Secretum

Day the Sixth

12th J uly, 1700

"But you never close the door, do you?"

I opened my eyes. I was at home. The daylight flooded in through the wide-open door of the bedroom, blinding me. Nevertheless, I recognised beyond any doubt the voice which had so disagreeably awakened me: Abbot Melani had come to pay me a visit.

"Charming, this little house of yours. One can see the feminine touch," he commented.

That night I had reached my bed dead tired, with just enough strength left in me to make sure that my two daughters were sleeping placidly in their bed, seeing that Cloridia was still spending the night in the apartments of the Princess of Forano.

"Come on, come on, get up, 1 am in a hurry. We have plenty to do: Buvat found absolutely nothing about that damned Tetrachion in the books on heraldry. We must interrogate Romauli at once."

"No, that is enough, if you please, Signor Atto. I want to sleep," I replied somewhat brusquely.

"Are you quite mad?" trilled Atto's castrato voice. I had no time to tell him to lower his voice so as not to disturb my little ones who were sleeping on the floor above. They rose at once and were soon looking in curiously. They stared in astonishment at this curious gentleman, the like of whom they had never seen before, red-stockinged, bewigged, all bedaubed with ceruse and bedizened with lace, braiding and knick-knacks after the French fashion, from his periwig down to his shoe buckles. The little one, who was also the less shy of the pair, ran straight to him, wanting to touch all the marvels with which Abbot Melani's apparel was bedecked.

"Oh fathers!" exclaimed Atto delightedly, as he took the little one in his arms. "When you return home afflicted by business, what could be sweeter than to see your dear little daughter at the top of the stairs, awaiting you with such a loving, joyful welcome, receiving you with kisses and embraces, telling you so many thoughts and so many things that you are at once freed from all the dark ponderings that weigh down your mind and become jocular and gay even despite yourself?"

Rising in haste, I rushed to tell my daughters not to disturb the Abbot, but Atto halted me with his hand.

"Stop! Do not think that playing with little children is no matter for serious men," he berated me with a feigned air of reproof, already forgetting his reason for being there, "for I reply to you that Hercules, as we read in Elianus's works, was wont after the heat of battle to amuse himself playing with little ones; and Socrates was found by Alcibiades playing with children, while Agiselaos would ride a cane to entertain his sons. You should take advantage of my presence to get dressed while I act as nurse for these two little angels. You know what awaits us."

Whereupon, he let my little ones' curious tiny fingers tug at all those bows and tassels with a seraphic joy and patience of which I would never have imagined Abbot Melani to be capable.

I knew full well what awaited us: the search for the Tetrachion; or better, for the dish donated by Capitor to Mazarin, and which the madwoman had called "Tetrachion". According to Cloridia's friend, the maidservant at the Spanish Embassy, that name denoted an "heir", not further specified, to the throne of the Catholic King of Spain. The same name, however, Atto had heard on the lips ofTranquillo Romauli, Master Florist of the Villa Spada; which was distinctly curious, since Romauli never seemed willing to speak of anything but petals and corollas. Nevertheless, seeing that his late spouse had been a midwife, there was a suspicion that the secret feminine password of which Cloridia had heard tell might come down to us from the lips of the Master Florist himself. When prompted, Romauli had permitted himself a few hints: the Escorial was, he said, growing arid, and he had even let slip an enigmatic reference to Versailles, the residence of the Most Christian King, and to the Viennese Schonbrunn. All this, I had reported in detail to Abbot Melani, and Buvat had advanced the theory that Tetra- chion might be the name of a flower present in some noble coat of arms. However, as the Abbot had just informed me, research in heraldic tomes had turned up no such flower, so that now Atto could not wait to take the conversation with Romauli further.

A dish, an heir, a Master Florist: three tracks, every one of which seemed to lead in a different direction.

"Seeing that your Romauli appears to be the only one to know what or who the Tetrachion is," said Atto, as though following the thread of my cogitations, "I should say that we must start from there."

On our arrival at the villa, I constrained the Abbot to make a little deviation before rejoining Tranquillo Romauli, whom I knew to be intent at that hour on raking the gardens in preparation for the afternoon's festivities. I had to escort the little girls to Cloridia at the great house, so that they could assist her in her midwife's duties with the new mother and infant and, at the same time, receive her loving motherly care.

We found Master Romauli leaning over a flower bed, wielding a pair of shears and a sprinkler. Upon seeing us, his face lit up. After the exchange of the usual pleasantries, it was Atto who came straight to the point.

"My young friend has informed me that you would be glad to pursue discussion of a certain matter," said Melani with calculated nonchalance. "But perhaps you may prefer the two of us to remain alone, and therefore…" he added, alluding to the possible desirability of sending me away.

"Oh no, not at all," replied the Master Florist, "for me 'tis as though my own son were listening. I beg of you, allow him to stay."

So Romauli had no hesitation whatever about discussing delicate matters, like that of the Tetrachion, in my presence. All the better, said I to myself; obviously, he felt so sure of his own arguments that he had no fear of the presence of witnesses.

Since the Master Florist had shown no sign of any intention to move from his working position and was still on his knees, in order to facilitate conversation, Atto too had to sit, choosing a little stone bench which was fortunately just in the right place. I looked around; no one was observing us or walking in the vicinity. The conditions were right for squeezing from Romauli all that he knew.

"Very well, honourable Master Florist," Atto began. "You must in the first place know that at this present moment, the fate of the Escorial is almost closer to my heart than that of Versailles, of which I have the honour to be a most faithful admirer. Precisely for that reason…"

"Oh, yes, yes, how right you are, Signor Abbot," broke in the other, working on a low rosebush. "Could you hold the shears for me one moment?"

Atto obeyed, not without a grimace of surprise and disappointment, while Romauli handled the stem of the plant bare-handed; then he resumed his speech.

"… Precisely for that reason, as I was saying," continued Melani, "I am sure that you too will be aware of the gravity of the moment and that it is therefore in the best interests of all… in this field, shall we say, to succeed in resolving this grave, nay this most grave crisis, as painlessly…"

"Here we are," the other interrupted him, placing in his hand a rose just cut from the bush, "I know what you want to get down to: the Tetrachion."

For a moment, the Abbot fell silent with astonishment.

"The Master Florist is most intuitive and a man of few words," Atto then said in amiable tones, yet looking swiftly all around to make sure that no one was watching us.

"Oh, it was so obvious," came the reply. "Our common friend told me that you wished to resume the matter upon which we touched in our first conversation, in which I referred to the Tetrachion and in which I also mentioned the Spanish jonquil and Catalan jasmine. And now you speak to me of the Escorial: one does not need to be a genius to understand what you are leading up to."

"Ah, yes, of course," Atto hesitated, somewhat troubled by the rapidity of the other's deductions. "Very well, this Tetrachion…"

"Let us proceed step by step, Signor Abbot, step by step," said the Master Florist, pointing at the rose which he had just placed in Atto's hand. Now, smell it!"

Somewhat taken aback, Atto twirled the rose a little in his hand; at length he raised it to his nose, breathing in deeply.

"But it smells of garlic!" he exclaimed with a grimace of disgust.

Tranquillo Romauli laughed delightedly.

