Secretum

Evening the Fifth

11th July, 1700

I had a bone to pick with Abbot Melani. Who was the Countess of S., the mysterious poisoner to whom the Connestabilessa referred so reticently in her letter? Had she something to do with the Countess of Soissons mentioned by Atto, who had spread trouble between Maria and the young King? And who was she? When I asked him, the Abbot, engrossed in his own narration, had not deigned to answer.

While Atto enjoyed himself at dinner in the gardens with the other illustrious guests, once again I plunged my hands amidst his dirty linen and found the ribbon binding his secret correspondence with the Connestabilessa. Unlike previous occasions, however, I was unable to find either the message from Maria Mancini or the reply which the Abbot had recently penned and which, as I had just heard, he had not yet sent. Where were they then?

Meanwhile, I felt myself drawn to the bundle of reports, and that brought to mind what I had read on the previous occasion about the unfortunate King Charles II of Spain. I thought that, if I were to read on, I might be able to find other traces of the Countess of S. and understand what she might have to do with Abbot Melani's business. I opened the report from the Connestabilessa which Atto had marked in a corner with the number two:

Observations concerning matters spanish

Given the state to which the Catholic King is reduced, and the absence of an heir, in Madrid they could think of only one explanation: witchcraft.

For a long time now there has been talk of this. Two years ago, El Rey in person turned to the powerful Inquisitor-General, Tomas Rocaberti.

The Inquisitor, after consulting with His Majesty's confessor, the Dominican Froilan Diaz, put the question to another Dominican, Antonio Alvarez de Arguelles, the modest director of an obscure convent in Asturias, but an excellent exorcist.

It is said that, when he received Rocaberti s letter, Arguelles nearly fainted. In his letter, the Inquisitor- General explained the matter to him in detail, asking him to implore the Devil to reveal what evil spell had been cast on the Sovereign.

Arguelles did not need to be asked twice. In a chapel, he summoned one of the sisters whom he had earlier freedfrom a diabolical possession. He made her place her hand upon the altar, then recite the spells suitable for that purpose.

From the mouth of the sister, he heard the Evil One speak thus. The voice revealed that King Charles had been the victim of a spell at the age of fourteen, cast by means of a bewitched beverage. The purpose was ad destruendam materiam generationis in Rege et ad eum incapacem ponendum ad regnum administrandum: in other words, to make him sterile and incapable of reigning.

Arguelles then asked who had cast the spell. Through the nun's mouth, the Devil replied that the potion had been prepared by a woman called Casilda, who had extracted the malefic liquid from the bones of a condemned man. This juice had then been administered to the King mixed with a cup of chocolate.

There was, however, a way of curing the diabolical infection: El Rey was once a day to drink half a quart of holy oil on an empty stomach.

Action was taken at once. Only, the first time that Charles swallowed a little oil, he was at once convulsed with such dreadful bouts of vomiting that the little group of monks and nuns, exorcists and physicians feared for his life. Thus, they were compelled to use the oil externally, on his head, chest, shoulders and legs; after which the relevant formulae, litanies and antidotes were recited.

Just a year ago, however, Rocaberti died suddenly. Obviously, everyone feared that this might be revenge on the part of Satan. Froilan Diaz, the King's confessor, had to go ahead on his own. Help arrived from an unexpected quarter: in Vienna, the Emperor Leopold had also taken an interest in the question, for something unheard of had occurred in the Imperial capital In the Church of Saint Sophia, a young man, possessed by evil spirits and subjected to exorcism, had revealed that the Catholic King was a victim of witchcraft. The boy (or the spirits which spoke through him) had even explained that the magical instruments employed were concealed in a certain place in the Spanish Royal Palace.

In Madrid, a furious search began. Squads of workmen unscrewed planks, drilled through panels, demolished party walls, tore away marble plaques, and in the end something was indeed found: a number of dolls and a pile of paper scrolls.

There could be no doubt about it: dolls are fetishes used for the casting of spells. On the scrolls, however, no one knows what was written.

The Emperor then sent a Capuchin Father to Madrid, a famed and feared exorcist, to eradicate the influence of the Evil One from the apartments of El Rey. There, however, matters became more complicated: not a day passes without rumours of the discovery of some other malefice, which some priest is said to have been taken on to combat, and so on and so forth. The situation is beginning to get out of hand. It even happened that a madwoman entered the Pcdace screaming and shouting; yet, so obscure and tormented is the atmosphere these days that no one had the courage to stop her, for fear that she might be a messenger of powers supernatural.

The madwoman succeeded in getting past the guards and even entering the royal apartments, screaming that El Rey was the victim of black magic, that the spell had been cast by means of a snuff box, and that the person behind the sorcery was none other than his wife.

The revelation was immediately accorded much credit, because the King's second wife, Maria Anna of Neuburg, is very ill-tempered and has sometimes behaved as though she were out of her mind.

Whenever Charles denies her some little favour, she tells him that this was in fact destined for someone capable of casting the evil eye (of which El Rey is terrified) and, if the King does not give in to her, the mysterious person will take revenge; not condemning him to death or sickness, but making him evaporate into nothingness, like a withered flower. Trembling with fear, the Catholic King invariably gives in to her.

When the rumours of sorcery and exorcisms got around, the Queen decided to act against the person responsible for all that chaos, who in her view was none other than poor Froilan Diaz. In short, he has been arrested.

Now, in this Jubilee Year, every day in Madrid new lunatics emerge, witches and maniacs overcome by their own nightmares. They scream and tear their hair out or roll on the ground, crying out in public places, under the anxious gaze of the populace, supposed revelations about the ensorcelment of the royal family. There seems to be no way of defending the Catholic King and his consort, and above all the honour of the Kingdom, from the defamatory attacks of those possessed by demons.

Tired and confused by this infernal round, the King is struggling to cope with a sense of guilt, shame and profound sadness. He is visiting the crypt of the Escorial ever more frequently, where he has the tombs of his ancestors opened in order to look upon their faces, thus condemning those regal corpses to immediate decomposition. When they opened the coffin of his first wife, Marie Louise of Orleans, he suffered a fit of desperation, kissing the corpse and wanting to take it away with him, caring nothing for the fact that it was crumbling in his hands. They had to drag him from the crypt by brute force, invoking the name of Marie Louise and screaming that he would soon be rejoining her in Heaven.

In this, El Rey is a true Habsburg, an epigone of Joan the Mad who could not be separated from the coffin of her husband Philip the Fair; or of Charles V who, after abdicating and withdrawing to a monastery, was wont to have himself enclosed in a sarcophagus naked and swaddled in bandages, to listen to his own requiem mass. Philip II slept with his coffin by his bed, with the Crown of Spain surmounted by a skull; and, like his son, Philip IV, was wont to visit the crypt of the Escorial, sleeping every night in a different tomb.

Queen Maria Anna, too, is desperate. For her the one solution would be to become pregnant. If the Monarchy has an heir, there will at long last be some hope amidst its dark future prospects. Only a couple of years ago, the Queen underwent the special cures of a monk of the Order of Jerusalem who was granted free access to her apartments.

It was in fact never clear what these exercises against sterility may have involved. It has, however, come to light that the monk, in the ecstatic fervour of prayer, suddenly made a great leap into the air, whereupon the Queen, who lay under the bedclothes, took fright and in turn leapt out of bed. The ambiguous event caused such a stir at Court that the monk had to be sent away forthwith. No few persons insinuate that the Queen, in her frenetic desire to become pregnant, may have imposed upon her own body acts redolent of the most unrestrained concupiscence.

