rising to his feet and massaging his nose.

"But how can you be so sure of that?"

"If you had listened to Brenozzi's words with greater perspicacity and, above all, if your awareness of worldly matters had been more extensive, you would certainly have noticed something unconvincing," he replied in a vaguely vexed tone of voice.

"Well, he did say that a cousin…"

"A distant cousin born in London, from whom he learned English simply by corresponding: now, do you not find that explanation a trifle curious?"

And he reminded me of how the glass-blower had dragged me downstairs by force and almost shocked me out of my senses and then subjected me to a flood of questions concerning the Turkish siege and the infection which was perhaps overcoming the resistance of Vienna, after which he had babbled of marguerites.

Only, continued Atto, he was not speaking of daisies, but of one of the most precious treasures of the Most Serene Venetian Republic, which it was prepared to defend by all means and which was doubtless the cause of our Brenozzi's present troubles. The islands which lie at the heart of the Venetian lagoon guard a secret source of wealth which the Doges, who for centuries have been at the head of that Most Serene Republic, watch over jealously. In those isles are manufactures of glass and of decorated pearls, known in Latin as margaritae (or "daisies"), and the art of manufacturing these depends upon secrets handed down for many generations, of which the Venetians are both proud and inordinately jealous.

"But then the daisies-the marguerites-which he mentioned and the little pearls which he put into my hand are one and the same thing," I exclaimed confusedly. "But how much could they be worth?"

"You cannot even imagine it. If you had travelled a tenth as much as I have, you would know that there clings to the trinkets of Murano the copious blood of the Venetians; and for these, it will perhaps flow until who knows when," said Melani, seating himself at his desk.

Many master glass-blowers and their apprentices had, indeed, attempted to flee to Paris, London, Vienna and Amsterdam, but also to Rome or Genoa, where they sometimes found more generous masters and commerce with fewer competitors.

Such fugues were not however to the taste of the magistrates of the Council of the Ten of Venice, who had no intention of losing control of that art, which had brought so much money into the coffers of the Doges; and they had therefore placed the matter in the hands of the State Inquisitors, the special council responsible for ensuring that no secret should be propagated which might be prejudicial to the interests of the Most Serene Republic.

The Inquisitors were most skilful: violence was followed by promises and blandishments, damage to new workshops and threats to relatives remaining in Venice; everything possible to persuade the glass-blowers to return.

"And did the glass-blowers return?"

"You should rather be asking 'do they return?', for the drama continues to this day and I think that it is being played out even in this hostelry. For those unwilling to return, there is the skilful and secretive work of the assassin. To steel, which announces violent death, they often prefer poison. That is why our Brenozzi is so worried," concluded Abbot Melani. "The maker of margaritae, glass or mirrors who flees Venice finds himself in hell. He sees assassins and betrayal everywhere, he sleeps with one eye open, he keeps looking over his shoulder. And Brenozzi, too, has surely known the violence and the threats of the inquisitors."

"And I, who ingenuously allowed myself to become so scared when Cristofano spoke to me of the powers of my little pearls," I exclaimed, not without some shame. "Only now do I understand why Brenozzi asked me, with such a nasty expression, whether those three pearls were enough. With those three little pearls, he wanted to buy my silence about our conversation."

"Bravo, you have grasped the point."

"Yet, do you not find it strange that there should be two fugitives present in this inn?" I asked, alluding to the presence of both Bedfordi and Brenozzi.

"Not so strange. In recent years, not a few have fled London, and no fewer, Venice. Your master is probably not the kind of person who tends to spy on his guests and nor, no doubt, was Signora Luigia Bonetti who kept the inn before him. Perhaps the Donzello is considered to be a 'discreet' hostelry where those fleeing from serious trouble can find refuge. The names of such places are often passed on by word of mouth from one exile to another. Remember: the world is full of people who want to flee their own past."

I had in the meanwhile risen from where I was lying and, taking the necessary from my bag, I poured into a bowl a syrup which the physician had indicated to me for the abbot. I explained to him briefly what it was and Atto drank it without complaint. Then he rose to his feet and, singing to himself, began organising some papers on the table:

In questo duro esilio…*

It was curious how Atto Melani could draw from his own repertory the perfect little aria for each occasion. He must, I thought, hold a truly lively and tender affection for the memory of his Roman master, Le Seigneur Luigi, as he called him.

"So poor Brenozzi is in a state of great anxiety," resumed Abbot Melani. "And he may, sooner or later, ask you again for help. By the way, my boy, you have a drop of oil on your head." He wiped the little spot from my forehead with a fingertip and carelessly brought it to his lips, sucking it.

"Do you believe that the poison which killed Mourai could have anything to do with Brenozzi?" I asked him.

"I would exclude that," he answered with a smile. "I think that our poor glass-blower is the only one to entertain such a fear."

"Why did he ask me, too, about the siege of Vienna?"

"And you, tell me: where is the Most Serene Republic?"

"Near to the Empire, just to the south, and…"

"That is quite enough: if Vienna capitulates, in a few days the Turks will spread out, above all to the south, entering Venice. Our Brenozzi must have spent quite a long time in England, where he was able to learn English discreetly in person, and not by correspondence. No, he would probably like to return to Venice, but he realises that the time is not propitious."

"In other words, he risks falling straight into the hands of the Turks."

"Precisely. He must have come as far as Rome, hoping perhaps to be able to set up shop and thus to find shelter. But he understood that here too the fear is great: if the Turks succeed in Vienna, after Venice, they will come to the Duchy of Ferrara. They will cross the Romagna and the Duchies of Urbino and Spoleto, and moving beyond the gentle hills of Umbria, they will leave Viterbo on their right and head…" * In this hard exile…

"For us," I shivered, realising clearly for the first time the danger that hung over us.

"It is not necessary for me to explain to you what would happen in that eventuality," said Atto. The Sack of Rome a century and a half ago would be a mere trifle by comparison. The Turks will lay waste to the Papal States, taking their natural ferocity to its most extreme consequences. Basilicas and churches, beginning with Saint Peter's, will be razed to the ground. Priests, bishops and cardinals will be dragged from their houses and their throats cut, crucifixes and other symbols of the Faith will be torn down and burned; the people will be robbed, the women horribly violated, the cities and countryside will be ruined forever. And if that first collapse takes place, all Christendom may well end up a prey to the Turkish horde."

The Infidel army, bursting out from the woods of Latium, would next cross the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, then the Duchy of Parma, and, passing through the Most Serene Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Savoy, it would overflow into French territory (and here perhaps I saw on Abbot Melani's face a trace of genuine horror) in the direction of Marseilles and Lyons. And at that point, at least in theory, it could head for Versailles.

It was then that, giving way again to discomfiture and taking my leave of Atto on a vague pretext, I picked up my bag and ran upstairs, stopping only when I reached the short stairway leading to the little tower.

At this point, I gave free rein to all my anxieties, abandoning myself to a doleful soliloquy. Here was I, a prisoner in a cramped hostelry which was suspected, with good reason now, of harbouring the plague. Hardly had I succeeded in shaking off that terror, thanks to the words of the physician, who foretold my resistance to infection, when Melani came telling that I ran the risk of leaving the Locanda del Donzello only to find Rome invaded by the sanguinary followers of Mahomet. I had always known that I could count only on the kindness of a very few persons, among them Pellegrino, who had generously saved me from the hardships and dangers of life; this time, however, I could count only on the (surely not disinterested) company of a castrato abbot and spy, whose precepts were for me almost exclusively a source of fear and anguish. And the inn's other lodgers? A bilious-tempered Jesuit, a shady and inconstant gentleman from the Marches, a brusque-mannered French guitarist, a Tuscan physician whose ideas were confused and perhaps even dangerous, together with my master and Bedfordi, who lay supine in their beds. Never before had I experienced so deeply the sentiment of solitude, when my murmurings were suddenly interrupted by an invisible force which knocked me backwards, leaving me lying spread-eagled on the floor; and there, looking down on me, stood the guest whom I had omitted from my silent inventory.