"Well, you have just demonstrated that, as with the palate, so with the flower; if the smell is not good, every beauty is insipid and as though 'twere dead. Thus, giving a good odour to a flower that has none, or only a bad one, is as beneficial as the miracle of giving it life."

"That may be so; but to this… er, impertinent flower," objected Melani, dabbing his nostrils with a lace handkerchief, and again shivering with disgust, "death was given, not life."

"You are exaggerating," said the Master Florist amiably. "It is only a medicated flower."

"Meaning?"

"To treat flowers, one takes sheep's manure, which one then macerates in vinegar, adding musk reduced to powder, civet and ambergris, and in this one bathes the seeds for two or three days. The flower born of this process will smell of fresh and delicious aromas, those of musk and civet, which tone up and revive the nostrils of whosoever brings it to his nose."

"But this rose stank of garlic!"

"Of course. It was in fact medicated in another way, to make it resistant to parasites. For, as Didymus and Theophrastes teach, it suffices to plant garlic or onions close to any kind of ornamental flower, especially, close to roses, for the latter to be instantly impregnated with a garlicky stink."

"Disgusting," Atto muttered to himself. "However, what has that to do with the Tetrachion?"

"Wait, wait. By means of medication," continued Romauli, quite unperturbed, "one can completely remove the bad smell of flowers that are rather disagreeable to the nose, such as the

African marsh marigold or Indian carnation, whichever you prefer to call it. One need only macerate the seeds in rose water and dry them in the sun before sowing. Once the flower has been grown, one must take the seeds and repeat the operation, and so on."

"Ah, and how much time does it take to arrive at the result?" asked Atto, growing vaguely curious.

"Oh, a trifle. No more than three years."

"Ah yes, a trifle," replied Atto, without the other becoming in the least aware of his irony.

"And even less time is needed for these little ones," said Romauli, utterly unruffled, jumping lightly up and tiptoeing as he invited Melani to lean over and look into a damp, shady corner behind the bench, between the trunk of a palm and a little wall.

"But these flowers are… black!" exclaimed Atto.

He was right: the petals of a group of carnations, hidden in this little cranny (where I had often noticed the Master Florist busying himself of late) were as black as anything I had ever seen.

"I made them grow there so that they should not be overmuch in evidence, said Romauli.

"How did you do it?" I asked. "In nature, there are no black flowers."

"Oh, that is a bagatelle for one versed in the secrets of the art. You take the scaly fruit of the alder, which must first be dry on the tree, reduce it to a very fine powder, and incorporate it in a little sheep's manure, tempered with wine vinegar. You must add salt to correct the astringency of the vinegar and the whole thing will grow soft. Thereupon, you incorporate the roots of the young carnation, and there you have it."

Atto and I, although bored by the Master Florist's explanations, were both astounded by the amiable and ingenious perversion whereby he obtained floral miracles. Not even to me, his faithful helper, had he revealed the existence of the black carnations. Who knows, I wondered to myself, how many such prodigies he had sown in the flower beds of the Villa Spada. He did in fact confide to us that he had just planted an entire bed with lilies the petals of which were painted with the names of the spouses (SPADA and ROCCI) in letters golden and silver; another, with roses medicated with the rarest of oriental essences, and a third with tulips from bulbs soaked in colours (cerulean, saffron, carmine and suchlike), thus tinted with striations of myriad hues, almost as though a rainbow had come down to earth; yet another, with monstrous plants, born of heterogeneous seeds planted in the same ball of manure, as well as parsley with its leaves infolded in the form of cylinders, obtained by pounding the seeds in a mortar and squashing their meatus, and a thousand other wonders of his art.

"I cannot wait for the moment," he concluded, "when Cardinal Spada brings the guests to take a look at my little productions."

"Ah, good. But I still do not see why you no longer wish to speak of the Tetrachion, and I am beginning to wonder whether I may not be wasting your time," said Atto, his tone betraying his real meaning, namely that he was wasting his own time; having said which, he rose from the bench with a decided air.

I too looked around me in confusion. Was the Master Florist having second thoughts?

"Yet, we are getting there," he replied. "The gardens of the Escorial are withering miserably, as I had occasion to mention last time we spoke."

" The gardens of the Escorial, did you say?" Atto asked with a slight start.

"Many, who are wrongly informed, maintain that those Spanish gardens, which were once so splendid, have no future, because of the climate, which has become icier in winter and more arid in summer. I have read much about those unfortunate gardens, you know. They need only a Master Florist and they would be saved. I have never been in Spain, nor indeed have I ever set foot outside Rome. 1 do, however, love to make comparisons with the gardens ofVersailles, which I know to be quite hardy, despite the damp, unhealthy air of the region, and with the many-coloured flower beds of Schonbrunn, which, I have read, were only recently reclaimed from the harsh conditions of the Vienna woods."

Abbot Melani turned and looked at me with hatred in his eyes, while the Master Florist carried on with one of his gardening tasks.

"And I," I tried in a whisper to justify myself, "when I told him that you were worried because death was hovering over the Escorial, thought he might not have understood…"

"So that is what you said to him. What a refined metaphor, eh?" hissed Atto.

"I have the solution for saving those gardens," continued Romauli, without realising a thing, "and it is indeed fortunate that you should be here, given your deep interest in the matter, as I have learned from your protege."

"Yes, but what about the Tetrachion?" I stammered, still hoping to learn something useful from the Master Florist.

"Precisely. But let us take this step by step. It is a delicate matter," announced Tranquillo Romauli. "Think of anemones. If one wants them to be double, one must select the seeds from flowers which are not early- or late-blooming; they must have suffered neither from heat nor from cold, and thus will produce completely perfect seeds."

"Double flowers, did you say?" I asked, beginning to imagine, and to fear, what he was getting at.

"But of course, from a single carnation will come a double one, if a seedling of the former is planted in excellent soil within the thirty days beginning on the 15th of August, Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God, in a warm place that is well protected from the extremes of the summer. From a double carnation will come a quadruple one if one takes two or three seeds of the double species and, having enclosed them in wax, or in a feather that is wider at the base than at the tip, placed them in the ground. That is what I have done, you see."

Lovingly, he pointed to a few flowers with rather bizarre characteristics: they were carnations of the purest white, with four flowers on the same stem, which bent almost in an arc under their sweet-smelling load.

"Here is my secret recipe for saving the Escorial. These flowers can resist every variation in temperature and climate; I invented them. These are my tetrachion carnations."

"Do you mean…" stammered Atto, blanching and stepping back a little, "that your Tetrachion is… this plant?"

"Yes, indeed it is, Signor Abbot Melani," said Romauli, rather surprised by Atto's evident disappointment. "They are so noble, these quadruple inflorescences, that I wished to give them an unusual name: tetrachion, from the ancient Greek ' tetra' meaning 'four'. But perhaps you do not share my opinion and my hopes for the Escorial. If that is so, I beg you to tell me at once, lest I bore you any longer; perhaps you might have preferred to visit my elaboratory of flower essences. I myself can take you there. You will come and visit me one of these days, will you not?"

The conversation with Tranquillo Romauli had cast us into the deepest gloom.

"A bane on you and your wife!" Abbot Melani began, the moment that we left him. "She promised us heaven knows what information through her supposed network of women, and here we are with a fistful of dead flies."