Everything, alas, is possible. The Queen is weighed down by too much bitterness. Her soul, already sufferingfrom years of conjugal disappointment, is exasperated by the sinister and unsettling atmosphere that pervades the Court. Maria Anna needs sympathy; it is well known that she sends tormented letters to her German correspondents, in which she attempts to explain and justify the madness into which what was once the greatest and most feared Kingdom in the world has descended, becoming the object of universal pity and derision.

But she writes in vain. Suffering poisons her thoughts and makes her unable to express them in writing. It is said that she often confides by letter in the Landgrave of Hessen. The Landgrave, however, hesitates to answer her; from what one can gather, the Queen's letters are a meaningless nonsense, the product of a disturbed mind, in which verbs and subjects wander without rime or reason, like the possessed who go howling through the dark night of Madrid.

Here the Connestabilessa's report, which continues and expands upon the desolate picture of the wretched Catholic King, came to an end.

I tried again to find those two last letters, which the Abbot had evidently placed elsewhere. Why, I wondered, had he done that? Was he perhaps beginning to get wind of my incursions?

I looked briefly among Buvat's papers, but found nothing. Then I looked among his clothes. There I discovered a curious series of sheets of paper, carelessly folded and placed in the pockets of his breeches, each filled with a different letter. One sheet was full of the letter e, another of o's, yet another, the letter y, and finally, a page of l's and one of the letter R. Perplexed, I turned those pages over in my hands. They looked like the kind of exercises one does when learning to write. It was certainly no fine handwriting: the hand was heavy and uncertain. I laughed. It looked like some weird exercise undertaken by Melani's secretary in order to rid himself of the fumes of wine before returning to the Abbot's service. Such overindulgence was, indeed, not rare in those days in which not only the noble guests but those accompanying them were spoiled.

A little later, in a coat, I found without too much difficulty the two letters that I sought. I calmed down: perhaps the Abbot had simply handed them to Buvat to remind him to prepare an archive copy of the reply to the Connestabilessa before sending it. So I sat down to read.

Rather than clarifying my ideas, the Connestabilessa's letter left me even more confused.

My dearest Friend,

My fever shows no signs of abating and I am rather sorry to have to delay so long my arrival at the Villa Spada. The physician does, however, assure me that I should be able to resume my journey within a couple of days.

Here, meanwhile, I continue to receive news. It seems that Charles II has employed the most heartfelt tones in begging for a mediation by the Pope. The poor Catholic King is caught in a dilemma. As I had occasion to tell you, he asked his cousin Leopold I to send his youngest son, the fifteen-year old Archduke Charles from Vienna. El Rey wants him in Madrid. He even had a naval squadron made ready in the port of Cadiz to go and fetch the Archduke. It is clear that El Rey means to make him his heir. But, as you well know, the Most Christian King now comes into the picture. As soon as he learned of this move, he instructed Ambassador Harcourt to inform El Rey that such a decision would be regarded as a formal breaking of the peace and, following up this message, he immediately had a fleet rather stronger than the Spanish one put out from the port of Toulon, ready to intercept and bombard the ship carrying the Emperor's youngest son. Leopold dared not make his son run such a risk. El Rey then proposed that the Emperor should send him to Spain's Italian territories, but Leopold is temporising. After years of fighting against the Turk, the Empire is unwilling to spill its subjects' blood in its defence, and that the King of France knows.

The Most Christian King has indeed determined that now is the time to strike the decisive blow: as you know, in order to frighten the Spaniards even more, a month ago he made public the secret pact into which he had entered with Holland and England a couple of years ago, pursuant to which Spain is to be partitioned. Upon hearing the news, they royal couple hastened back to Madrid from El Escorial in a state of shock. The Queen flew into a rage and smashed everything in her bedchamber. Even I could not calm her. There is a state of emergency at Court: the Council of Grandees fears France and is ready to welcome a nephew of the Most Christian King if that will spare the country an invasion.

El Rey, for his part, wrote at once to his cousin Leopold, thanking him for having had nothing to do with the pact of partition and begging him to have no part in it in the future.

Pardon me if I have recounted here facts already known to you, but I must repeat that the situation is quite serious. If His Holiness Innocent XII is unable to bring the Most Christian King to reason, it will be the end for all of us.

Now, will the Holy Father be in a position to attend to so grave and delicate a task? We all know that he is seriously ill and that a conclave may be imminent. I have even heard that he may not wish to have anything to do with the matter. What do you know of that? It seems that he may no longer be very much his own master and that, to every question, he replies: "And what can we do about that? " It seems that even in those moments when he is most lucid, he likes to repeat: " We are denied the dignity which is due to the Vicar of Christ and there is no care for us."

It would be unheard offor someone to dare really to force the hand of His Holiness, taking advantage of his illness.

Silvio, 'tis right to pay the gods their homage due, but then I can't allow their ministers should be disturbed.

Lastly, courteous Silvio, why do you kneel to Dorinda since you're her lord? Or, if you be her slave, obey her words.

My spirit was weighed down by conjectures. I tried to take matters in order. In the first place, the Connestabilessa again spoke of a mediation. The King of Spain, or so she said, had requested the Pope's help so that he could make Archduke Charles his heir and have him brought from Vienna to Madrid without starting a war. The Most Christian King, however, was threatening to send the Archduke's ship to the bottom of the sea.

I did however recall that, in his first letter, Abbot Melani had clearly written that the Pontiff was to have provided the King of Spain with an opinion as to whom he should choose as his heir: the Duke of Anjou, nephew of the Most Christian King of France or the Archduke Charles, younger son of the Emperor of Austria. This was a very different matter from the mediation to which the Connestabilessa referred in a letter which closed on what looked like a veiled rebuke to the Abbot, whom as usual she addressed as Silvio, for the pressures which were said to be being exercised on the Pontiff.

Only, why ever should the Connestabilessa be angry with Atto? Was the old castrato then really so influential at the pontifical court?

Lastly, the Connestabilessa was answering Atto's earlier letter, in which 'midst a thousand reverences, the Abbot reminded her of his eternal platonic love. And here came the new mystery. Maria too was replying from behind a pseudonym: Dorinda.

Dorinda: now, where had I heard that name? Unlike Silvio, Dorinda was far from being a common name. And yet I seemed already to have heard it, or perhaps read it. But when?

At that juncture my soul was beset by too many questions. My curiosity was by now well and truly whetted and I hastened to read Abbot Melani's reply.

Here, however, I found myself having to read a honeyed and painfully interminable preamble of lamentations for the Connestabilessa's delays, which were said to endanger the Abbot's very life, and countless other such sickly-sweet protestations, as well as a description of the wedding between Maria Pulcheria Rocci and Clemente Spada, in which the Abbot did not spare the unfortunate bride with the most irreverent comments on her flatfish face.

Then at long last I came to what I was looking for:

Do all that you can to recover your health as soon as possible, I beg of you! Do not allow yourself to be beset by pointless worries. His Majesty King Charles II of Spain has rather wisely decided to defer to the Holy Father. The choice of the right pair of hands into which to confide his magnificent Kingdom, which unites no fewer than twenty Crowns, is surely one that calls for divine Counsel.