"You frightened me, silly!"

Cloridia, feeling a strange presence behind her door (on which I had in fact been leaning) had opened it suddenly, causing me to roll into her chamber. I rose to my feet without even trying to excuse myself and hastily wiped my face.

"And anyway," she went on "there are disasters worse than the plague or the Turks."

"Did you hear my thoughts?" I responded, astonished.

"In the first place, you were not thinking, because whoever truly thinks has no time for snivelling. And besides, we are in quarantine on suspicion of infection, and in Rome these days no one can sleep a single night without dreaming of the Turks entering through the Porta del Popolo. Whatever should you have to whine about?"

And she handed me a dish with, on it, a glass half full of spirits and an aniseed ring-cake. I was about to seat myself timidly on the edge of her high bed.

"No, not there."

I stood up instinctively, spilling half the liquor on the carpet and somehow catching the cake but covering the bed with crumbs. Cloridia said nothing. I fumbled for an excuse and tried to make amends for the little disaster, wondering why she had not harshly scolded me, like Signor Pellegrino and indeed all the guests of the locanda (except, it is true, Abbot Melani whose conduct in regard to me was more liberal).

The young woman who stood before me was the one person of whom I knew so little, yet what I knew was certain. My contacts with her were limited to the meals which my master ordered me to prepare and bring to her, to the sealed notes which she would sometimes ask me to deliver to this or that person, to the maids whom she often changed and whom from time to time I would instruct in the use of the water and the pantry in the hostelry. That was all. For the rest, I knew nothing of how she lived in the little tower where she received guests who entered through the passage that gave on to the roof; nor did I need to know anything.

She was not a common prostitute, she was a courtesan: too rich to be a harlot, too avaricious not to be one. Yet all that is not sufficient to understand properly what a courtesan might be, and of what refined arts she might be mistress.

Everybody knew what took place in the "stufe", those hot vapour baths imported into Rome by a German and recommended for eliminating putrid humours through perspiration. Those baths were for the most part kept by women of easy virtue (indeed, there was one within a stone's throw of the Donzello which was generally regarded as the most famous and ancient in Rome and was known as the Stufa delle Donne, the Women's Baths. Everybody knew, except me, what commerce one could have with certain women near Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, or in the vicinity of Via Giulia, or at Santa Maria in Via; and it was common knowledge that at Santa Maria in Monterone an identical business took place even in the parish apartments; and in former centuries the pontiffs had found it necessary to forbid the clergy to live in the same neighbourhood as such women, yet these prohibitions had as often as not been ignored or circumvented. In any case, it was perfectly clear who hid behind such noble Latin names as Lucrezia, Cornelia, Medea, Pentesilea, Flora, Diana, Vittoria, Polisse- na, Prudenzia or Adriana; or what was the true identity of the Duchessa or the Reverendissima, who had been so bold as to filch their titles from illustrious protectors; or, again, what lusts Selvaggia and Smeralda enjoyed unleashing, or what was the true nature of Fior di Crema, or why Gravida-the Fragrant One-was called by that name, or indeed what trade Lucrezia-the-Slut carried on.

What point was there in investigating all this? That had already been done a century and more ago and, furthermore, a classification had even been made of all the categories: meretrici, puttane, curtail (those of the Curia), whores of the lamp, of the candle, of the Venetian blinds, of the silhouettes, and "women in trouble, or of lesser fortune", while some burlesque ballads sang, too, of the Sunday girls, the church mice, the Guelf girls, the Ghibellines and a thousand others. How many were they? Enough to give Pope Leo X the idea, when repairs had to be made to the road leading to the Piazza del Popolo, of levying a tax on the harlots, of whom many lived in that quarter. Under Pope Clement VII, some swore that every tenth Roman was engaged in prostitution (not even counting bawds and pimps), and perhaps Saint Augustine was right when he said that if prostitutes were to disappear, unbridled licence would flourish everywhere.

The courtesans, however, were of quite another kind. For, with them, mere amorous beguilements were transformed into a sublime exercise: one that gave the measure not of the appetites of merchants or the soldiery, but of the genius of ambassadors, princes and cardinals. Genius, because the courtesan jousted against men victoriously in verse, like Gaspara Stampa who dedicated an entire ardent canzoniere to Collatino di Collalto, or Veronica Franco who challenged the potentates of the Venier family both in bed and in poetry; or like Imperia, the queen of Roman courtesans, who would gracefully compose madrigals and sonnets, and was loved by men of such illustrious and opulent talents as Tommaso Inghirami, Camillo Porzio, Bernardino Capella, Angelo Colocci and the unbelievably wealthy Agostino Chigi, and who posed for Raphael and may have rivalled the Fornarina herself. (Imperia died by her own hand, yet on her deathbed, Pope Julius II granted her full absolution for her sins, while Chigi had a monument erected to her). The celebrated Madremianonvuole,* thus nicknamed following some imprudent juvenile refusal, knew all of Petrarch and Boccaccio by heart, as well as Virgil and Horace, and a hundred other authors.

So the woman before me belonged, in Pietro Aretino's words, to that shameless race whose pomp leaves Rome drained, while through the streets the wives go veiled and muttering paternosters.

"Have you, too, come to ask what the future holds in store for you?" asked Cloridia. "Are you in search of good news? Take care, for fortune-and so I tell all those who come here-does not always ordain matters as one might desire."

Taken by surprise, I was rendered speechless.

"I know nothing of magic. And if you wish to know the arcana of the stars, you must go to someone else. But if no one has ever read your hand, then Cloridia's is indeed the door to come to. Or perhaps you have dreamed a dream and wish to know its hidden meaning. *My-mother-doesn't-want-me-to

Do not tell me that you came here without any desire, for I will not believe you. No one ever comes to Cloridia without wanting something."

I was at once curious and so excited that I found it hard to keep my composure. I remembered that I was supposed to administer Cristofano's remedies to her, too, but that I put off. Instead, I seized my opportunity and told her of the nightmare in which I had seen myself fall into the obscure cavity below the Donzello.

"No, no, it is not clear," commented Cloridia at the end, shaking her head. "Was the ring of gold or of base metal?"

"I could not say."

"Then the interpretation is unclear; because a ring signifies a reward or a punishment. A gold ring signifies great profit. I find the trumpet interesting, for it betokens secrets, hidden or revealed. Perhaps Devize is the holder of some secret, which he may or may not be aware of. Does that mean anything to you?"

"No, I really know only that he is the most splendid guitar player," said I, remembering the marvellous music which I had heard issuing from the strings of his instrument.

"Of course, you can know no more, otherwise Devize's secret would not be one!" laughed Cloridia. "But in your dream Pellegrino too is present. You saw him dead and then resuscitated, and the dead who rise again signify travail and damage. So, let us see: a ring, a secret, a dead man resuscitated. The meaning, I repeat, is not clear because of the ring. The only clear things are the secret and the dead man."

"Then the dream presages misadventures."

"Not necessarily: because in reality your master is only sick, and in a bad way, but not dead. And illness means simply idleness and little employment. Perhaps, since Pellegrino has not been well, you are afraid that you have been neglecting your duties. But do not be afraid of me," said Cloridia, lazily extracting another ring-cake from a basket. "I shall certainly be the last person to tell Pellegrino if you are a little disinclined to work. Tell me, rather, what are they saying downstairs? Apart from the unfortunate Bedfordi, it seems to me that the others are all still in good health, is that not so?" and, with a vague gesture, she added, "Pompeo Dulcibeni, for instance? I ask you, seeing that he is one of the oldest…"

Again Cloridia was asking me about Dulcibeni. I hung back, feeling dejected. She understood at once: "And don't be afraid of coming close to me," said she, drawing me to her and ruffling my hair. "I, for the time being, do not have the plague."