I lowered my head and said nothing; Atto was right. In fact, I was beginning to suspect that, after having risked my life to serve Abbot Melani, Cloridia might secretly have changed her mind about the assistance she had at first promised me and decided to provide me with little or no further news, in case such information might spur me to undertake perilous courses of action. Obviously, I said nothing to the Abbot about my suspicions.

"Clearly, the Master Florist has nothing to do with the women's password," I retorted; "yet he did give us one useful piece of information: Tetrachion means quadruple."

"But tell me, what the Devil has that to do with Capitor's dish?" cried Melani, hammering each syllable and laughing hysterically.

"Nothing whatever, Signor Atto, as far as I can see. But, as I said, at least we know now what the word means."

"I certainly did not need your Master Florist to know that 'tetra ' means 'four' in Greek," the Abbot rejoined angrily.

"Yet you did not know that Tetrachion means simply 'quadruple'.. " I hazarded.

"I had simply forgotten, at my age. Unlike Buvat, I am not a librarian," Atto corrected me.

"Perhaps there was something quadruple in Capitor's dish."

"As I told you, it represented Neptune and Amphitrite driving a chariot through the waves."

"Are you quite sure that there was nothing else?"

"That is all I saw, unless you regard me as completely senile," protested Atto. "However, we shall know for sure the moment that we find Capitor's three gifts. And you know well where we must look."

So, at a tired, funereal pace, we moved yet again towards Elpidio Benedetti's arcane Vessel. I then recalled that I had something urgent to ask Abbot Melani: whoever was that Countess of Soissons, who had sown trouble between Maria and the King? Was she in fact the Countess of S., the mysterious poisoner to whom the Connestabilessa had so reticently referred?

I was suddenly overcome by a bout of acute resentment for the Abbot: he still had made no mention to me of the Spanish succession, yet the Connestabilessa's letters spoke of nothing else. Atto spoke to me of another Spain, that of fifty years ago, the Spain of Don John and Capitor with her mysterious gifts to Mazarin. Might there be a connection between these two Spains? Perhaps there was one, contained in the mysterious essence of the Tetrachion.

"You are lost in thought, my boy," observed Atto, who had in truth until that moment been more absorbed than I.

The Abbot was observing my frowning, pensive face with some anxiety; like all professional liars, he was forever worrying that someone might sooner or later piece together the broken threads of his half-truths.

"I was thinking of the Tetrachion and, now that we are again approaching the Vessel, of Maria Mancini," said I with a great sigh.

This was, of course, a lie. It is true that I was thinking of Maria, but only because in the letters which she had sent to Atto, and which I had by now inspected several times over, there were still a number of things that eluded me.

"To be specific, I was wondering about the court's cruelty to that young woman; for instance, about the Countess of Soissons — by the way, who is she?" I asked with false ingenuousness.

"I see that even the intense events of the past few hours and even the lack of sleep have not caused you to forget all that I have been telling you," replied the Abbot with some satisfaction, probably believing that I had been so moved by his narration of the amorous vicissitudes of the young King of France that I was now begging him for more details. He had expected no less of me.

The Countess of Soissons, explained Abbot Melani, was none other than Maria's elder sister. She was called Olimpia Mancini and, according to some, she had been among the young King's initiators in the arts of love.

In the spring of 1654, when she was seventeen and Louis fifteen, they would often dance together on festive occasions; and she nursed the kind of hopes that might be expected in the circumstances…

However, her uncle, the Cardinal, promised her early on to the Count of Soissons, a member of the House of Savoy related to the royal family. They married in 1657.

"Olimpia was rather envious by nature," croaked Atto, bringing up what was plainly a disagreeable memory. "She had a long, pointed face with no beauty about it other than dimples on her cheeks and two vivacious eyes, which were unfortunately too small. The court wondered: 'Was she ever the King's mistress?'"

"Well, was she?" I interrupted, in the hope that Melani would let drop some detail of interest for my research.

"That is not the right question. One cannot speak of mistresses in connection with a fifteen-year-old boy. The most that might be asked is whether they may have given in to their urges. And the answer is: what does it matter?"

According to Atto, one thing was certain: whether platonic or not, the time passed with Olimpia left absolutely no mark on the young King: nothing that touched his soul. And when Maria and Louis's hearts first beat for one another, Olimpia was already expecting her first son.

"Alas, pregnancy did nothing to curb her terrible jealousy for her sister, who had succeeded in the most natural way in the world in obtaining what she had vainly but deliberately set out to win: the heart of the young King."

Spite thus spurred Olimpia once more to flirt with the Sovereign, between her first and second pregnancies; but this time, in vain. She then gained the secret support of the Queen Mother, who feared the love between Louis and Maria, and took pleasure in troubling her sister by showing her letters in which the King's mother expressed her opposition.

"So it was she who calumnied Maria in the King's ear, as soon as she returned to Paris after the Spanish wedding!" I realised in surprise.

Given my condition as a foundling who had never had brothers and sisters, I had always dreamed of and liked to imagine myself with many, many siblings. And in my dreams, I always saw them as the truest and most trustworthy of friends.

"Are you surprised? Since the times of Cain and Abel, things have gone thus," replied Atto with a complacent air, whereupon he recited:

Blood brothers often will ingest

Dame Envy's fatal venom best:

First Cain, then Esau, and Thyestes,

And Jacob's sons and Eteocles,

For they were fired much more than others

As if their victims weren't their brothers,

And consanguinity incited

Will burn up stronger when ignited.

"As you heard, it is no accident that Sebastian Brant, who is so dear to that Albicastro, should have dedicated verses in his Ship of Fools to fraternal hatred. Fortunately, however, there is no infallible rule. Maria always kept up the closest of ties with another of her sisters, Ortensia."

Ah, yes, I thought. Was not Atto himself a living example of fraternal love? He had all his life been tied to his brothers by an unbreakable mutual aid pact. I had heard of this many years before, at the Locanda del Donzello, when a lodger hissed disapprovingly that the brothers Melani always moved "in a pack, like wolves".

"So Olimpia, as I was telling you, whispered malevolently in the King's ear that, while he was away at the Spanish border getting married, Maria had allowed herself to be courted by the young Charles of Lorraine and was even prepared to marry him."

"And what was she supposed to do, poor thing?" I commented. "By now, the King had taken a wife."

"Precisely, Maria was looking for a French match. She had no desire to return to Italy where women of high rank are compelled to rot at home as mere ornaments."

With malign joy, Olimpia saw her calumnies bear fruit. It happened when Maria was presented to Louis' new bride. This was the first time she had seen the King after a long absence: that time had seen their separation, Mazarin's violence and Louis's tears at the fortress of Brouage. Love, and with it jealousy, had not come to an end; it had simply been cast in chains.

Well, when Maria again came before him, Louis, eaten up by jealousy, looked at her with such coldness and scorn that she was barely able to complete the three ritual reverences. Olimpia's wickedness had triumphed.

Mazarin, on his deathbed, richly rewarded Olimpia's zeal in separating Louis and Maria: he appointed her superintendent of the Queen's household, to the great displeasure of Maria Teresa herself, who was anything but pleased to have her still hopefully hanging around her husband.

"Poor Maria Teresa. Olimpia took advantage of her closeness to the Queen to be the first to reveal the King's adulterous affairs to her."