Fear not: Innocent XII is a Pignatelli. His is a family of faithful subjects of the Kingdom of Naples, and thus, of Spain. He will not fail to honour the Catholic Kings request, of that you may be sure. His decision, even if it may be slow in coming, will be carefully weighed up and will certainly be dictated by love for the Spanish Crown.

All of us here are sure that whatever His Holiness may decide will, for the King of Spain, be sacrosanct; nor will anyone in Europe dare disregard the Pope's opinion. Against the fulminations of Heaven the Po — tentates of this world can do nothing. The hand of the Almighty which extends its protection over the successors of Saint Peter in accordance with the words qui vos spernit, me spernit, will attribute a rightful triumph to the word of His Holiness.

I could not understand a thing. It was as though Abbot Melani and the Connestabilessa were conversing together in two different languages, caring not whether they understood one another. Had the Catholic King not decided for the Archduke, as the Connestabilessa said, and was he not imploring the Pope's support? Or did he not know which heir to back and was accordingly making his decision dependent upon the Papal opinion? Melani's letter ended thus:

And you, most clement one, do not worry about the Pontiff's health: he is surrounded by excellent persons who take good care of him and his needs, but would never dare to interfere with the pastoral role which His Holiness holds in his grasp by divine right. First among these is the Cardinal Secretary of State Fabrizio Spada, whom you too appreciate so greatly and who is anxiously awaiting your arrival at this his marvellous Villa on the Janiculum.

My friend, from this hill one dominates Rome, all Rome and perhaps a little beyond. Tarry no more.

Shalt we not be meeting in two days time, then?

And, at the foot of the letter:

So, be Dorinda. You, Silvio, what more can you expect? What can Dorinda afford you more? But you, Dorinda, goddess who dwell'st on heav'n's high summit, show Silvio now eternal pity, not eternal anger.

Atto yielded to the Connestabilessa's invitation not to bow down before her, even symbolically; indeed, said he to himself, whatever could he lay claim to any more? His love for her was hopeless. Nevertheless, Abbot Melani, replied with gentle supplication to the rebukes which the Connestabilessa regularly reserved for him when she called him Silvio. He begged her henceforth to show pity, not fury.

I had to admit that Abbot Melani had a rather fine poetic vein, in the matter of love.

I again turned over the name Dorinda in my mind but was still unable to remember where I had seen or heard it before.

Soon, moreover, I returned to graver considerations: Atto had still said nothing to me about the Spanish succession, yet his letters to the Connestabilessa spoke of nothing else (love apart). This I had realised from the day when the Abbot arrived at the villa. From that time until this, however, I had established nothing. I had not even managed to find out anything more about the Countess of Soissons, always supposing that she and the enigmatic poisoner, the Countess of S., were one and the same person.

I shook my head disconsolately: the enigma remained intact, nor was there any sign of the fog that surrounded it dispersing. One thing was certain: the Cardinal my master was in some way involved in the matter. Both the Connestabilessa and Melani reported that the Secretary of State had been to see the Spanish Ambassador about the King of Spain's request to Innocent XII and, in view of the Pontiff's dreadful state of health, the Cardinal was dealing with the matter personally on his behalf.

I therefore felt it to be all the more my bounden duty better to clarify my ideas about this series of mysteries. I therefore promised myself that I would, on the morrow, at last question Atto at least about the identity of the Countess of Soissons.

Il Roscio's directions were accurate enough. The place could not have been more uninviting; yet, according to the instructions we had received, we were to go there by night, so as not to be seen. This was an essential precaution: we were, after all, trying to take the inscrutable German by surprise.

To tell the truth, I was expecting some out-of-the-way, solitary place, perhaps in the midst of market gardens or woodland, far removed from men and merchandise. Instead, Il Roscio had sent us into the heart of the Holy City. "I have never been there," he had warned, "but I do know from the others in my company that there's where he lies low."

We did not have far to go: from the Villa Spada, we came to Monte Cavallo, passing before the sacred and imposing walls of the Apostolic Palace. There, we turned off to the right, then into Via San Vitale. To the left, behind the high walls which lined the way on either side, stood the campanile of the Jesuits of San Vitale. Its graceful outline reminded me of the little church which, on very clear days, one could sometimes, from our little field, catch sight of in the far distance; and I prayed God to keep me in good health, not only for my own sake but for that of my Cloridia, whom I mentally implored, seeing all the dreadful risks I had run in recent days and was likely to encounter in the coming ones, to pray not only for my soul's salvation but for that of my body.

We came at last to the Via Felice which, with its harmonious alternation of ups and downs, takes one from the steep pile that is Santa Maria Maggiore to the gentle heights of Monte Pincio.

There, we turned to the right, leaving the Quattro Fontane behind us. A little before the church of the monks of San Paolo L'Eremita and the Premonstratensi Fathers' church of San Norberto, a few paces away from Santa Maria della Sanita de' Benfratelli, a nameless side street ran off to the right. We took it, walking between a little group of houses on the right and an isolated house to our left. Beyond these habitations, the road bent leftwards, petering out into a track amidst uncultivated fields.

It was precisely at that point that, following Il Roscio's instructions, we left the road and turned right. Here the terrain became steep, almost vertical, forming a sort of great elongated mound which stretched out rather like the back of a buried giant. As we skirted this mound, we noticed in its flank, below and to our right, first, a slit, then a more generous opening, and lastly, a grotto, then yet another. It was a series of artificial caverns, originally faced with well-cut stones, but by now covered in earth and overgrown with trees, bushes, creepers, fungus, lichens and all kinds of mildew.

The caves were arranged in two parallel rows, one on a lower level, where we were. The other, consisting of larger grottoes, was higher up and set further back, so much so that before it there was a sort of corridor several yards wide. At the right-hand end of this group of caverns there was yet another group on a third level, above which rose a rustic house with a turret. Behind that, stood the convent of the nuns of San Francesco alle Therme. The name of the convent was no accident.

"Whoever could have imagined that?" said Atto, whose familiarity with antiquities I had known since the time of our first encounter. "The Baths of Aggripina. I'd never have expected that I might have to look for people as foul as the cerretani in so noble a place."

He was moving among those ancient imperial ruins almost on tiptoe, as though he feared that he might, by tripping up, damage some centuries-old brick; he looked all around him with caution and an imperceptible strain of melancholy in his voice. Seventeen years previously, I had seen him recognise and admire a subterranean Mithraeum and I knew that he had written a guide to Rome for lovers of fine antiquities. Despite all the time that had passed, he had not, it seemed, lost his former predilections.

"We have arrived," said Sfasciamonti, pointing in front of us. "Here is the place."

At the end of the row of caves, before the last stretch of the convent wall, dark and impassive, there stood a tower.

This was one of the numerous pinnacles that had once made of Rome an Urbs turrita, in other words, a city adorned with many towers, steeples and turrets: lookout and defence positions from the Middle Ages, which gave the place an old-fashioned, warlike look. This one was not high: it must have been topped, as often happened during the barbarian invasions, or else the upper part had collapsed in some fire.

"No one will stop you," Il Roscio had added enigmatically when furnishing us with details of the German's lair. "If anything, it is you who will decide to go away."

We had a first confirmation of these words when we arrived in front of the tower. We circled it, looking up at all the walls. The windows were all barred. At the foot of the structure, we found a sort of hut which contained the entrance. It was made of wood, creaking and decrepit. We pushed on the door. It was open.