I then recalled my duties concerning health and mentioned that Cristofano had already delivered me the preventive remedies to be administered to all those in good health. Blushing, I added that I was to begin with the violet unguent of Master Giacomo Bortolotto from Parma, which I was supposed to spread on her back and her hips.

She fell silent. I smiled weakly: "If you prefer, I also have here the fumigants of Orsolin Pignuolo from Pontremoli. We could begin with those, seeing that you have a fireplace in your chamber."

"Very well," she answered. "So long as it does not take too much time."

She sat down at her dressing table. I saw her uncover her shoulders and gather her locks up into a white muslin bonnet tied with crossed ribbons. Meanwhile, I attended to making a fire and gathering the burning coals from the fireplace in a pot, trembling briefly when I thought of the nudity which those coals must have seen during those still warm mid-September nights.

I turned again towards her. On her head she had placed a piece of linen, folded double: she resembled a holy apparition.

"Carob, myrrh, incense, liquid amber, benzoin, gum ammoniac, antimony, made into a paste with the finest rose water," I recited, having studied Cristofano's notes well, while placing the bowl of coals lightly on the little table and breaking a bag into it. "I must insist, breathe in with wide open mouth."

And I pulled down the fine linen cloth until it covered her face. The room filled swiftly with a pungent odour.

"The Turks make far better health-bringing fumigants than these," she muttered after a while from under the cloth.

"But we are not Turks yet," I replied clumsily.

"And would you believe it if I told you that I am one?" I heard her ask.

"No, of course not, Donna Cloridia."

"And why ever not?

"Because you were bom in Holland, in…"

"In Amsterdam, correct. And how come that you knew?"

I was at a loss for a reply, since I had learned that detail only a few days earlier, when I stopped at Cloridia's door before knocking to deliver a basket of fruit and overheard a conversation between her and an unknown visitor.

One of my girls will have told you, I suppose. Yes, I was born in a land of heretics almost nineteen years ago, but Calvin and Luther have never counted me among their own. I never knew my mother, while my father was an Italian merchant, who travelled a great deal."

"Oh, how fortunate you are!" I sighed from the depths of my mere foundling's estate.

She said nothing, and from the movement of her bust I guessed that she was inhaling deeply. She coughed.

"If one day you should ever have to do with Italian merchants, just remember: they leave only debts to others and keep the profits for themselves."

Cloridia explained that in Amsterdam she herself had known intimately the fame of the Tensini, the Verrazzanos, the Balbi, the Quingetti, and then the Burlamacchi and the Calandrini, who were also present in Antwerp: Genoese, Tuscans, Venetians, all merchants, insurers, shipowners, bankers and bill brokers, a few agents of Italian principalities and republics, and for freedom from scruples there were none who could outdo them.

"What does 'bill broker' mean?" I asked, leaning with my elbows on the little table, the better to hear and be heard.

"It is one who acts as go-between between a lender of money and someone who borrows it."

I brought my face close to hers: after all, she could not see me. And that made me feel very sure of myself.

"Is that a good profession?"

"If you wish to know whether those who exercise it are good people, well, that depends. If the question is whether this is work that makes one rich, why, that is for certain. Indeed, it makes those who practise it exceedingly wealthy. The Bartolotti, whose house on the Heerengracht is the finest in the whole city, started out as simple brewers and are now the most powerful people in Amsterdam, shareholders and financiers of the East India Company."

Then Cloridia gasped: "May I get up?"

"No, Monna Cloridia, not while there is still smoke!" I stopped her, although I myself felt the exhalations going to my head. I did not want to bring our conversation to so early a conclusion. Almost without realising it, I had begun to stroke a corner of the piece of linen which covered her head: she could not be aware of that.

"Are the shipowners and insurers as wealthy?" I asked.

She sighed. At this point, my ingenuous questions, together with my limited knowledge of the world (and of circumstances which I could not at present be blamed for not knowing) all had the effect of loosing Cloridia's tongue. Suddenly, she inveighed against merchants and their money, but above all against bankers, whose wealth was at the root of all manner of iniquity (only, here in truth, Cloridia used far harsher language and spoke with very different accents), especially when money was lent by usurers and brokers, and most of all, when those to whom it was destined were kings and popes.

Cloridia had risen from the hot coals and torn off the covering from her head, causing me to step sharply back, red with shame. She then cast off her bonnet and her long curly mane fanned out across her shoulders.

She appeared to me then for the first time in a new and indescribable light, capable of cancelling out all that I had hitherto seen of her-and above all, what I had not yet seen, but which seemed to me even more indelible-and I saw with my pupils and even more with my soul all that lovely lucent brown velvet complexion which contrasted with her luxuriant Venetian blond curls. Little did I then care that I knew them to be the creation of white wine lees and olive oil, if they framed those long black eyes and the serrated pearls of her mouth, that rounded yet proud little nose, those lips smiling with a touch of rouge just sufficient to remove their vague pallor, and that small but fine and harmonious face and the fine snow of her bosom, intact and kissed by two suns, on shoulders worthy of a bust by Bernini or so at least it seemed to me et satis erat, and her voice which, although distorted and almost booming with rage, or perhaps precisely because of that, filled me with lascivious little desires and little languid sighs, with rustic frenzies, with flower-strewn dreams, with a lusciously odorous vegetable delirium, until it seemed that I could become almost invisible to others' eyes, through the mist of desire that enveloped me and made Cloridia appear to me more sublime than a Raphael Madonna, more inspired than a motto of Teresa of Avila, more marvellous than a verse of the cavaliere Marino, more melodious than a madrigal of Monteverdi, more lascivious than a couplet by Ovid and more edifying than an entire tome of Fracastoro. And I said to myself that, no, the poetics of an Imperia, of a Veronica, of a Madremianonvuole would never have such power (although my soul was weighed down with knowing that a few paces from the locanda, in the Stufa delle Donne, there lay in wait low females, ready and willing for anything, even for me, so long as I had but two scudi) and while I listened to her, in a lightning flash as rapid as Cardinal Chigi's horses, I was transfixed by the mystery of how I, who time and time again had brought to her door the tub, with pails of boiling hot water, for her bath, could possibly have remained indifferent to her presence behind those few wooden planks, with her servant-girl gently rubbing the nape of her neck with talcum and lavender water, so much did she now fire my mind and my senses and my whole spirit.

And thus absorbed I lost sight (and only later was 1 to realise this) of how bizarre was all that inveighing against merchants by a merchant's daughter, and above all how unexpected those protestations of horror for lucre in the mouth of a courtesan.

And in addition to being blind to such strange behaviour, I was almost deaf, too, to the rhythmic drumming of Cristofano's knuckles on Cloridia's door. She, however, responded promptly to his courteous request to enter and invited the physician in. He had sought me everywhere. He needed my help in preparing a decoction: Brenozzi was complaining of a great pain in the jaw and had requested a remedy. Thus was I unwillingly snatched away from my first colloquy with the only feminine guest of the Donzello.

We at once took leave of one another. With the eyes of hope I strove to discover in her countenance some trace of sadness at our separation, and that despite my descrying-as I was closing the door-the most horrible scar on her wrist, which disfigured her almost as far as the back of her hand.

Cristofano brought me down to the kitchen, where he instructed me to find a number of seeds, herbs and a new candle. He then made me heat a cooking pot with a little water while he reduced the ingredients to powder and sieved them, and when the water was hot enough, we put in the fine mixture which immediately gave off a most agreeable aroma. While I was preparing the fire for the decoction,

I asked him whether it was true, as I had heard say, that I could use white wine also for cleaning and whitening my teeth.

"Of course, and you would attain a good, indeed, a perfect result, if you only were to use it as a mouth-wash. If, however, you should mix it with white clay, you would see a very fine effect which will greatly please the young ladies. You must rub it into the teeth and gums, ideally with a piece of scarlet such as that over Cloridia's bed, on which you were sitting."