It happened with Louis XIV's first official mistress, Louise de la Valliere. Olimpia, who stuck her nose in everywhere, offered her to the King as a screen, to cover his nocturnal promenades with his sister-in-law Henriette, secretly delighted that the man she could not have was now deceiving his own consort.

But the fence that separates the power of sovereigns from their desires is easily swept aside, and thus in the end it was Louise who became the King's real mistress. Then Olimpia became her bitterest enemy, putting another of the Queen's maids of honour, Anne-Lucie de la Motte, into the fiery Sovereign's bed and then informing the naive Louise by means of an anonymous letter. Unable to separate the two lovers, Olimpia obtained an audience with the Queen and told her everything: from the King's escapades to the steady relationship with Mademoiselle de la Valliere. Then she sat back and enjoyed the spectacle: torrents of tears, a memorable scene between the King and his mother, and finally a palace scandal involving all the maids of honour.

The King himself remedied all this. In his exasperation, he took advantage of the opportunity to break away from his mother's influence and impose Mademoiselle de la Valliere on her, on his wife and on the whole court as his first official mistress.

"Olimpia was now hoist of her own petard," laughed the Abbot, "and that was the beginning of her ruin which, after all she had got up to, was not long in coming."

"Look!" I exclaimed, interrupting the narration.

We had passed the San Pancrazio Gate and had almost reached the Vessel. Before the entrance of the villa stood three magnificent carriages.

"One of them is Cardinal Spada's," I noticed.

Suddenly, the three carriages moved off and turned to the right. As they drew away, we could clearly see that they were empty. Their passengers (Spada, Spinola and Albani) had descended at the Vessel, where, presumably, their lackeys would later be returning to collect them.

"Take courage, my boy, perhaps this time we're in luck: the trio are 'on board'," commented Melani.

So the three cardinals had returned to meet at Benedetti's villa. The time before, we had attempted to trace them, but in vain. Now we had found them by chance: perhaps it would go better this time.

Seeing that we had almost arrived at our destination, Atto rapidly completed his tale.

"Olimpia was ruined by her own jealous fury. She ended up by commissioning anathemas and poisons for the lovers of the Most Christian King and love potions for Louis himself. All these intrigues came to light with the Affair of the Poisons, which cost her an arrest warrant and compelled her to flee in all haste to Brussels. To this day, she still hops from place to place throughout Europe, a prey to an irreducible hatred for France, striving by all the means in her power to harm the reign of the Most Christian King. She is suspected, among other things, of having poisoned her husband, and even Madame Henriette and her daughter.

"Madame Henriette and her daughter?" I repeated hesitantly.

"For heaven's sake, here we go again, must I always repeat everything to you? Henriette, I have just told you, was the King's sister-in-law; what is more, we have seen her portrait on the ground floor here. She was the mother of Marie-Louise of Orleans, the first wife of King Charles II of Spain. But that is another story," said the Abbot, cutting short his account. Curiously, he was always in a hurry to terminate our conversation whenever it touched in some way on the present state of Spain.

Now at last I had discovered the identity of the mysterious Countess of S.: the Countess of Soissons was a sister of Maria Mancini. The Connestabilessa had in fact hinted at the suspicions of poisoning hanging over her head after the death of the Queen of Spain, Marie-Louise of Orleans. Her discretion in speaking of her was due, not to any involvement on Olimpia's part in the present state of affairs, but to the fact that she was her own sister. That was why Maria had, when referring to her, expressed such pain at her evildoing. In other words, I had made another fine blunder, the second of the day, after that with the Master Florist: the mysterious Countess of S. was in fact far from mysterious, nor had she anything to do with the dangers which seemed now to hang over Abbot Melani's head.

As Atto was ending his narration, although I was concerned not to show any sign of it, I once again became a prey to anger. For days and days now, I had been spying on the correspondence between Atto and the Connestabilessa concerning the Spanish succession, yet had found out absolutely nothing. What was more, Melani still had not uttered so much as a word on the matter of Spain, nor did he seem to have any intention of ever doing so. All his attention seemed to be taken up with investigating the meetings between my master, Cardinal Spada, Cardinal Albani and Cardinal Spinola di San Cesareo, with a view to the forthcoming conclave. And these meetings were taking place at the Vessel, or so it seemed, for, when all was said and done, despite our repeated visits to that strange villa towards which we were now directing our footsteps, we had never found anything to confirm that. The Vessel, however, with its disquieting and inexplicable apparitions, had led the Abbot to follow the thread of distant memories: Maria Mancini, the youthful King of France, even Superintendent Fouquet, all leading up to Capitor, Don John the Bastard's madwoman (and here we were, back in Spain) who forty years ago gave Mazarin three presents, among them the dish which she called Tetrachion.

The Tetrachion. As though lost in a circular labyrinth, here I was, again thinking of it. The chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy, on whose lips this obscure name had surprisingly appeared, had been skilfully interrogated by Cloridia to help me cast light upon a whole series of intrigues: the stab wound to Abbot Melani's arm, the death of Haver the bookbinder and the exchange of letters between Atto and Maria Mancini on the Spanish succession, in which my master Cardinal Fabrizio was, moreover, also mentioned. The letters reported that the Cardinal Secretary of State Fabrizio Spada had visited the Spanish Ambassador in connection with the King of Spain's request to Pope Innocent XII for assistance and, given the Pontiff's poor state of health, Spada was personally looking after policy in his place.

And here we were back at the start: the Spanish succession, in which the Tetrachion, an indefinable, faceless and formless entity, was said to be the legitimate heir.

Ever since the Abbot and I had set forth together on this adventure, I had kept returning again and again to the same considerations, yet without ever getting anywhere. Everything seemed to be connected — but how? Perhaps the solution was there, close at hand, yet I could not get at it. That tangle of clues was rather like the folia, a circular motif, pervasive yet intangible, a sort of sea serpent, at once evasive and insinuating, which in the end holds the innocent listener in its hybrid embrace, immobilising him in its coils.

The folia, the Abbot and I were crossing the threshold of the villa and already that music was enveloping us in the Lethe of its warm, spicy embrace.

Once again, we found Albicastro perched on his cornice, drawing from the magic quiver of his violin the scintillating sounds of the folia.

"Does he always have to be in the way?" muttered Atto. "He has no fear of making himself ridiculous!"

Albicastro left off playing and looked at us. I started, fearing that the musician had overheard the Abbot's unflattering remark, despite the fact that he had uttered it under his breath.

"Human affairs, like the Sileni of Alcibiades, always have two faces, each the opposite of the other. Did you know that, Signor Abbot Melani?" the Dutchman began enigmatically. "Like those ridiculous and grotesque statuettes which contained divine images, what seems from the outside to be death, when examined from within, proves to be life; and vice versa, what seemed alive, is dead."

The musician had, alas, heard Atto's acid words.

"In human affairs, what seems beautiful turns out to be deformed, what seems rich, poor, what seems infamous, glorious; the learned man may prove ignorant, the strong weak, the generous ignoble, the joyful sad; prosperity may reveal itself to be adversity, friendship hate, the enjoyable harmful. All in all, when you open up the Silenus, you find everything suddenly transformed into its opposite."