Once inside, we found ourselves in a large, dark, evil-smelling space. Rats and strays of all sorts seemed from time immemorial to have chosen the place for their dejections. The light of our lantern enabled us to avoid the colossal cobwebs which hung throughout the length and breadth of that dungeon, and the foul matter (scrap, rubble, rubbish) that covered the floor.

Suddenly I came close to tripping heavily against a solid mass, well secured to the ground. I rubbed my sore toe. It was a step.

"Signor Atto, a staircase!" I announced.

I shone light on the place with the lantern. A stairway climbed the right-hand wall towards a door.

Here too, neither lock nor chain barred the way.

"Il Roscio was right," observed Sfasciamonti, "there are no obstacles or security measures to impede us. How very interesting."

Behind the second door, another stairway awaited us; this time, exceedingly steep. Melani often stopped to catch his breath.

"But when are we going to get there?" he wondered disconsolately, trying in vain to look behind him and see how far we had come.

"We are climbing to the top of the tower," I answered.

"That, I had surmised for myself," retorted Atto acidly. "But tell me where the deuce the German's lair could be. On the chimney-pots?"

"Perhaps the German is a stork," joked Sfasciamonti, stifling a laugh.

I in the meanwhile was returning in memory to that time, years ago, when Atto and I had spent entire nights exploring galleries and catacombs in the dark underbelly of the city, encountering all manner of perils and fending off dangerous ambushes. Now we were back in the same pitch darkness, but climbing heavenward, not down into the bowels of the earth.

For several minutes, we continued in a straight line, by the faint light of our lantern, until we reached a little quadrangular cavity. The floor was covered with an iron plate. In front of us, a few steps led to a little door which looked very much as though it led to an even higher level. We looked at one another suspiciously.

"I do not like this one bit, corps of a thousand bombards," commented Sfasciamonti.

"Nor I," echoed Melani. "If we go up there, it will be impossible to beat a quick retreat and get out again."

"If only there were a window in this tower, even a slit, perhaps we might be able to work out how high we've climbed," said I.

"Come, come, 'tis pitch dark outside," retorted the Abbot.

"What are we to do?"

"Let us go on further," said Atto, advancing into the little room. "How strange, there's a smell here like…"

He broke off. It all began at that moment and happened too fast for us to have any control over events. As we followed Melani, we felt the platform resound slightly and, with a discreet but quite distinct click, descend about half a palm.

We started, aware of imminent danger.

"Get back! 'Tis a trap…" screamed Sfasciamonti.

It was already too late. A massive and immensely heavy wooden and iron trapdoor slammed thunderously behind us, cutting us off from the stairway from which we had come and brutally striking the ground, like a peasant's hoe biting into the bare and arid earth. Fortunately, the lantern had not gone out, but what the light was about to reveal to us was enough to make us wish for the blackest darkness.

Tongues of infernal fire flickered before and around us, illuminating us with their horrid light and making our faces seem like those of damned souls. Once they touched our skin those fiery daggers would surely inflict unspeakable suffering upon us.

"God Almighty help us! We have ended up in hell," I exclaimed, overcome by panic.

Atto said nothing: he was trying to keep those demonic fireflies from his face, hitting out at them as one strikes at mosquitos, but with thrice the force and thrice the desperation.

"Damnation, my feet!" cried Sfasciamonti.

At that moment, I felt it too: unbearable heat burned as though within my shoes. I had to raise one foot, then the other, then again the first, for keeping them on the ground was quite intolerable. Atto, too, and the catchpoll were leaping like madmen, brushing off the tongues of fire and struggling to keep each foot on the ground as little as possible.

"Out of here, damn it!" screamed Atto, rushing with Sfasciamonti towards the little door that we had not wished to pass through but which had now become our only way out.

Fortunately, like the other doors before it, this too was open. This time we were confronted by a series of rusty iron rungs. The catchpoll entered first. The opening was so tight that we had to bend almost until our noses touched our knees. We advanced breathlessly, one stuck to the other, our feet still half burned, while some of the malignant droplets of fire mockingly invaded our little hole. Thus, I found myself caught between Sfasciamonti's powerful bulk and Atto's more scrawny and weary body, trembling with fear and imploring Our Lord to have pity on my soul.

"No!!"

It was then, just when Sfasciamonti let forth that desperate scream, that I saw him disappear, engulfed by a sudden abyss and felt him grasp at my right arm, dragging me down the precipice with prodigious force.

The invisible and natural mechanism that governs human actions in such upheavals moved of its own accord and caused me, willy-nilly, to grasp at Atto, who thus fell with me. Hanging onto one another in a wretched bundle of flesh and bones, we were sucked by an invincible force into a vertiginous and endless fall.

"Et libera nos a malo" I had the presence of mind to gasp as the alien vortex almost robbed me of my breath.

The fall seemed to last forever. We were piled up one on top of the other as though Lucifer's pitchfork had cast us among the damned and was bringing us before the judges of the Inferno.

Sfasciamonti, motionless under me, was hunched up in terror as well as under the combined weight of Atto and myself. Melani was overcome by shock and pain and moaned, barely moving. With an immense effort I struggled out from under that double human carpet and gave thanks to the Lord that I was able to sit on the ground. The floor was no longer burning hot. A pungent and familiar odour, disquieting under those tragic circumstances, impregnated my skin and my clothing. I became aware of the environment surrounding me, and anguish gripped my soul.

The lantern, of course, was broken. It was, however, possible to descry everywhere a weird luminosity, a mixture of fog and bluish half light, like that which glow worms dispense in gardens after nightfall, subtly pervading all things.

Was I still in one piece? I looked at my hands and trembled. They emitted light, no, they seemed even to be made of light.

I was no longer a man. An opalescent glow issued from every point on my body, as I could see when I looked at my legs and my belly. My mortal remains were elsewhere. In their place was a poor lost soul, a wretched effigy wandering in the Underworld, of substance translucent and immaterial.

At that moment, Sfasciamonti rose to his feet and saw me.

"You… you are dead!" he whispered in horror, his eyes fixed on what remained of me.

He looked all around him with mad, bulging eyes. Then he looked at himself, his hands and his arms. He too emitted that bluish light which was everywhere, within us and without.

"Then I too… all of us… oh, my God," he sobbed.

Then came the apparition. A being of darkness, enveloped in a menacing black shroud, his face hidden by a great mystic cowl, was watching us from a niche in the wall, closed with an iron grate.

Atto too rose from the ground and saw him. All three of us were suspended for long, interminable moments between breathing and breathlessness, between desperation and hope, between life and death. Other hooded figures appeared behind the figure in the niche, which must have been, or so it seemed, a little gallery. Evil emissaries of the infernal regions, they would soon be upon us. It was clear that they were about to seize and devour us.

The grate rose. Now nothing separated us from the demons. Their leader, he who had appeared to us first, took a step forward. Instinctively, we drew back. Even Sfasciamonti, or rather the great bluish phantom who had taken his place, trembled like an autumn leaf.

It all happened in moments. The satanic being extracted from his shroud a long, lurid orange object. It was a glowing dagger, in keeping with the white heat of the flames of Hades. This he pointed at us, as though casting an anathema. Soon, said I to myself, from it would issue the tongue of flame that consumes every residual mortal atom, reducing us (if our luminous manifestation still possessed any substance) to poor wandering ectoplasms.