I feigned not to have noticed the double allusion and hastened to change the subject, asking Cristofano if he had ever heard tell of his Tuscan compatriots, such as the Calandrini, the Burlamacchi, the Tensini, and others (although in reality there were a couple of names which I could not recall without distorting them). And, while he ordered me to put the mixture of herbs and wax into the cooking pot, Cristofano replied that, yes, some of those names were quite well known in Tuscany. They were, however, all so bound up with trade with Holland, where they had bought lands, villas and palaces, that in Tuscany they were known as the infiamengati — the new Flemings. Some had made their fortune, had married into and had become kinsmen of noble families of that country; others were crushed under the weight of their debts and of them no more news had been heard. Others had died in ships that had sunk among the Arctic ice floes of Archangel or in the waters of Malabar. Others had eventually grown rich, and at an advanced age had preferred to return to their own land, where they were accorded well-merited honours: like Francesco Feroni, a poor dyer from Empoli, who had begun by trading with Guinea old sheets, bright buntings from Delft, cotton canvas, Venetian beads, quantities of spirits, Spanish wines and strong beer. With his trade, he had grown so rich that in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany he was famous even before his return home, also for having served as an excellent ambassador of the Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici, in the United Provinces. When at length he did decide to return to Tuscany, the Grand Duke himself had him appointed his Depositary-General, thus arousing the envy of all Florence. Feroni had brought back conspicuous wealth to Tuscany, and had purchased a splendid villa in the country of Bellavista, and despite all the evil that the Florentines could say of him, he could count himself fortunate to have returned to his home country and have escaped all dangers.

"Such as going down with one's ship?"

"Not only that, my boy! Certain trades involve enormous risks."

I should have liked to ask him what he meant, but the decoction was ready and Cristofano told me to bring it to Brenozzi in his little chamber on the second floor. Following the doctor's instructions, I recommended the Venetian to inhale the steam while it was still hot, with his mouth wide open: after such a treatment, his jaw would hurt far less or not at all. Afterwards, Brenozzi was to leave the cooking pot outside his door for collection. Thanks to his toothache, I was spared his garrulousness. Thus I could return at once to the kitchen to resume my conversation with the physician before he regained his apartment. It was, however, Abbot Melani whom I found there.

I struggled to hide my consternation. The brief time I had spent with Cloridia, concluding with the disquieting vision of her martyred wrist, together with her singular diatribe against merchants, made me feel a desperate need to interrogate Cristofano further. The doctor, however, following his own prescription, had prudently regained his chamber without waiting for me. And now Atto Melani, whom I found rummaging carelessly in the pantry, had come to oppress my thoughts yet further. I pointed out to him that his disobedience of the physician's instructions endangered all of us and it would be my duty to advise Cristofano; it was, moreover, not yet time for supper and I would in any case soon be busy preparing the wherewithal to satisfy the appetite of our honourable guests, if only (and here I cast a meaningful eye on the slice of bread which Melani held in his hand)… if only I could dispose freely of the larder.

Abbot Melani tried to conceal his own embarrassment, and replied that he had been looking for me to tell me certain things which were on his mind, but I cut him off and told him that I was tired of having to listen to him when we were all obviously in dire danger, nor did I yet know what he really wanted or was looking for, and I did not wish to be party to goings-on of which I did not understand the purpose and that the time had now come for him to explain himself and to dispel all possible doubts, for I had heard gossip concerning him which did not do him honour, and before placing myself at his service, I demanded adequate explanations.

The meeting with Cloridia must have endowed me with new and fresh talents, for my audacious discourse seemed to catch Abbot Melani utterly unprepared. He said he was surprised that someone in the hostelry should think that he could dare dishonour him without paying the price and demanded, without great conviction, that I reveal the name of that insolent fellow.

He then swore that he in no way intended to abuse of my services and affected utter astonishment: had I perhaps forgotten that he and I together were seeking to discover the unknown thief of Pellegrino's keys and of my little pearls? And indeed, before all that, was it not urgently necessary that we should understand if there was any connection between those events and the assassination of Monsieur de Mourai, and how all that related-if indeed there were any relation-to the misadventures which had befallen my master and the young Bedfordi? Did I no longer fear, he reproved me, for the lives of us all?

Despite the unstoppable flow of his words, it was clear to me that the abbot was becoming muddled.

Encouraged by the success of my sudden sally, I interrupted him impatiently and, with a corner of my heart still turning towards Cloridia, I demanded that Melani explain to me instantly what had brought him to Rome and what his intentions were.

While I felt my pulse pounding hard in my temples and mentally wiped the sweat from my brow at the audacity of my claims, I was utterly taken aback by the reaction of Abbot Melani. Instead of rejecting the arrogant pretensions of a mere apprentice, his expression changed suddenly and with all simplicity and courtesy he invited me to sit down in a corner of the kitchen so that he could satisfy my just demands. Once we had taken our places, the abbot began to describe to me a series of circumstances which, although they seemed fantastic, I must, in the light of what later transpired, take to be true or at least to possess the appearance of truth, and these I shall therefore report as faithfully as possible.

Abbot Melani began by saying that in the last days of August, Colbert had fallen gravely ill, and was soon so close to death that it was feared this might follow within days. As happens on such occasions, in other words when a statesman who is the repository of many secrets is approaching the end of his life on earth, Colbert's house in the Richelieu quarter suddenly became the object of the most varied visits, some disinterested, others less so. Among the latter was that of Atto himself, who, thanks to the excellent references which he enjoyed from no less than his Most Christian Majesty in person, had been able without great difficulty to gain access to the four walls of the minister's home. There, the great coming and going of persons of the court calling to pay their last tribute to the dying man (or simply to show their faces) had enabled the abbot to slip quietly out of an antechamber and, circumventing the already lax surveillance, to enter the private apartments of the master of the house. Here he had in truth twice come close to being discovered by the servants as he hid behind an arras or under a table.

Somehow escaping discovery, he had in the end entered Colbert's study where, at last feeling himself to be safe, he had begun to rummage hastily among the letters and documents which were most readily and rapidly accessible. Twice, he had been compelled to break off his inspection, alarmed by the passage of strangers in the nearby corridor. The documents over which he had been able to cast a swift glance seemed practically devoid of interest: correspondence with the Ministry for War, affairs of the navy, letters concerning the Manufactures of France, appointments, accounts, minutes; nothing out of the ordinary. Then, once again he had heard through the door the approach of other visitors. He could not risk the bruiting abroad of the news that Abbot Melani had been surprised taking advantage of Colbert's illness to go clandestinely through the minister's papers. He had therefore confusedly grabbed and slipped into his breeches a few bunches of correspondence and notes piled in the drawers of the desk and the cabinets, to which he had without great difficulty found the keys.

"But had you permission to do this?"

"To ensure the King's security, every act is permitted," the abbot retorted drily.

He was already scrutinising the shady corridor before leaving the study (for his visit, the abbot had chosen the late afternoon, so as to be able to count on the declining light) when, through the corner of his eye, intuition caused him to catch sight of a small chest in an obscure recess half-hidden by the draperies of a heavy curtain and the massive flank of an ebony cupboard.

It lay under a considerable pile of white sheets of paper, on top of which balanced an imposing lectern with a richly carved foot; and on that lectern, a folder tied with a brand-new cord.

"It seemed as yet untouched," explained Atto.

Indeed, Colbert's illness, a violent renal colic, had peaked only a few weeks earlier. For several days, it was said that he had no longer attended to any business; this meant that the folder might still be waiting to be read. The decision was made in a flash: he put down all that he had taken and took the folder with him. Hardly had he picked it up, however, than his eyes again alighted on the pile of blank sheets of paper, deformed by the weight of the lectern

'"A fine place to leave writing paper,' I muttered to myself, attributing such a betise to the usual careless servant."