"Do you mean that what to me seems ridiculous, is perhaps divine?" said Melani teasingly.

"I am taken aback, Signor Abbot, that you, who come from France, should have difficulty in grasping my meaning. Yet you have the perfect example before your eyes. Who among all you Frenchmen would ever say that your king is not rich and master of all that surrounds him? But if he's in thrall to many vices, is he not perhaps equal to the most ignoble of slaves? And above all, if his heart is devoid of the soul's wealth and he dies without having been able to satisfy it, should he not be called most poor? You doubtless know what Solon said to Croesus, King of Lydia: "The richest man is no happier than he who lives for the day, unless, having enjoyed a life in the midst of great wealth, he has the fortune to end it well."

Upon hearing these last words, Melani gave a start and walked off disdainfully, without deigning so much as to salute the Dutchman.

As I followed him, I too grew pensive. Croesus, King of Lydia: the name of that famous monarch of ancient Greece reminded me of something. The pallor I found on Atto's face when I cast a sidelong glance at him, walking tense and silent beside me, made me suspect that the musician had touched a tender place on his heartstrings. I strove for some resonance from another string, that of memory. Where had I heard the story of the sage Solon and the Lydian Croesus? I strove in vain. So I said to myself that, where memory would not reach, reasoning could. Albicastro had compared Croesus to the Most Christian King…

It took only a few seconds, then, for that name to come to mind: Lidio, which kept cropping up so enigmatically in Atto's correspondence with the Connestabilessa. Croesus was King of Lydia — another "Lidio". That mysterious personage was sending Maria messages through Atto, and through the same channel, she was replying to him. What was the Connestabilessa conveying to him? "In every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin." And, yet again: "With respect to that whereon you question me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that you have closed your life happily." Thinking about this, it all sounded as though these were quotations from some ancient book. What was more, did not these phrases resemble what Solon told Croesus, as quoted by Albicastro? I promised myself to seek out the episode between Croesus and Solon as soon as I possibly could in the library of Villa Spada.

I joined Atto and we looked all around us. Of the three cardinals, there was no trace.

"No, they are not here. Otherwise, we'd hear some sound, or at least some secretary would emerge."

It was as though the trio had vanished into nothingness.

"There's something wrong here," said Atto, pensively pinching the dimple on his chin. "Let us get a move on. Standing around here will get us nowhere. And there's much work to be done."

Our goal was the charger. Judging by the picture depicting Capitor's three presents, which we had found at the Vessel two days before, this must be a rather bulky object. It was made of gold, exquisitely wrought and magnificent in appearance. It would have been in Benedetti's interest to show it for all to see in some fine room; however, seeing the state of abandonment of the Vessel, it was not unlikely that someone had put it in a safe place to preserve it from being stolen.

"We found the picture on the second floor," said Atto. "We shall begin there."

This was the floor with the four apartments with a bath chamber and a little shared salon. Our search could not have been more thorough. We inspected beds, wardrobes, dressers and little rooms, all to no effect.

In the process of checking every possible nook and cranny, we had to rummage through each of the four little libraries with which the four apartments were equipped. Climbing onto a chair, I began to look behind every row of books, swallowing some of the dust which had gathered there over who knows how many years. This phase in the search brought me no luck either, apart from a single detail.

As I was inspecting the books in the fourth and last library, my eyes settled on the third shelf from the top. This was a long row of volumes which were all the same, with their spines engraved in gold

letters: HERODOTUS THE HISTORIES

On the first volume, under the title, I read:

Book I LYDIA AND PERSIA

Obviously, I knew the name and works of the famous Greek historian. But what struck me was the title: here was Lydia, the land of Croesus.

"I am going down to the first floor, there's nothing here," called Atto, as he descended the stairs.

"I've still something to do up here, I'll join you in a moment," I replied.

Indeed, I did have something to do. I climbed down from the chair on which I was perched and settled into an armchair. I opened the book to search for the passages containing the story of Croesus.

As I turned the pages, I offered up my silent thanks to the walls within which I sat. Once again, the Vessel had, through ways obscure and ineffable, perceived a request for explanations, a yearning for knowledge. This time, however, it had not replied with its inscriptions but had placed a book before my eyes.

The search was more successful than that for the dish. The passage which explained everything began at the twenty-seventh chapter.

The immensely wealthy Croesus, King of Lydia, received one day a visit from Solon, the Athenian sage. Croesus said to him: "Stranger of Athens, we have heard much of thy wisdom and of thy travels through many lands, from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world. I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom, of all the men that thou hast seen, thou deemest the most happy?"

Croesus, who was extraordinarily wealthy, venerated and powerful, obviously thought that Solon would say that it was he, great Sovereign of the Lydians, who was the happiest of men. Instead, Solon spoke of someone unknown, a certain Tellos of Athens, who had had a prosperous life, many sons and grandsons, and had died in battle against his city's enemies. The second prize, he accorded to the Argive brothers, Cleobis and Biton, two athletes who took the yoke of their old mother's chariot on their shoulders for a good forty-five furlongs to the temple in which the festival of the goddess Hera was being celebrated. Upon reaching the temple, their mother prayed Hera to grant her sons the best fate a man could have. After banqueting and performing the sacred rites, Cleobis and Biton lay down to sleep in the temple and never again awoke: such was their end. The people, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made.

Croesus then broke in angrily, "What, stranger of Athens, is my happiness, then, so utterly set at nought by thee, that thou dost not even put me on a level with common men?" Solon answered with these wise words:

I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but with respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily. For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life.

… If he end his life well, he is of a truth the man of whom thou art in search, the man who may rightly be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate…

… He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, is, in my judgment, entitled to bear the name of 'happy'. But in every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin.

"Boy, are you coming or not? Our work is only beginning!" Atto's voice called me back sharply to the present; the volume of Herodotus jumped in my hand.

I had read enough, I thought. Now I was beginning to understand.

If my reasoning was correct, the name Lidio must conceal no less than the Sun King in person, just as he was hidden behind the metaphor of Croesus in Albicastro's speech. Besides, had not Atto mentioned to me that Herodotus was among Louis and Maria's favourite authors?

Here was the secret I had sought in vain: the Connestabilessa and the King wrote to one another secretly, and Atto was their go-between!

Of course, they were no longer Maria and Louis, the ivory- skinned maiden and the timid youth of the apparitions at the Vessel; their writings were no longer murmurings of love. Nevertheless, the King of France still held the counsel of Maria Mancini in high esteem, so much so that he was prepared to run the risk of a clandestine correspondence in order to enjoy the benefit of her wit. I well remembered that in a post scriptum Atto had written to her:

You know what value he sets upon your judgement and your satisfaction.

Atto had in truth written in the same letter that he had something to deliver to the Connestabilessa: something which, he asserted, might cause her to change her opinion of Lidio. Whatever could that have been?

After the first moments of enthusiasm, however, doubts surfaced: the reference to Herodotus was obvious, but it was less evident that Lidio was the pseudonym for the Most Christian King. Of course, it was not perhaps an accident that Louis should have loved to read Herodotus together with his beloved. Besides, Albicastro had made an all-too-facile comparison between Croesus and the King of France. All in all, one could not completely rule out the possibility that, in Atto and Maria's correspondence, someone quite different might be hidden behind the disguise of the King of Lydia. What was more, I knew too little about Maria Mancini's life since her departure from Paris to be able to find out who this mysterious personage might be.