He pointed the dagger in my direction, in a gesture of condemnation. Whatever had I committed, I asked myself blubbering, to merit, not purgatory, but the irremediable horrors of hell? Four devils ran to me, seized me and forced me to the ground on my back, nailing me down with their horrid clawed arms. I did not scream: terror itself, choking my throat, prevented that.

Besides, said I to myself in a flash of desperate humour, who can hear the lament of the damned?

Their leader came to me. Even now, his face could not be seen, only the macabre hooked hand (likewise bluish and phosphorescent) brandishing the fiery dagger. Meanwhile, I knew not what had become of Atto and Sfasciamonti; I heard only an indistinct scuffling. Probably they too had been overcome in their turn.

The angel of evil leaned over and was upon me. With his dagger, he aimed directly at my forehead. He directed the tip just above my eyes, in the middle. He was about to penetrate the bony covering (or its appearance) with the overwhelming force of fire. Then, twisting the blade in the hole, he would stir and fry the grey matter of my brain.

"No," I implored, I know not if with thought alone or with the whisp of voice that I had been allowed to retain from my earthly life.

In the lightless abyss which was my executioner's hood, I thought I saw (the powers of darkness and their agents) a malign smile, which heightened my terror at the approaching end. The absurd heat of the blade dried my eyeballs (had I still any?). Only an animal lust for life still kept them open.

The point of the incandescent blade was less than a hair's breadth from my forehead. It was about to strike. Now, in less than a second. Now, yes, Cloridia my love, my sweet little girls…

It was then, as though in a gentle prelude to death, that I lost consciousness. Before fainting, heart and soul beat together for one last instant. Just long enough to hear:

"One momentary: periculous blunderbungle."

"What? Wretched imbecile, I'll blast you to bits!"

Then, violent noises, as of a struggle, and the shot.

"Take courage, hero, stand up."

A smack. Rapid, violent and alarming as a bucketful of water in the face. It had awoken me, recalling me from the torpor of my swoon. Now I heard Atto's voice addressing me.

"I… I do not…" I stammered, still prone, while my head seemed to be on the point of exploding. I coughed several times. There was a smell of burning, and smoke everywhere.

"Return among the living," Melani chanted to me. We must leave here before we are asphyxiated. First, however, let me present you Beelzebub. You will, I think, be surprised to find that you have already met."

Still trembling, I sat up. The bluish light no longer pervaded the cavern. Now all was yellow, red and orange: a torch had been lit, which illuminated the surroundings. I looked at my hands. I too no longer emitted that arcane phosphorescence.

"I have reloaded," I heard Sfasciamonti announce.

"Good," replied Atto.

I opened my eyes wide. The scene moments before, faced with which I had believed myself to have bid life farewell, had changed utterly.

In his right hand, Sfasciamonti brandished the dagger with which I was on the point of being put to death. He was pointing it at a little group of hooded demons, all huddled oh so quietly against the wall, without giving the faintest sign of resistance. Such discipline was not without cause: in his left hand the catchpoll held his ordnance pistol. Atto, for his part, grasped an improvised torch: a cone made up of sheets of paper which he had lit with the incandescent dagger and which now illuminated the narrow space in which we stood, while however spreading fumes that rendered the air unbreathable.

"Up, you wretch, and get us out of here," said Atto to the chief of the demons, placing a handkerchief across his nose in order not to breathe in too much smoke.

It was then that I recognised the leader of the infernal company. That foul, oversized covering, the odours of filth and decay spreading all around, those clawed hands…

The cowl shifted a little. Once more I beheld that crumpled parchment of a face, that miserable patchwork of bits of skin held together only by inertia, that tumescent cankered nose like a mouldy carrot, the evasive eyes, bloodshot and deceitful, the few broken yellow-brown stumps of teeth, the wrinkles deep as ploughed furrows, the skeletal cranium and the yellowish scalp from which hung resignedly a few rare tufts of rust-coloured hair.

"Ugonio!" I exclaimed.

It is necessary that I should at this juncture make clear the nature and history of the personage in question, as well as his companions, with whom it was my fate to share no few adventures many years ago.

Ugonio was a corpisantaro, one of those bizarre individuals who spend their lives searching Rome's subterranean innards for the relics of saints and of the first martyrs of the Christian faith. The corpisantari are truly creatures of darkness, whose time is spent grubbing with their bare hands underground, separating dirt from shards, earth from stones, splinters from mould, and exulting whenever this stubborn and meticulous labour of filtering reveals a mere fragment of a Roman amphora, a coin of the imperial age or a piece of bone.

They are wont to sell for a high price the relics (or corpisanctorum, whence their name) which they find in the subsoil, exploiting the good faith, or better, the unpardonable ingenuousness of buyers. The piece of amphora is sold as a fragment of the cup from which Our Lord drank at the Last Supper; the little coin becomes one of the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas Iscariot betrayed the Son of God; the sliver of bone is palmed off as part of Saint John's collarbone. Of all the vile substances that the corpisantari glean under the ground, nothing is thrown away: a half-rotten piece of wood is sold dear as an authentic splinter of the True Cross, a feather from a dead bird is auctioned as a plume from an angel's wing. The mere fact of spending a lifetime grubbing, piling up and archiving all that disgusting material has endowed them with a reputation as infallible hunters after sacred objects and thus guarantees them a large number of readily hoodwinked customers. Over a long period of time and thanks to the astute bribery of servants, they have accumulated copies of the keys to cellars and store rooms throughout the whole city, thus gaining access to all the most recondite recesses of subterranean Rome.

Surprisingly enough, the corpisantari combine their execrable practices with a genuine, intense, almost fanatical religiosity, which surfaces at the most unexpected moments. If my memory does not betray me, they have asked several pontiffs for the right to form a confraternity; but there has never been any response to that request.

So, Ugonio was one of their number. Being a native of Vienna, he spoke my language with inflections and accents which often made it difficult to discover any coherent sense behind the verbiage; hence his nickname, the German.

"The German…" I exclaimed, utterly astonished, turning to Ugonio. "So 'tis you!"

"I recognate not this disgustiphonous appellation, from which I dissocialise myself with my entire personage," he protested. "I commandeer the Italic tongue, not as an immigrunter, but as if 'twere my own motherlingo."

"Silence, beast," cut in Atto, who had already heard many years before how Ugonio loved to boast about his disastrous gibberish. "Just to hear you talk gives me nausea. So you have made your fortune with this Jubilee, cheating the pilgrims with your so-called relics, perhaps selling some ham bone at a good price as the tibia of Saint Calixtus. I hear that you have become a big noise. And now you've sold yourself to Lamberg, eh? But, what am I saying? Far from selling yourself, you are a true patriot. After all, you're Viennese and, as such, a faithful subject of His Imperial Majesty Leopold I, like that damned ambassador of yours. Bah, who would have guessed that I'd ever again in my life have to put up with your disgusting presence?" concluded Melani, spitting on the ground in disdain.

I, meanwhile, looked at Ugonio and a thousand memories raced around my head. Certainly, the Abbot's suspicions seemed utterly justified: if the infamous German was in cahoots with the cerretani, it followed that they too would all have been in the pay of Vienna and conspiring against us. Nevertheless, I was content to see the old corpisantaro again, with whom I had shared so many adventures, and I sensed that the Abbot too was not displeased, despite his indignant reaction.

"What have you to tell me about the stab wound in the arm which I got from that cerretano accomplice of yours? Was it perhaps meant for my breast? Speak!"