Taking the lectern under his left arm, the abbot tried to look through the still virgin sheets of paper, in case some interesting document should be hidden there. Nothing. It was paper of excellent quality, smooth and heavy. He did, however, find that some leaves had been cut in a way that was as accurate as it was singular: they all had the same form, like a star with irregular points.

"I thought at first that this might be some senile mania of the Coluber. Then I noticed that some of these papers bore marks of rubbing and, on the edge of one of the points, slight striations of what appeared to be black grease. I was still puzzling this over," continued Atto, "when I noticed that the great weight of the lectern was making my arm stiff. I decided to put it down on the writing desk when I remarked with horror that a corner of the delicate lace of my cuffs had been caught in a crudely fashioned joint of the lectern."

When the abbot succeeded in freeing the lace, it bore traces of black grease.

"Ah, you presumptuous little snake-in-the-grass, did you think you could deceive me?" thought Melani with a flash of sudden insight.

And swiftly he picked up one of the still new paper stars. Studying it carefully, he placed it on top of one of the used ones, turning it quickly until he could see which was the right point. Then he inserted it in the joint of the lectern. Nothing happened. Nervously, he tried again: still nothing. By then, the star was already crumpled and he had to take another one. This time, he inserted it in the joint with the greatest of care, holding his ear close to the operation, like a master clockmaker listening for the first tick of the mechanism he has returned to new life. And it was precisely a slight click that the abbot heard as soon as the tip of the paper reached the extremity of the slot: one end of the foot of the lectern had sprung open like a drawer, revealing a small cavity. In it lay an envelope bearing the effigy of a serpent.

"Such a presumptuous snake-in-the-grass," Abbot Melani muttered to himself before the emblem of the Coluber which so unexpectedly confronted him.

At that moment, Atto heard in the corridor the bustle of rapidly approaching footsteps. He took the envelope, adjusted his jacket in order to conceal as well as possible the bulge created by the parcel and held his breath, hidden behind an arras, while he heard a man arrive before the study door. Someone opened that door and said, turning to the others, "He will already have gone in."

Colbert's servants, not having heard Abbot Melani enter the dying man's sickroom, had begun to search for him. The door closed again, the servant returned whence he had come. Abbot Melani left in complete silence and moved without haste towards the main entrance. Here he greeted a valet with an easy smile: "He will soon be better," said he, looking him straight in the eye as he went through the door.

In the days that followed, no word reached him of the disappearance of any folder, and the abbot was able to peruse it at his ease.

"Pardon me, Signor Atto," I interrupted him, "but how did you understand which was the right point of the paper to insert into the joint?"

"Simple: all the paper stars that had already been used had traces of grease at exactly the same place. It had been a gross error on the Serpent's part to leave it there. Clearly, his senses had begun to grow dull of late."

"And why did the secret drawer not open at once?"

"Stupidly, I had thought it was a crude mechanism," sighed Atto, "which would be activated as soon as one touched the end of the aperture with the right key: in other words, with the point of the paper inserted at the right angle. But I had underestimated the French cabinet-makers' skill in inventing ever more remarkable devices. In reality (and here was why it was so important to use superior materials like those leaves of exquisitely fashioned paper) the mechanism was complex and involved many highly sensitive metal parts not situated directly behind the opening but at one remove from there, and only a slow stroking of both sides could activate all the parts in perfect succession."

I remained silent, lost in admiration.

"I should have understood at once," concluded Atto with a grimace. "The used stars were blackened not precisely at the tip but along both sides."

His instinct had not deceived him: into his hands had fallen one of the most extraordinary finds. Inside the envelope stamped with the face of the Serpent (and he emphasised the word) was a letter in Latin sent from Rome by someone unknown to Melani but whom he understood by his style and from other details to be certainly a cleric. The paper had grown yellow and seemed to date from many years previously. The missives referred to confidential information which the same informer had sent previously to the addressee. The latter, as was to be understood from the envelope, was the Superintendent General of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet.

"And why was this in Colbert's possession?"

"I have already told you, as you will recall, that at the time of his arrest and in the days that followed, all Fouquet's papers and correspondence, both private and relating to matters of state, were confiscated."

The language of the mysterious prelate was so cryptic that Melani was unable even to understand what might be the nature of the secret to which it alluded. He noted, amongst other things, that one of the epistles began curiously with the words mumiarum domino, but was unable to find any explanation for this.

But the most interesting part of Abbot Melani's tale was still to come, and here the material took on the contours of the incredible. The folder which Atto had found on top of the lectern contained very recent correspondence with which, because of his illness, Colbert had not yet been able to deal. Apart from a few matters of no importance, there were two letters sent from Rome in July and almost certainly (as appeared from the obsequious turns of phrase employed) destined for Colbert in person. The sender must have been a trusted servant of the minister, and he reported the presence in the city of the squirrel on the arbor caritatis.

"Meaning…"

"Elementary. The squirrel is the animal on Fouquet's coat of arms; the arbor caritatis, the tree of charity, can only be the city of loving kindness, that is, Rome. And indeed, according to the informer, the former Superintendent Fouquet had been seen and followed no fewer than three times: near a piazza called Fiammetta, in the vicinity of the church of Sant'Apollinare and in the Piazza Navona. Three places, if I am not mistaken, in the Holy City."

"But that is not possible," I objected. "Did not Fouquet die in prison, at…"

"At Pinerol, of course, a good three years ago, and in the arms of his son who at that extreme hour was generously granted access to him. Yet the letter from Colbert's informer, although written in cipher, spoke to me clearly: he was here in Rome little more than a month ago."

The abbot decided to leave at once for Rome in order to solve the mystery. There were two possibilities: either the news of Fouquet's presence in Rome was true (and that would have been beyond anything that could have been imagined, since it was common knowledge that the Superintendent had died following a long illness after almost twenty years' imprisonment in a fortress); or it was false, and then it would be necessary to discover whether someone, perhaps an unfaithful agent, was distributing false rumours with a view to disturbing the King and the court and comforting the enemies of France.

Once again I noticed how, when telling of such secrets and surprising events, Abbot Melani's eyes lit up with a twinkle of malicious joy, of private satisfaction and unspoken pleasure in recounting these things to someone like myself, a poor apprentice utterly ignorant of intrigues, plots and secret affairs of state.

"Did Colbert die?"

"No doubt, seeing the condition he was in; even if not before my departure."

In fact, as I learned far later, Colbert died on the 6th of September, exactly a week before Abbot Melani told me of his intrusion.

"In the eyes of the world, he will have died a victor," added Atto after a pause, "immensely wealthy and powerful. For his family, he bought the finest noble titles and high offices: his brother Charles became Marquis de Croissy and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; another brother, Edouard-Francois, was created Marquis de Maulevrierand became Lieutenant-General of the King's armies; his son Jean-Baptiste became Marquis de Seignelay, and Secretary of State for the Navy. Without counting all the other brothers and sons who made brilliant military and ecclesiastical careers, or the rich marriages contracted by his three daughters, all of whom became duchesses."

"But did Colbert not cry scandal, accusing Fouquet of being too rich and of having placed his men everywhere?"

"Yes, and then he himself engaged in the most blatant nepotism. He spun a network of his own spies such as there had never been, hunting down and ruining all the most loyal friends of the Superintendent."

I knew that Melani was also referring to his own exile from Paris.

"Not only that: Colbert had accumulated an estate of over ten million livres net, concerning the origins of which no one has ever expressed the slightest suspicions. My poor friend Nicolas, on the other hand, had contracted personal debts in order to provide funds for Mazarin and for the war against Spain."

"An astute man, your Signor di Colbert."

"And unscrupulous," added Melani. "All his life, he was praised to heaven for his vast reforms of the state which will, alas, guarantee him a place in history. Yet, all of us at court know perfectly well that every single reform was stolen from Fouquet: those to do with revenue and estates, the easing of the taille, tax relief, the great manufactures, and the naval and colonial policies. It is no accident that he had all the Superintendent's papers burned very early on."