In other words, I still needed to confirm the identity of one of the personages. I already knew which one: Silvio.

Maria Mancini had written to Atto, sometimes calling him Silvio, and in those passages in her letters she sent him warnings, recommendations and even reproofs, the meaning of which remained thoroughly obscure to me.

And what, I asked myself, if these too were literary quotations, just like the Lidio referred to in Herodotus? I began to imagine that Silvio too might also be a character from some book, perhaps a messenger of love, even one drawn from mythology.

There, I said to myself, if only I could discover where that name, Silvio, came from, perhaps I might obtain a few more clues as to who Lidio might be or even, I hoped, definitive proof that the King and the Connestabilessa were still engaged in amorous conversations.

I soon grew discouraged; I had only one name: Silvio. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Where was I to begin my search? A hand fell heavily on my shoulder, dragging me from my reflections.

"Will you stop meditating with that book in your hand like Saint Ignatius? Come and help me."

The Abbot, covered in dust and perspiration, had come to get me back to work.

"So far, I have found nothing. I mean to continue searching the first floor. Come and help me."

"I am coming, Signor Atto, I am coming," said I, climbing onto the chair and replacing the little volume of Herodotus.

My meditations would have to wait until later.

So we descended to the first floor, with its gallery of mirrors and its distorted perspective and, on either side, the little chapel, the bath chamber and the two little chambers dedicated, the one to the papacy and the other to France.

Suddenly, I found myself facing the delightful image, woven into a tapestry, of a lovely nymph dressed in a wolf's skin, who had been wounded in her flank by the arrow of a young hunter. The nymph's gentle appearance, from her ivory complexion to her soft ebony curls, were in sharp contrast to the blood that gushed from her side and the desperation written on the young man's face. The floral frame punctuated with scrolls and medallions in relief completed the tapestry with exquisite elegance.

Then I recognised it. This was one of the two Flemish tapestries before which Abbot Melani had stood, lost in ecstatic admiration, on our previous visit to the Vessel. Atto had explained to me that it was he himself who had persuaded Elpidio Benedetti to purchase it when the latter was visiting France some thirty years previously. What else had the Abbot said to me? This I pondered, while my thoughts began dancing in my head like Bacchantes moving in procession towards some exciting, yet unknown goal. Originally, there had been four tapestries — that, Melani had told me — but two of them he had made Benedetti present to Maria Mancini, because the scenes depicted in them were drawn from an amorous drama, The Faithful Shepherd, much appreciated by her and the young King (but this detail I had almost had to drag from him, so reticent had Atto become at that juncture). A drama of love…

Turning to Abbot Melani with an ingenuous smile, while I struggled to feign a bad bout of coughing, brought on by all that dust, I begged his leave to absent myself awhile from our search. Then, without even awaiting his permission, like some new Mercury flying on winged heels, I dashed up the stairs to the second floor and in a matter of seconds I was again visiting the four libraries, in one of which I had left the Histories of Herodotus.

Perched on a chair, my fingers almost scratching at the spines of the volumes, I scanned their titles, as though my eyes needed help from the sense of touch to confirm what they were reading.

At last I found it: tiny, no more than a booklet, some six inches high and less than half an inch thick. It was bound in black leather patterned with golden squares, its spine decorated with Florentine lilies. I

opened it: PASTOR FIDO,

I then placed my trust in the book-mark, of fine maroon satin, by now faded; opening at the place where it had lain since time immemorial, I read at random:

Happy Dorinda! Heav 'n has sent to thee That bliss you went in search to find.

I exulted. Dorinda: that was the name of the wounded nymph whom I had just seen in the tapestry. Abbot Melani had told me when we saw it for the first time. And Dorinda was also the name which the Connestabilessa had given herself in her last letter, in which she addressed Atto as Silvio.

1 had found what I was looking for. Now it only remained for me to seek the name Silvio. If, as I thought, he was one of the characters from The Faithful Shepherd, I had succeeded. So, with my breast trembling with emotion, I began to leaf through the pages of the little book, in search of a Silvio who might perhaps be a messenger of love between Dorinda and her beloved, just as Melani was perhaps the go-between linking the Connestabilessa and the Most Christian King.

Very soon, I found it:

Know you not Silvio, son to famed Montano?

That lovely boy! He's the delightful swain.

O prosp'rous youth…

This Silvio was, then, no go-between, as I had hoped, but a wealthy and beauteous youth. Apart from his wealth, he seemed hardly a portrait of Abbot Melani…

What I then read surpassed all my imagining:

O Silvio, Silvio! Why did nature give

Such flower of beauty, delicate and sweet,

In this thy Spring of life, to be so slighted?

It was a dialogue between Silvio and his old servant Linco, who reproves the youth for his hard-heartedness. I turned more pages:

O foolish boy, who fly to distant hills

For dang'rous game, when here at home you may

Pursue what's near, domestic and secure?

SILVIO:

Pray, in what forest ranges this wild creature?

LINCO:

The forest is yourself, and the wild creature Which dwells therein is your fierce disposition

Shall I not say thou hast a lion's heart

And that thy hardened breast is cased with steel?

No, it could not be Atto who hid behind the nickname Silvio. Rather, someone else came all too readily to mind when I read of that scornful, rich young shepherd:

Now, Silvio, look around, and take a view Of all this world; cdl that is fair and good Is the great work of love. The heav'ns, the earth, The sea are lovers too.

In short, all nature is in love but you. And shall you, Silvio, be the one exception, The only soul in heav 'n and earth and sea, A proof against this mighty force of nature?

I thought once more of all that Abbot Melani had told me: was not that series of reproofs perfectly suited to His Majesty the Most Christian King of France? Had not the Sovereign's heart turned to ice after his separation from Maria Mancini?

Thou art, my Silvio, rigidly severe To one who loves thee ev'n to adoration. What soul could think, beneath so sweet a face A heart so hard and cruel was concealed?

And, yet again:

O cruel Silvio! O most ruthful swain!

I turned to the frontispiece. I wanted before all else to read the foreword and the initial argumentum or resume of the drama, so as to discover what part was played in it by the nymph Dorinda who provided the Connestabilessa with her nom de plume. Thus I learned that Silvio was betrothed to Amaryllis, but did not love her. He loved no one. He wanted only to go hunting in the forest. Then, however, he accidentally wounded in the side a nymph who was in love with him — Dorinda, to be precise — having mistaken her for a wild beast because she wore a wolf's skin. At that point, Silvio fell in love with her, broke his bow and arrows, cured the wound and the couple married.

Was the tale not perhaps very like that of the young King of France, betrothed to the Spanish Infanta but in love with Maria Mancini? Only the denouement of their love story, as well I knew from Atto, was very different from that of The Faithful Shepherd, for which they themselves so yearned.

Time was growing short. Atto would soon be coming up to look for me. I entered the spiral staircase. There, I heard a strange buzzing. Cautiously descending a few steps, I peeped out to glance at Abbot Melani. Tired, Atto had slumped into an armchair to await my return, and had gone to sleep.