"I deny, redeny and ultradeny your absurdious inculpations. Nor was I beware that someone had stubbed your member with a messerblade."

"I see, you don't mean to collaborate. You will regret it. And now, get us out of here," Atto continued. "Show us the way. Sfasciamonti, give me the pistol and keep Ugonio covered with the dagger. Anyone who makes a false move will end up with a hole in his belly."

The group of hooded beings, whom in my momentary panic I had taken for devils, filed back through the niche whence they had come. We followed, keeping them under the threat of pistol and dagger and, obviously, Sfasciamonti's muscular bulk. Thus, we entered a fetid and narrow burrow which led out from what we'd taken for a bolgia from Dante's Inferno, once again towards the unknown.

"But… we are underground!" I exclaimed at one point, as I became aware of a certain strange humidity and recognised the opus reticulatum, the brick structure typical of ancient Roman walls.

"Yes," Sfasciamonti assented, "where did the tower end and this begin?"

"We are in some secondary conduit of the Baths of Agrippina," replied Abbot Melani. "Who knows, perhaps this was once a corridor on the second floor, with windows and balconies, and one could breathe the fresh air. The rest, I'll explain to you later."

As will by now be quite plain, the ambiguous arts of the corp-isantari meant that they had de facto much in common with another execrable group, the cerretani. It was no accident that we should have run into them in the course of our search for the famous German.

As we proceeded along the tunnel, faintly lit by Atto's torch (which he revived by adding a little piece of canvas found on the ground) Sfasciamonti began to interrogate Ugonio.

"Why do they call you the German? And why did you order the theft of Abbot Melani's text and of the relic?"

"'Tis a vilethy, iniquilous falsehoodie. I am pletely innocuous, this I perjure now and forever, indeed almost never, I mean."

Sfasciamonti fell silent for an instant, taken aback by the corpisantari's garrulous and ramshackle jargon.

"He said that it is not true. Anyway, they call him the German because he was born in Vienna and his mother tongue is German," I explained.

Meanwhile, we had passed from the corridor to a stairway. I was still affected by the experiences from which I had just emerged, shaken through and through by having passed from life to death (or so it had truly seemed to me) and then back again. I was exhausted and in pain from the innumerable kicks, shoves and bruises I had received. My clothing stank of a thousand strange essences and, what was more, I had the inexplicable feeling that my back was covered with a fine layer of lard. Last but not least, I was burning with shame at having been the one member of the group to have fainted from fear, and what was more, at the very moment when Atto and Sfasciamonti had brought the situation under control.

Atto's torch had ended its brief life; we found ourselves suddenly proceeding in the most stygian darkness, testing the terrain with our feet and groping along the walls with our hands. I trembled at the thought that another battle might break out on that airless staircase, with unforeseeable and surely bloody consequences. However, the hooded troop proceeded up the stairs in good order; Atto and Sfasciamonti needed to suppress no insurrection. That was in the nature of the corpisantari. shamelessly deceitful cheats, up to all manner of scheming and chicanery, yet incapable of harming anyone or offering violence; except, of course, when (as I had seen seventeen years earlier), it came to aiding some high-ranking ecclesiastic, on which occasion their Christian zeal inspired them to act with a courage and audacity worthy of true heroes of the Faith.

"Accursed ragamuffins," Atto railed. "First of all that hoax with the Inferno and now these infernal stairs."

"Signor Atto," I found the courage to ask him, "we were enveloped in a strange blue light. How the deuce did they manage to make us look like spectres?"

"That is an old trick. Indeed, if I remember rightly, two tricks were involved. In the first room, where we seemed to be under a rain of fiery droplets, there was an iron platform, under which they had placed hot coals. The platform was burning hot, but that we realised only after the heat had penetrated our shoes. Under the iron plate, on the coals, they will have placed a vessel, probably made of enamelled terracotta, containing wine spirits, together with a piece of camphor, which will have filled that small space with its exhalations."

"I see! That is why I smell so strange. I thought that it was…"

"It was just what you thought: camphor," Atto cut me short. "What they use against moths. But let me continue: at a certain point in our advance, we tripped against a mobile step which lowered and, in so doing, activated some machinery. That in turn caused a trap door to fall vertically, making a hellish noise. Meanwhile, the flame from our lantern penetrated that den full of the vapour of spirits and camphor, which immediately caught fire. The surprise and the tremendous burning under our feet worked perfectly. What with all that dancing fire and the heat coming up from below, we thought we were in hell. Then we escaped through the little door, taking the only way out, down the iron rungs, when we were sucked down as not even Scylla and Charybdis could have engulfed us."

"Quite! But how was that done?"

"I and Sfasciamonti worked that out while you were taking your little nap. At the end of the iron rungs, there was a metal slide, smooth and well greased with abundant kitchen fat."

I touched my backside. Yes, it was just the same lard I had used when I was an apprentice at the inn, when I greased the pots and pans before cooking chicken in a wine sauce with walnuts, or preparing some poultry in broth.

The grease, Atto continued, caused us to rush down the slide at great speed, descending the whole height of the tower in an instant.

"The whole height? What does that mean?" interrupted Sfasciamonti who had listened open-mouthed to Atto's explanation.

"The tower is not really as low as we had thought; on the contrary, it is very high, but over the centuries it has been partially buried. We entered through a sort of lean-to hut that was built quite recently and led, not to the ground floor of the tower, but about halfway up its original height. The slide, however, hurled us down, down to the original, ancient base of the tower, which is today many feet under the ground."

"And deep down, the tower communicates with a whole network of tunnels," I concluded, drawing on the strength of my old acquaintance with subterranean Roman galleries, all joined up to one another.

"Yes, and here the second trick awaited us. As soon as they saw us arrive at the Baths of Agrippina — what was more, at a late hour, which gave away our intention of entering their rabbit warren — they burned a glass of spirits or some similar liquor in this second space. And in the spirits, if I recall the recipe correctly, they dissolved a little common salt."

"One moment," I interrupted, "how do you know all these details?"

"These things are child's play. In France, everyone knows them; one need only purchase some suitable book, like that of the Abbe de Vallemont, which I think I have already mentioned to you."

"The one of which you spoke to me at the Vessel?" I asked, vaguely troubled.

"Exactly."

The artifice that followed, Abbot Melani went on to explain, worked, not in the presence of fire, but if one lit a candle and then extinguished it. And our lantern, as those who organised all that machinery could easily foresee, reached the bottom of the slide still lit but was smashed upon contact with the ground. If the room had been well impregnated with the vapours of the mixture of spirits and salt, faces seen through that artificial atmosphere would take on the pallid, livid, deathly semblance of exhumed corpses, or lost souls. And that is what happened.

"Excuse me," I then asked, realising that our ascent through utter darkness was practically at an end, and we were again walking on flat ground. "Why did you not realise at once that this was all an artifice?"

"Surprise. They organised everything to perfection: first, the dancing fire, then our faces turned into spectres, and lastly the army of devils and the flaming sword, in reality heated up on some stupid fireplace… Unfortunately, in a state of shock, I too was slow to recognise the smell of camphor, otherwise I'd have warned you in time."

"Then, what made you realise what was happening?"

"When that idiot Ugonio, alias the German, opened his mouth. It was impossible not to recognise him, even after all this time. He, too, knew you. He said 'periculous blunderbungle', realising that he was on the point of committing a dangerous blunder. I'd say that his eyes and his memory are better than yours, heh!" guffawed Atto.