Fouquet, explained the abbot to me, was the first shipbuilder and coloniser of France, the first to take up Richelieu's old dream of making the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Morbihan the centre of the economic and maritime renewal of the kingdom. It was he, already the organiser of the victorious war against Spain, who first discovered and organised the weavers of the village of Maincy, whom Colbert later transformed into the manufactory of the Gobelins.

"Besides, it was soon common knowledge that these reforms were not flour from his own sack. For a good twenty-two years Colbert was Comptroller-General, a more modest title with which he, to please the King, had renamed the office of Superintendent, which was officially abolished. Fouquet, however, remained in government for eight years only. And here lay the problem: for as long as he was able to, the Serpent followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, and fortune smiled on him. But then he had to pursue on his own the reform plans which were confiscated from Fouquet at the time of his arrest. And from that point on, Colbert made one long series of false moves: in industrial and mercantile policy, where neither the nobility nor the bourgeoisie gave him credit, and in maritime policy, in which none of his much-vaunted companies were long-lived, and no one ever succeeded in gaining supremacy over the English and the Dutch."

"And was the Most Christian King aware of nothing?"

"The King keeps his changes of judgement jealously to himself; but it seems that, no sooner had the physicians given Colbert up for lost than he began a round of consultations to choose a successor, taking a selection of names of ministers whose character and training were very different from that of Colbert. When this was pointed out to him, it is said that His Majesty replied: "That is precisely why I chose them."

"Did Colbert then die in disgrace?"

"Let us not exaggerate. I should say, rather, that the whole of his career as minister was afflicted by the King's continuous rages. Colbert and Louvois, the Minister for War, the two most feared intendants in France, were overcome with trembling and covered in cold sweat whenever the King summoned them in council. They enjoyed the Sovereign's confidence, but they were his two first slaves. Colbert must have realised very early on how difficult it was to take Fouquet's place and, like him, to meet every day the King's demands for money for battles and ballets."

"How did he manage?"

"In the most practical way. The Coluber began to channel into the hands of one man, the Sovereign, all the wealth which had hitherto been that of the few. He abolished countless offices and pensions, he despoiled Paris and the kingdom of every luxury and all ended up in the coffers of the Crown. As for the people, those who previously had gone hungry now died of hunger."

"Did Colbert ever become more powerful than Fouquet had been?"

"My boy, he was far, far more powerful. Never did my friend Nicolas enjoy the liberties from which his successor benefited. Colbert laid his hands on everything, everywhere, interfering in areas that had remained completely beyond the reach of Fouquet, who faced the added difficulty of almost always acting in wartime. And yet the debts which the Serpent left behind him were far greater than those for which Fouquet was arraigned for ruining the state, he who ruined himself for the state."

"Did no one ever bring accusations to bear against Colbert?"

"There were several scandals: such as the one and only case of the forgery of money in France during the past several hundred years, and all of those involved were the Coluber' s men, including his nephew. Or the stripping and illicit trafficking of Burgundy's timber; or the criminal exploitation of the forests of Normandy; and these both involved the same henchman of Colbert, Berryer, who had materially falsified documents in the Fouquet trial. All devices to amass wealth for his family."

"A fortunate life, then."

"That, I would not say. He spent his existence pretending to be of the most exemplary integrity, accumulating a fortune which he was never able to enjoy. He suffered from envy that was boundless and could never be allayed. He had always to sweat blood and tears in order to come up with some paltry idea which was not to be thrown away. A victim of his own mania for power, he arrogated to himself control over every area of the country, spending a lifetime chained to his desk. He never enjoyed himself for one single hour, and despite that he was detested by the people. Every single day he suffered the terrible wrath of the Sovereign. He was mocked and despised for his ignorance. And it was a combination of these last two factors that eventually killed him."

"What do you mean?"

The abbot laughed heartily: "Do you know what brought Colbert to his deathbed?"

"A renal colic, you said."

"Precisely. And do you know why? The King, furious at his latest blunder, summoned him and showered him with insults and contumely."

"Was this some administrative error?"

"Far more. To emulate Fouquet's expertise, Colbert stuck his nose into the building of a new wing for the Chateau of Versailles, imposing his own opinions on the builders, who were unable to make him understand the risks incurred by his villainous intervention."

"But how so? Fouquet had died in prison three years before, and Colbert was still obsessed with him?"

"For as long as the Superintendent remained alive, although entombed at Pinerol, Colbert lived in a state of constant terror that the King might one day return him to his post. Even when Fouquet was no more, the memory of his all-too-brilliant, genial, cultivated, well-loved and admired predecessor remained etched into the Coluber's soul. Colbert had many sons who were healthy and robust, and he enriched them all; he had immense power, while his adversary's family was dispersed far from the capital and condemned perpetually to struggle against creditors. Yet the Coluber' s thoughts could never be free of that one original defeat inflicted upon him by Mother Nature, who had so despised him as to refuse her own gifts and shower them prodigally upon his rival Fouquet."

"How did the building work go at Versailles?"

"The new wing collapsed, and all the court laughed. The King flew into a rage with Colbert who, overcome by humiliation, suffered a most violent attack of the colic. After days of screaming in pain, the sickness brought him to his death throes."

I was at a loss for words before the power of divine vengeance.

"You were truly a good friend of Superintendent Fouquet," was the only phrase I was able to utter.

"I would have wished to be a better friend."

We heard a door open and then close again on the first floor; then footfalls moved towards the stairs.

"Better leave the way open for science," said Atto, alluding to the approach of Cristofano. "But remember that we shall have work to do later."

And he ran to take shelter on the stairway leading to the cellars, while the doctor passed, after which he moved swiftly upstairs.

Cristofano had come to ask me to prepare dinner, because the other guests were complaining.

"I thought I heard footsteps when I was coming downstairs. Has someone perhaps been here?"

"Absolutely not, you will have heard me: I was just getting ready to prepare the stove," said I, pretending to busy myself with the pots and pans.

I would have liked to retain the doctor but he, reassured by my reply, returned directly to his apartment, begging me to serve dinner as soon as possible. Thank heavens, thought I, that he had decided to serve only two meals a day.

I set myself to preparing a soup of semolina with beans, garlic and cinnamon, with sugar on it, to which I added cheese, sweet-smelling herbs, a few little pancakes and half a pint of the watered-down wine.

While I was attending to my cooking, a thousand turbid thoughts rushed through my poor prentice's mind. In the first place came what Abbot Melani had just told me. I was shaken: here, I thought, are all the present and past troubles of the abbot: a man capable of deceit and dissimulation (and to some extent, who is not?) but not inclined to deny the past. His former familiarity with Superintendent Fouquet was the one mark that not even his juvenile flight to Rome and the humiliations that had followed could cancel out, and which even now made him uncertain of the King's favour. Yet he continued to defend his benefactor's memory. Perhaps he spoke so freely only with me, as I would certainly never be able to report his words to the French court.

I went over again in my memory what he had discovered among Colbert's papers. In all tranquillity, he had confided in me how he had purloined a number of confidential documents from the Coluber s study, forcing the devices which were designed to protect them. But this was no surprise, given the character of the man, as I had already learned both from others and from him in person. What had struck me was the mission which he had taken upon himself: to find in Rome his old friend and protector, Superintendent Fouquet. That could be no light matter for Abbot Melani, not only because the Superintendent had hitherto been believed dead, but also because it was precisely he who had, however involuntarily, involved Atto Melani in the scandal: and I seemed, according to the abbot, to be the one person privy to his secret mission, which only the sudden closure of the inn when we were placed in quarantine had, I thought, momentarily interrupted. Thus, when I had entered the gallery under the hostelry, I was in the company of a special agent of the King of France! I felt honoured that he should go to so much trouble to resolve the strange affairs which had taken place at the Donzello, including the theft of my little pearls. And indeed it was he who had insistently requested my help. By now, I would not have hesitated one moment to give the abbot copies of the keys to Dulcibeni and Devize's chambers, which only a day before I had refused. However, it was too late: because of Cristofano's instructions, the two would, like the other guests, remain closed in their apartments all the time, making any search of those apartments impossible. And the abbot had already explained how inopportune it would be to ask questions of them, which might raise their suspicions.