I sat down on a step and drew my conclusions: not only the name of Lidio but also that of Silvio were screens concealing the Most Christian King. Thus, the Connestabilessa was not only what Solon had been for Croesus; she still remained Dorinda, Silvio's lover…

Many things in Atto's and Maria's letters had at last become clear to me. What lay hidden in those letters was not state espionage, not obscure political manoeuvring, not the turbid depths of international diplomacy, as I had suspected all that time when I so ignobly spied on Atto and Maria. No, those letters concealed an even greater secret, an unimaginable, yet purer one: Louis and Maria were still writing to one another forty years after their last farewell.

At last I understood why Atto spoke to me with such confidence of the French Sovereign's sentiments for the Connestabilessa and how his suffering at the loss of his beloved had hardened his heart. I understood, too, why he told of these things as though they were alive and kicking today; he was constantly dealing with the most confidential first-hand details of the undying love between the couple! That was why Atto had come to Rome: to meet Maria Mancini, after an absence of thirty years, and to bring who knows what embassy of love on behalf of the Most Christian King. I would have given anything to know at that moment what the King was sending through Abbot Melani. Whatever could necessitate a meeting en tete a tete. A signed letter from the King? A pledge of love?

I could also understand why Abbot Melani had hesitated so much when answering my questions the first time we had seen those tapestries at the Vessel. The Faithful Shepherd had not only been the favourite reading of the two old lovers: it still was. It was their secret code. And Atto acted as their go-between, now as then.

Yet, what kind of love can there be between two old persons who have not seen one another for forty years? The answer was to be found in a letter from Atto to Maria, which I recalled at that moment:

Silvio was proud, 'tis true, but he venerates the gods, and was one day vanquished by your Cupid. Since then he has ever bowed down before you, calling you his.

Altho' his you were not.

A love made up of memories and lost opportunities, such was the King's for Maria Mancini.

And I who had believed that Atto was referring there to his wretched castrato's estate! No, Atto was referring to the unbroken chastity of that love, and to how present it still was in the old Sovereign's soul.

I then thought of all the passages in Maria's letters in which she wrote addressing Silvio, and I understood at last the meaning of the warnings and reproaches which she borrowed from The Faithful Shepherd.

O, Silvio, Silvio! who in thine early years hast found the fates propitious, I tell thee, too early wit has ignorance for fruit.

These words, which were impenetrable when I believed them to be addressed to Abbot Melani, now calmly revealed their meaning to me. The Most Christian King had indeed ascended to the throne very young; thus, his destiny had matured "when still unripe". But he who comes to power too early must, "on attaining maturity, surely reap the fruit of ignorance", in other words remain arrogant throughout his whole life. And now that the burning question was that of the Spanish succession, Maria was warning Louis XIV to act wisely.

In the same way, was Maria Mancini not perhaps accusing the Sovereign of being somehow himself responsible, through his own arrogant conduct of both life and government, for the series of disasters which had befallen France's friends in Spain?

Vain boy, if you imagine this mishap

By chance befell, you widely are deceived.

These accidents so monstrous and so strange

Befall us mortals by divine permission.

Don't you reflect the Gods by you were slighted,

By this your haughty pride and high disdain

Of love and ev 'rything the world deems human.

They cannot abhor, although it be in virtue.

Now are you mute, who were but now so haughty!

Very soon, the game had become perfectly clear to me. The Connestabilessa, writing with consummate skill, spoke to Atto of Lidio in the third person, sending messages and replies through the Abbot; and then addressed Atto, calling him Silvio, the message really being for the King's eyes. Two identities, to confound unwelcome readers and thus to protect the writers from any spies. With me, the trick had worked perfectly. Never could I have discovered the truth, had it not been, first, for Albicastro, then, the Vessel, both of which had showed me the way that led to Lidio. The Flying Dutchman and his Phantom Vessel, as Melani called them… Yes, indeed, 1 observed, turning The Faithful Shepherd over and over in my hands. All these illuminations had come to me through the Vessel. First, there was the phrase of Albicastro, the eccentric occupant of the villa, which with singular clairvoyance compared Croesus to the King of France. That explained why Atto had given such a start and turned rapidly on his heels without replying to the Dutch musician; he himself had been perturbed by that arcane oracle. Then came the book of Herodotus, followed by that of the Gavaliere Guarini, thanks to which my ideas were made completely clear. Benedetti's mysterious villa had once again proved its fathomless faculties.

Suddenly, I smiled to myself: it was, when one came to think of it, most probable that the villa's one-time owner, Abbot Elpidio Benedetti, in his capacity as an agent of Cardinal Mazarin in Rome, had collected in his villa books, pictures, works of art and everything that a fashionable Francophile could not fail to have or know.

One thing was by now certain: neither the conclave nor the Spanish succession was the matter or purpose of the meeting planned between Atto and Maria, but love. Political manoeuvres were the basis, not the heart of their epistolary conversations. They were just a cover, and might arouse the interest of those keen on intrigue, but no more.

That was why Atto became so heated when, in our incursions to the Vessel, he told me the old story of that broken royal romance. For him it was something still alive, and one might even posit that the apparitions and phantasms of the past which we had witnessed at the Vessel were none other than the spiritual emanations of that long-distant (yet still potent) passion between the Connestabilessa and the aging Sovereign.

This, in all probability, was the true motive behind Melani's presence at the Villa Spada during that time: he and the Connestabilessa were taking advantage of the invitation extended to both to attend the Spada wedding to meet once more. All of this was, I thought, far removed from the conclave or the Spanish succession.

Maria, however, was late arriving. She had already missed the day of the ceremony. Whatever could be keeping her? Perhaps she really was suffering from a persistent fever, as she declared in her letters; or perhaps, I came to imagine, she was held back by a natural reluctance to engage in amorous skirmish, leading her to play hard to get, almost as though Atto himself were her former love, rather than his ambassador.

I heard Abbot Melani's footsteps. He had woken up and was coming up to see what I had done. I looked again at The Faithful Shepherd. The book was really tiny, I thought. It would be child's play to slip it into my pocket and take it with me without the Abbot seeing. I would return it later. Now, it was useful to me. I would read Maria's letters in the light of those verses.

"At long last! May one know what you are up to?" he exclaimed, seeing me at the top of the stairs.

"As you had gone to sleep, I thought I'd let you rest awhile."

"And that was wrong of you, for without your help I have been able to get practically nothing done," retorted Atto, trying to hide his embarrassment.

It was an elegant way of confessing that, as soon as I had left him alone, he had dozed off.

"Now it will be enough to feel our way," the Abbot continued. "I mean to explore the Vessel systematically, from top to bottom. The dish must be somewhere here. We have already searched the second floor more than enough. We shall therefore begin with the ground floor, then we shall go up to the first floor and, lastly, to the third floor, where the servants' quarters are."

As he descended the spiral staircase in front of me, I scrutinised from behind his bent and age-worn figure, still, however, made vibrant by the call to action. Looking at him, I was moved by the thought of the nature of his mission. For once, Melani had surprised me, revealing sentiments and ideas nobler than those I had ascribed to him, rather than the base ones which had, alas, all too often driven him in the past.

It was thus, with my soul overflowing with emotion, that I entered the other parts of the villa, to help Atto in his search for Capitor's three gifts, and above all, the dish.