"Was that why he did not strike me?"

"I never bestrike," interrupted Ugonio's offended voice from the end of the line.

"Never?" I asked, not without a trace of anger in my voice, recalling those terrifying moments at the mercy of the incandescent dagger.

"All trespissers emergency profoundamentally pissified," grunted Ugonio, stifling with great difficulty an outburst of malign, conceited laughter.

He was right. Before fainting, I too had involuntarily wet myself like a terrified infant.

The purpose or all that infernal theatre was quite plain. Down there among the tunnels in and around the Baths of Agrippina, the German had his lair and no one was to enter there uninvited; the point was that anyone foolhardy enough so to do was to be subjected to that carousel of terror so that he would run for his life, ejected like a dog, soaked in his own urine.

It was the first time for seventeen years that I had ventured into the subterranean city beneath Rome, and here again I had found Ugonio, just as when I last emerged from that labyrinth. What had brought me there? The investigations into the theft perpetrated against Abbot Melani: loot consisting of papers, a telescope and the relic of the Madonna of the Carmel with my three little Venetian pearls. Yes, the relic. I had almost forgotten it. I should have realised earlier, I thought with a little smile: relics and tunnels… the daily bread of the corpisantari. Now it only remained for us to find the place where the stolen goods were stored.

By this time, we had come to the end of the stairway that had led us away from the second infernal chamber. Here we met with a surprise.

We found ourselves in a spacious storeroom, at least thirty yards long by thirty wide, with a good level floor and walls reinforced with bricks, equipped with a number of exit doors (leading, presumably, to other tunnels) and a spiral staircase leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Here reigned indescribable chaos: piles and piles of objects of every imaginable and unimaginable shape and form made of the storeroom a mad pandemonium of knicknacks, remnants, relics, trifles, hardware, ornaments, toys, souvenirs, sweet nothings, playthings, scrap, builders' waste, shards and splinters, antique junk, food leftovers, bagatelles, detritus, rubbish and much other vile material regurgitated from burglaries and robberies in the city's most sordid back streets.

Thus, I saw heaps of coins half-eaten by time, immeasurable piles of paper pressed together and tied up with string, baskets of filthy, greasy clothes, moth-eaten furniture piled up to the ceiling, dozens, indeed hundreds of pairs of shoes of all kinds, from rustic boots to courtesans' finest slippers, sashes and belts, books and exercise books, pens and inkstands, pots and pans, distorts and alembics, stuffed eagles and embalmed foxes, mousetraps, bear skins, crucifixes, missals, sacred vestments, tables large and tables small, hammers, saws and scalpels, entire collections of nails of all sizes, and then arrays of wooden planks, bits of old iron, brooms and brushes, rags and cloths, bones, skulls and ribs, buckets of oil, balsams, ointments and innumerable other disgusting things.

All these, however, were mixed with vases full of rings, bracelets and golden pendants, boxes of Roman medals and coins, frames and ornaments of the finest quality, silverware, porcelain dinner and coffee services, jewel cases, carafes, bowls and glasses of the finest Bohemian crystal, tablecloths from Flanders, velvets and upholstery materials, arquebuses, swords and daggers, entire collections of precious paintings, landscapes, portraits of ladies and of popes, nativities and annunciations, all roughly piled up one against the other and covered in layer upon layer of dust.

"Good heavens," exclaimed Sfasciamonti despite himself. "This seems almost like…"

"I know what you are about to say," interrupted Atto. "The proceeds of the last three hundred thousand thefts committed in Rome during the Jubilee."

"It turns one's stomach," replied the catchpoll.

"What they said about you was true," continued Atto, addressing Ugonio. "During the Holy Year, your business prospers even more than usual. You will, I imagine, have made some special vow to the Blessed Virgin."

The corpisantaro did not respond to the Abbot's irony. I, meanwhile, was looking around prudently in the midst of all that vile chaos, taking care not to knock anything over. One had to proceed down narrow aisles between one heap and the next, without disturbing anything. Failure to do so might result, not only in breaking a vase but getting oneself buried under an avalanche of books, or a pyramid of amphorae, clumsily stacked on top of some rickety old cupboard. Something in a dark corner, half hidden beneath a tumulus of old sheets and a precious golden pyx, attracted my attention. It was a strange ironwork device, like a bush made up of curved pieces of tin and iron sheeting. I took it in my hand and showed it to Atto, who was approaching. He picked up the tangle of iron and his eyes opened wide as he examined it.

"This once was two armillary spheres. Or perhaps three, I cannot tell. These beasts have succeeded in reducing it to mere wreckage."

There were in fact two or three of these special devices in the form of a globe, consisting of several iron hoops rotating concentrically around an axis and fixed on a pedestal, which are used by scientists to calculate the movement of heavenly bodies.

"The expropriament was complicationed by an unforesightable," said Ugonio in an attempt to justify himself. "Unfortuitously, the objectivities got jammied one against t'other."

"Yes, jammied," murmured Atto in disgust, casting aside the little tangle of metal and exploring the mass of junk. "I have no difficulty in imagining what happened. After the theft, you will have gone off and got drunk somewhere. I suppose that here there will also be… Oh, here we are."

It was a row of cylindrical objects, standing vertically on the flagstones, one beside the other. Atto picked up one that seemed a little less dusty and ill-used than the others.

"Excellent," said Melani, dusting the cylinder down with his sleeve. "Those who don't die, meet again."

Then he handed it to me with a triumphal smile.

"Your spyglass!" I exclaimed. "Then it is true that the German was behind this."

"Of course he stole it. Like the others in this collection."

On the ground there stood a little forest of telescopes of all shapes and sizes, some brand new, others filthy and falling to pieces.

Sfasciamonti too drew near and began to rummage about near the telescopes. At length, he picked up from the ground a large device that seemed familiar, and showed it to me.

MACROSCOPIUM HOC

JOHANNES VANDEHARIUS

FECIT

AMSTELODAMI MDCLXXXIII

"This is the other microscope stolen from the learned Dutchman, as reported to me by the sergeants my colleagues, do you remember?" said he, "it is the twin of the one which I and you recovered from the cerretano a few nights ago."

The hooded troop looked on powerless and embarrassed at the unmasking of their trafficking. We all looked at Ugonio.

"You also stole my handwritten treatise," hissed Melani spitefully.

The corpisantaro's hump seemed even more bent, as though he were struggling to become even smaller and darker in his desire to escape the consequences of his misdeeds.

Sfasciamonti drew the dagger and grabbed Ugonio by the collar of his filthy greatcoat.

"Ow!" he cried, at once loosening his grip.

The catchpoll had pricked a finger. He turned the collar of Ugonio's jacket and drew out a brooch. I recognised it at once: it was the scapular of the Madonna of the Carmel, the ex voto stolen from Abbot Melani. And above it were still sewn my three little Venetian pearls which Atto had so lovingly kept on his person all these years.

The catchpoll tore the relic from Ugonio's breast and handed it to Atto. The Abbot took it between two fingers.

"Er, I think it would be better if you held onto this," said he with a hint of embarrassment, turning away as he handed it to me.

I was happy. This time, I would hold jealously onto my three little pearls, as a keepsake of that Abbot Melani who was from time to time capable of an affectionate gesture. I grasped the relic, not without a grimace of disgust at the dreadful odour emanating from it after its prolonged sojourn close to the corpisantaro.