I was proud to share so many secrets, but all that was as nothing when compared with the tangle of sentiments provoked by my colloquy with Cloridia.

After bringing dinner to every guest in their chambers, I went first to see Bedfordi, then Pellegrino, where both Cristofano and I took care of feeding the patients. The Englishman was jabbering incomprehensible things. The doctor seemed worried. So much so that he went to Devize's chamber next door, explaining Bedfordi's condition to him and begging him to lay aside his guitar at least for the time being: the musician was, in fact, practising sonorously, rehearsing on his instrument a fine chaconne which was among his favourite pieces.

"I shall do better," replied Devize laconically.

And, instead of leaving off from playing, he launched into the notes of his rondeau. Cristofano was about to protest, but the mysterious enchantment of that music enveloped him, lighting up his face, and, nodding benevolently, the physician went out of the door without making a sound.

A little later, whilst I was descending from Pellegrino's chamber, up under the eaves, I was called in a stage whisper from the second floor. It was Padre Robleda, whose room was near the stairs. Leaning out from his door, he asked me for news of the two patients.

"And the Englishman is no better?"

"I would say not," I replied.

"And has the doctor nothing new to tell us?"

"Not really."

Meanwhile, the last echo of Devize's rondeau reached us. Robleda, hearing those notes, permitted himself a languid sigh.

"Music is the voice of God," said he, explaining himself.

Seeing that I was carrying the unguents with me, I took the opportunity to ask him whether he had a little time for the administration of the remedies against the infection.

With a gesture, he invited me to enter his little chamber.

I was about to put my things down on a chair which was situated just past the door.

"No, no, no, wait, I need this!"

He hurriedly laid on the seat a little glass box with a black pear- wood frame, with inside it a Christ child and fruit and flowers, standing on little feet shaped like onions.

"I bought it here in Rome. It is precious, and it will be safer on the chair."

Robleda's weak excuse was a sign that his desire for conversation, after long hours passed in solitude, was now equal to his fear of contact with someone who must, he knew, touch Bedfordi every day. I then reminded him that I was to apply the remedy with my own hands, but that there was no cause for mistrust, as Cristofano himself had reassured everyone of my resistance to the infection.

"Of course, of course," was all he answered, marking his cautious confidence.

I asked him to uncover his chest, since I would have to anoint him and to place a poultice in the region of his heart and especially around the left pap.

"And why is that?" asked the Jesuit, perturbed.

I explained that this was what Cristofano had recommended, as his anxious character might risk weakening his heart.

He became calmer and, while I was opening the bag and looking for the right jars, lay supine on the bed. Above this there hung a portrait of Our Lord Innocent XI.

Robleda began almost at once to complain of Cristofano's indecision, and the fact that he had not yet found a clear explanation for the death of Mourai or for the distemper which had laid Pellegrino low; indeed, there were even uncertainties concerning the plague to which Bedfordi had fallen victim, and all this was sufficient to affirm without the shadow of a doubt that the Tuscan physician was not up to the task. He then went on to complain about the other guests and about Signor Pellegrino, whom he blamed for the present situation. He began with my master, who was, according to him, insufficiently vigilant about the cleanliness of the hostelry. He came next to Brenozzi and Bedfordi, who, after their long voyage, could certainly have brought some obscure infection to the inn. For the same reason, he suspected Stilone Priaso (who came from Naples, a city where the air was notoriously unhealthy) and Devize (who had also journeyed from Naples), Atto Melani (whose presence at the inn and whose dreadful reputation surely called for recourse to prayer), the woman in the little tower (of whose habitual presence at the inn he swore that he had never heard, otherwise he would never have set foot at the Donzello); and lastly he inveighed against Dulcibeni, whose mean Jansenist expression, said Robleda, had never pleased him.

"Jansenist?" I asked, curious about that word which I was hearing for the first time.

I then learned in brief from Robleda that the Jansenists were a most dangerous and pernicious sect. They took their name from Jansenius, the founder of this doctrine (if indeed it could be called one), and among his followers there was a madman called Pasqual or Pascale, who wore stockings soaked with cognac to keep his feet warm and who had written certain letters containing matter gravely offensive to the Church, to our Lord Jesus Christ and to all honest persons of good sense with faith in God.

But here the Jesuit broke off to blow his nose: "What an immodest stink there is in this oil of yours. Are you sure it is not poisonous?"

I reassured him as to the authority of this remedy, prepared by Antonio Fiorentino to protect people from the pestilence at the time of the republic of Florence. The ingredients, as Cristofano had taught me, were none other than theriac of the Levant boiled with the juice of lemons, carline thistle, imperatoria, gentian, saffron, Dictamnus albus and sandarac. Gently accompanied by the massage I had begun to give his chest, Robleda seemed to be lulled by the sound of the names of these ingredients, almost as though that cancelled out their disagreeable odour. As I had already observed with Cloridia, the pungent vapours and the various techniques of touch with which I applied Cristofano's remedia pacified the guests to the depths of their souls and loosened their tongues.

"When all is said and done, are they not almost heretics, those Jansenists?" I resumed.

"More than almost," replied Robleda with satisfaction.

Indeed, Jansenius had written a book the propositions of which had been harshly condemned many years ago by Pope Innocent X. "But why are you of the opinion that Signor Dulcibeni belongs to the sect of the Jansenists?"

Robleda explained to me that on the afternoon before the quarantine, he had seen Dulcibeni return to the Donzello with a number of books under his arm which he had probably acquired from some bookshop, perhaps in the nearby Piazza Navona where many books are sold. Among these texts, Robleda had noticed the title of a forbidden book which precisely inclined towards that heretical doctrine. And that, in the Jesuit's opinion, was an unequivocal sign that Dulcibeni belonged to the Jansenist sect.

"Is it not strange, however, that such a book may be purchased here in Rome," I objected, "seeing that Pope Innocent XI will doubtless have condemned the Jansenists in his turn."

Padre Robleda's expression changed. He insisted that, contrary to what I might think, many acts of gracious attention towards the Jansenists had come from Pope Odescalchi, so much so that in France, where the Jansenists were held in the greatest suspicion by the Most Christian King, the Pope had for some time been accused of harbouring culpable sympathies for the followers of that doctrine.

"But how could Our Lord Pope Innocent XI possibly harbour sympathies for heretics?" I asked in astonishment.

Padre Robleda, stretched out with his arm under his head, looked obliquely at me, his little eyes twinkling.

"You may perhaps be aware that between Louis XIV and Our Lord Pope Innocent XI there has for some time been great discord."

"Do you mean to say that the Pontiff is supporting the Jansenists solely in order to damage the King of France?"

"Do not forget," he replied slyly, "that a pontiff is also a prince with temporal estates, which it is his duty to defend and promote by all available means."

"But everybody speaks so well of Pope Odescalchi," I protested. "He has abolished nepotism, cleaned up the accounts of the Apostolic Chamber and done all that can be done to help the war against the Turks…"

"All that you say is not false. Indeed, he did avoid the granting of any offices to his nephew, Livio Odescalchi, and did not even have him made a cardinal. All those offices he in fact kept for himself."

This seemed to me a malicious answer, even though it was so phrased as not to deny my assertions.

"Like all persons familiar with trade, he knows well the value of money. It is indeed acknowledged that he managed very well the enterprise which he inherited from his uncle in Genoa. Worth about five hundred thousand scudi, it is said. Without counting the residue of various other inheritances which he took care to dispute with his relatives," said he hurriedly, lowering his voice.

And before I could get over my surprise and ask him if the Pontiff had really inherited such a monstrous sum of money, Robleda continued.