Sfasciamonti, meanwhile, had returned to work and was holding the dagger against Ugonio's cheek.

"And now for Abbot Melani's treatise."

Atto grasped the pistol. The corpisantaro did not need to be asked twice:

"I have not stealed anyfing: I executioned a levy on commissionary," he whispered.

"Ah! A theft on commission," Atto translated, turning to us. "Just as I suspected. And on whose behalf? That of your wretched compatriot the Imperial Ambassador Count von Lamberg, perhaps? Now, tell me, do you also have people stabbed on commission?" he asked emphatically, showing Ugonio the arm wounded by the fleeing cerretano.

The corpisantaro hesitated an instant. He looked all around, trying to work out what the consequences might be for him if he were to remain silent: Atto's pistol, the dagger in Sfasciamonti's grasp, the corpulent bulk of the latter, and, on the other hand, his band of friends, numerous, but all more or less halt or lame…

"I was commissionaried by the electors of the Maggiorengo," he replied at last.

"Who the Devil are they?" we all asked in unison.

Ugonio's explanation was long and confused, but with a good dose of patience, and thanks to some recollections of his extraordinary gibberish, retained from the events of many years ago, we did manage to grasp, if not all the details, at least the main message. The matter was simple. The cerretani elected a representative at regular intervals, a sort of king of vagabonds. He was known as the Maggiorengo-General and was crowned at a great ceremony of all the sects of cerretani. We learned among other things that the previous Maggiorengo had recently passed on to a better life.

"And what has all this to do with the theft which they commissioned you to carry out?"

"Of that I am iggorant, with all due condescendent respect to your most sublimated decisionality. Ne'er do we ejaculate the why and wherefore of a levy. 'Tis a problem of secretion!"

"You are not speaking because it is a matter of secrecy between you and your client? Do you imagine you are going to get away with it that easily?" threatened Melani.

The dusty and suffocating storeroom in which we stood was lit by a few torches set into the wall, the smoke from which escaped through channels set above the flames of the torches themselves. Atto suddenly grabbed one of these torches and held it next to a nearby pile of papers, which seemed to me to consist of legal and notarial deeds stolen from who knows where by the corpisantari.

"If you will not tell me to whom you have given my manuscript treatise, as true as God exists, I shall set fire to everything in here."

Atto was serious. Ugonio gave a start. At the idea of all his patrimony going up in smoke, he grew pale, at least as far as the parchment pallor of his face permitted it. First, he tried blandishments, then he tried to persuade Melani that he was placing himself in some ill-defined danger, this being a particularly delicate moment as the milieu of the cerretani had been shaken by a grievous robbery perpetrated against them.

"A grievous robbery? Robbers aren't robbed," sneered Atto. "What have they stolen from the cerretani?'

"Their novated lingo."

"Their new language? Languages cannot be stolen because they cannot be possessed, only spoken. Try inventing something else, you idiot."

In the end, Ugonio gave in and explained his offer to the Abbot.

"Agreed," said Atto in the end. "If you keep your side of the promise, I shall not destroy this wretched place. You know full well that I can do it," said Atto, before having us accompanied to the exit. "Sergeant, have you anything else to ask these animals?"

"Not now. I am curious to see whether they will keep their word tomorrow. Now, let us go. I do not wish to remain too long absent from Villa Spada."

"Ugonio recognised me as soon as he saw me from close up. Do you think it possible that he did not know from whom he was stealing the treatise and the telescope?" I asked Melani.

"Of course he knew. Rascals like him always know where they're sticking their hands."

"And yet, he didn't think twice about doing it."

"Certainly not. Evidently, the pressure from whoever commissioned him was too great. They must have offered him a great deal of money; or perhaps he was too afraid of failing."

"Now I understand! That was why I always had the feeling of being watched at the Villa Spada," I exclaimed.

"What are you saying?" asked Atto in astonishment.

"I never told you this, because I was not sure of what I was seeing around me. We have already encountered so many strange things," I added, alluding to the apparitions at the Vessel. "I didn't want to make it look as though I'd become a visionary. Yet, several times in the past few days, I have had the feeling of being spied on. It was as though… well, as though they were constantly keeping an eye on me from behind hedges."

"Obviously. Even a child could see that: it must have been Ugonio and the other corpisantari' said Atto, irritated by my slow thinking."Perhaps," I thought aloud, "they may even have been following us on the evening when we were drugged. Some rather strange fellows came into the wine shop where we had stopped, some mendicants who seemed to be spoiling for a fight. There was even a brawl which forced us to abandon our table. They almost knocked over the jug of wine."

"The jug of wine?" exclaimed Atto, wide-eyed.

I told him then of the scuffle that had broken out in the wine shop, which I and Buvat had witnessed, and how we had momentarily lost sight of our table. Atto exploded:

"Only now do you think of telling me this?" he groaned impatiently. "For heaven's sake, did you not realise that you and Buvat were put to sleep by pouring a little sleeping draught into your wine?"

I fell silent, humiliated. It was true, it must have been done like that. The mendicants (obviously a group of cerretani) had organised what looked like a brawl in order to create confusion in the place; thus, they had caused us to leave our table and got in our way while they poured the narcotic into our wine. After that, they had gone off without any further ado.

"Once they had put you to sleep," concluded Atto, calming down a little, "Ugonio and his companions in crime will have entered your house and Buvat's bedchamber. Then, as soon as they were able to, they tried again with me."

"It is a miracle that they crossed the villa boundary and managed to leave with their loot without being seen by anyone," I commented.

"Yes, indeed," said Atto, looking askance at Sfasciamonti, "it really is a miracle."

The catchpoll lowered his eyes in embarrassment. Yes, while I had cut a poor figure, Sfasciamonti ran the risk of passing for an incompetent. Atto, on the other hand, by finding Ugonio, had found out not only who had put me and Buvat out of action with the sleeping draught, but the thief of his treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave and of the relic and the telescope, which he now held tightly in one hand, fuming in equal measure with disdainful rage and warlike satisfaction.

No sooner had we crossed the Tiber than Sfasciamonti announced that he would hasten on his way in order to get back as early as possible, leaving us the advantage of proceeding at a more convenient and moderate pace.

"I shall go on ahead of you, it is getting really late, corps of a thousand maces. My absences from the villa cannot last too long. 1 do not want Cardinal Spada to think I am shirking my duty," he explained.

"Better, far better thus," commented Atto, as soon as we were alone.

"And why?"

"As soon as we get back, we shall have things to do."

"At this hour of night?"

"Buvat should have completed the task I set him."

"What? Searching for the flower among the arms of noble families?"

"Not just that," replied the Abbot laconically.

Yes, Buvat. The evening before, I had seen him again after a prolonged absence, and Melani, after setting him to work searching for traces of the Tetrachion among the noble arms, had requested him also to see to an unspecified "other matter". What could he be up to? During the first few days, his presence had been constant and assiduous. More recently, he would appear briefly, then absent himself again for a long period. Now I knew that Atto had assigned him some task to which the scribe was obviously attending outside the villa. I realised that the Abbot had, for the time being, no intention of revealing to me what was going on behind the scenes.

When we reached the villa, however, Atto's secretary had not yet returned.

"Good! Plainly, the trail which I suggested he should follow has proved fruitful. Perhaps the final details are still missing."

"Details? What of?" I insisted.

"Of the accusations whereby we shall nail Lamberg."