"He is no lion-heart, our good Pontiff. It is said, but take care," he lowered his voice, "this is but gossip, that as a young man he left Como out of cowardice, in order to avoid arbitrating in a quarrel between friends."

He fell briefly silent, and then returned to the attack: "But he has the holy gift of constancy, and of perseverance! He writes daily to his brother and to his other relatives to have news of the family estates. It seems that he cannot remain two days in succession without controlling, advising, recommending… Moreover the assets of the family are considerable. They increased suddenly after the pestilence of 1630, so much so that in their part of the world, in Como, it was said that the Odescalchi had profited from the deaths, and that they had used suborned notaries to obtain the inheritances of those who had died without heirs. But those are all calumnies, by our Lord's charity," said Robleda, crossing himself and rounding off his speech: "Nevertheless, their wealth is such that in my opinion they have lost count of it: lands, premises leased to religious orders, venal offices, franchises for the collection of the salt taxes. And then, so many letters of credit, I would say, almost all in loans, to many persons, even to some cardinals," said the Jesuit nonchalantly, as though showing interest in a crack in the ceiling.

"The Pontiff's family gains riches from credit?" I exclaimed, surprised. "But did not Pope Innocent forbid the Jews to act as moneylenders?"

"Exactly," replied the Jesuit enigmatically.

Then he dismissed me suddenly, on the pretext that it was time for his evening orations. He made as if to rise from his bed.

"But I have not yet finished: I must apply a poultice now," I objected.

He lay down again without a protest. He seemed to be lost in contemplation.

Following Cristofano's notes, I took a piece of crystalline arsenic and wrapped it in a piece of sendal. I approached the Jesuit and placed the poultice above his breast. I had to wait for it to dry, after which I twice again wet it with vinegar.

"Please do not, however, listen to all the malevolent gossip which has been spread about Pope Innocent, ever since the time of the Lady Olimpia," he continued, while I attended to the operation.

"What gossip?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing: it is all just poison. And more powerful than that which killed our poor Mourai."

He fell silent then, with a mysterious and, to me, suspect air.

I became alarmed. Why had the Jesuit remembered the poison which had perhaps killed the old Frenchman? Was it only a casual comparison, as it seemed? Or did the mysterious allusion conceal something else, or had it, perhaps, to do with the Donzello's no less mysterious underground passages? I said to myself that I was being silly, yet that word-poison-kept turning around in my head.

"Pardon me, Padre, what did you mean?"

"It would be better for you to remain in your ignorance," said he, cutting me short distractedly.

"Who is Lady Olimpia?" I insisted.

"Do not tell me that you have never heard speak of the Papess," he murmured, turning to look at me in astonishment.

"The Papess?"

It was thus that Robleda, lying on his side supported by an elbow and with an air of granting me an immense favour, began to recount to me in an almost inaudible voice that Pope Innocent XI had been made a cardinal by Pope Innocent X Pamphili, almost forty years earlier. The latter had reigned with great pomp and magnificence, thus consigning to oblivion a number of disagreeable deeds which had taken place under the previous pontificate, that of Urban VIII Barberini. Someone, however-and here the Jesuit's tone descended by another octave-someone had observed that Pope Innocent X, of the Pamphili family, and his brother's wife, Olimpia Maidalchini were linked by bonds of mutual sympathy. It was murmured (all calumnies, of course) that the closeness between the two was excessive and suspect, even between two close relatives for whom affection and warmth and so many other things (quoth he, looking into my eyes for the space of a lightning flash) would be completely natural. The intimacy which Pope Pamphili granted to his sister-in-law was, however, such that she frequented his chambers at all hours of the day and night, put her nose into his affairs and interfered even in matters of state: she arranged audiences, granted privileges, assumed responsibility for taking decisions in the Pope's name. It was surely not beauty that gave Donna Olimpia her dominance. Her appearance was, indeed, particularly repugnant, although combined with the incredible force of an almost virile temperament. The ambassadors of foreign powers were continually sending her presents, aware of the power which she exercised in the Holy See. The Pontiff himself was, however, weak, submissive, of melancholy humour. Gossip in Rome ran rife, and some made a joke of the Pope, sending him anonymously a medal with his sister-in-law dressed as Pope, tiara and all; and, on the other side, Innocent X in women's clothing, with a needle and thread in his hand.

The cardinals rebelled against this indecorous situation, succeeding for a while in having the woman removed, but after that she managed to regain the saddle and to accompany the Pope even to the tomb; and that, after her own fashion: she concealed the Pontiff's death from the people for a good two days, so that she would have time to remove everything of value from the papal apartments. Meanwhile, the poor lifeless body was left alone in a room, a prey to the rats, while no one came forward to see to the burial. The funeral eventually took place amidst the indifference of the cardinals and the mockery and jibes of the common people.

Now, Donna Olimpia loved to play at cards, and it is said that one evening, in a gay assembly of ladies and cavaliers at her table, she found herself in the company of a young cleric who, when all other competitors had withdrawn from the game, accepted Donna Olimpia's challenge to play against her. And it is also said that there gathered around them a great crowd of people, to watch so unusual a contest. And for more than an hour, the two confronted one another, with no thought for time or money, occasioning great gaiety among those present; and, at the end of the evening, Donna Olimpia returned home with a sum of money of which the exact total has never been known, but which was by all accounts enormous. Likewise, rumour had it that the unknown young man, who in truth almost always held better cards than his adversary, was gracious enough so to arrange matters as to reveal those cards distractedly to a servant of Donna Olimpia, so that he lost all the decisive hands, without however (as chivalry requires) allowing anyone to see that, not even the winner; thus confronting his grave defeat with magnificent indifference. Anyway, soon after that, Pope Pamphili made a cardinal of that cleric, who went by the name of Benedetto Odescalchi, and attained the purple in the flower of youth, at the age of thirty-four years.

I had in the meanwhile completed my massage with the ointment.

"But remember," Robleda warned me hastily in a voice that had returned to normal, while he cleaned the poultice off his chest, "this is all gossip. There exist no material proofs of that episode."

Hardly had I left Padre Robleda's chamber than I experienced a sense of unease, which not even I could explain to myself, as I thought back over my conversation with that flabby, purple-faced priest. No supernatural talent was needed to understand that the Jesuit regarded Our Lord Pope Innocent XI, not as an upright, honest and saintly pontiff, but no less than a friend and accomplice of the Jansenists; all for the purpose of thwarting the designs of the King of France, with whom he had clashed. Furthermore, he saw him as consumed by unhealthy material appetites, avidity and avarice; and even as having corrupted Donna Olimpia to obtain his Cardinal's hat. But, I reasoned, if such a portrait were truthful, how could Our Lord Pope Innocent XI be the same person who had restored austerity, decorum and frugality to the heart of Holy Mother Church? How could he be the same person who for decades had extended charity to the poor, wherever he found them? How could he be the same man who had enjoined the princes of Europe to unite their forces against the Turks? It was a fact that previous pontiffs had showered their nephews and families with presents, while he had broken off that unseemly tradition; it was a fact that he had restored a healthy balance to the Apostolic Chamber; and finally, it was a fact that Vienna itself was resisting the advance of the Ottoman tide thanks to the efforts of Pope Innocent.

No, what that gossiping poltroon of a Jesuit had told me was simply not possible. Had I not, moreover, immediately suspected his manner of saying and not saying, and that capricious doctrine of the Jesuits which legitimised sin? And I too was guilty of having allowed myself to listen to him, even at a certain point encouraging him to continue, led astray by Robleda's casual and misleading mention of the poisoning of Signor di Mourai. This was all, I thought remorsefully, the fault of Atto Melani's attitude to investigation and the craft of spying, and of my desire to emulate him: a perverse passion which had made me fall into the snares of the Evil One and had disposed my ears to hearken to his whispers of calumny.

I returned to the kitchen where I found on the sideboard an anonymous note, clearly addressed to me: three knocks on the door be ready