We inspected the great hall on the ground floor: the shelves, the dressers, the drawers. Every single object (cutlery, glasses, ornaments) was where we had found it on our first visit. It was in that room that were exhibited, as we knew, a number of portraits of lovely and noble ladies of France (including the portrait of Maria which I had admired on our first tour of the premises). As I was rising after pointlessly stirring up the dust under a divan, I found myself face to face with one such portrait to which I had not previously accorded any attention.

"Madame de Montespan," announced Melani as he too approached that face of extraordinary, disturbing beauty. "Onetime favourite of the King of France. A relationship which lasted ten years and produced seven children; almost a second Queen."

I had just enough time to admire the abundant flesh of her bosom, the blue eyes fired with the will to elicit desire, the lips ready for kisses, the well-rounded arms. Atto had already passed to the next portrait.

"Louise de la Valliere," he announced. "His Majesty's first official adultery, as I have already told you," he added, pointing to that face of singular purity, crowned by thick silvery blonde tresses, a veritable synthesis of finesse, elegance and ethereal refinement, so much so that she seemed to have been formed by the Lord to manifest to humanity the blessed triad of grace, modesty and tenderness and almost magically, through her sea- coloured eyes, to win hearts and fidelity.

"How different they are!" I exclaimed. "This one is so pure, and the other so… how can I put it?"

"Turbid and sinful? Come straight out with it: that la Montespan was no angel one can see at a glance," laughed the Abbot, "but almost importantly, they are both far removed from the frank and impetuous temperament which radiated from Maria's person. These are two Frenchwomen, even if the one's the opposite of the other. Maria is Italian," concluded Atto, emphasising the last words, while his eyes lit up with renewed ardour at the thought of her. Now at last I realised from what a privileged and intimate observer I had hitherto had the good fortune to hear the tale of the drama which had so perturbed the soul of the Most Christian King. Thus, I trembled with the desire to hear the remainder of that old, unhappy story, now that I knew it to be still going on. Above all, I was by now convinced that Atto was on the point of meeting Maria to bear her some important embassy of love from the Most Christian King, and I was determined to discover what this might be.

"The King of France had many loves after the departure of Maria Mancini, if I remember correctly," I remarked, while the Abbot guided me into the salon with the portraits of kings and princes.

"He had many favourites," Atto corrected me, "and never fewer than two at a time."

"Two? Is that the custom among French sovereigns?"

"No, of course not," smiled the Abbot, opening a huge dresser full of Venetian crystal and Savona porcelain and rummaging inside it; "far from it." Never had such a thing been seen in France: a Queen and two titular mistresses, all three condemned to live shoulder to shoulder. Without counting the fact that Madame de Montespan was already married. Henri IV Louis's grandfather, had a mistress, but he never thought of imposing her on the Queen."

"I imagine that you see this as yet another unfortunate consequence of his abandoning Maria," said I, holding out the bait in my impatient desire to satisfy my curiosity about the present relations between the Most Christian King and the Connestabilessa.

"The deluge of pain that rained down on the heart of the young King, he transformed into a universal deluge, capable of submerging entire peoples for generations and generations," intoned the Abbot. "So Louis could not have Maria for his Queen? Then, let the other Queens pay! He could not have Maria as a woman by his side? So he surrounded himself by women without number, and all at the same time."

The King, explained Atto, always had at least two mistresses at the same time, who were in turn betrayed and abandoned for others, and this was a continuous process; nor could they ever be sure of the King's feelings or of what he intended for them. "The Three Queens" was what they called that constant triad."He who has suffered an injury needs to inflict it in turn upon others, ad infinitum," Melani summed up. "As he could not belong to Maria, Louis chose to share his time among many, and so to belong to none. With cold calculation, and at the same time, icy wrath, he divided his life among his many women: his wife, the long-term mistresses, the thousand lovers of a month or of a night, causing them all immense pain. Help me to lift this carpet, please."

He kept them all on tenterhooks, continuously, and not even the court could ever be sure whether the ladies with whom Louis loved to show himself off were really the favourites of the moment or if their star was already setting and their only use had become to serve as foils to divert attention from some new, secret preference. All submitted to the Sovereign's scourge; and none dared raise her head.

"The drastic change in the King's character was evident at court from the day after his marriage," said the Abbot. "Louis bundled all Maria Teresa's Spanish retinue off to Madrid."

The Queen, Atto continued, by now in full spate of recollection, opposed not the least resistance, but in exchange requested a boon from her spouse: to be able always to remain with him. Always. Louis granted her that. He ordered the Grand Marechal des Loges never to separate them. He kept his promise until her death: at the Louvre, at Fontainebleau, at Saint-Germain and even Versailles, he always slept beside her, abandoning his mistress's bed in the middle of the night and returning to the bedchamber of his legitimate consort where he remained until daylight. All this, without exception, without a word of explanation and without any excitement; even when Maria Teresa's bedchamber was crossed by wet-nurses bearing a bundle in their arms, the latest bastard of the King's mistresses, delivered in one of the adjoining rooms. Even the concession which had seemed to the poor Queen to be a boon, Louis transformed into a perverse and cruel reprisal.

"But how is that possible? The King's mistresses occupying rooms adjoining the Queen's bedchamber?" Here comes the best bit," replied Abbot Melani with sad irony. "His Majesty's favourite hunting grounds were among the Queen's maids of honour. And correspondingly, when Louis grew weary of some concubine, he would often cover his withdrawal by granting her a position in his consort's retinue. So much so that Maria Teresa always sighed 'I am fated to be served by my husband's mistresses.'"

The Abbot glanced curiously into a huge light-grey soup tureen, decorated with pomegranates of shining green and crimson porcelain.

"For two decades, the King sired a child a year, and I speak only of those who were recognised; but of these only six were children of the Queen. Seven came from la Montespan, the rest from other mistresses," Atto explained, arching his eyebrows. "Colbert, his Minister, for as long as he lived, was the King's dumb slave. He served as his intermediary, procuring wet-nurses, babes' clothing and compliant chirurgeons to assist at his mistresses' deliveries. He even found among his old servants adoptive families in which to raise the secret bastards, or in other words the children of the concubines of the moment," added the Abbot, prodding the stuffing of an armchair.

The King did not stop at imposing upon the Queen this painful cohabitation with mistresses and their brats. When he travelled, he put them all in the same carriage and even compelled them to eat elbow to elbow. Then came the worst: Louis made his new bastards legitimate and even declared them Bourbon princes. For them, he arranged royal weddings, going so far as to inaugurate the unheard of mixing of bastards with the legitimate Bourbons. He even wedded one of his bastard daughters to a "nephew of France", forcing the son of his brother Philippe to marry the last daughter he had fathered on Madame de Montespan. The court grumbled; the young man's parents were desperate, there were scenes, tears and very public scandals. The King exulted.

"Where will it all end, at this rate?" hissed Atto vehemently.

"If I have understood you, there is reason to fear for the future of the throne."

He stopped to catch his breath after detaching from the wall a large picture, the frame of which had seemed to him (erroneously) too massive not to hide a hidden chamber in its backing."I am afraid that one day the King may place his bastards in the line of succession to the throne. And that will be the end. It will mean that no longer will the Queen's son become King but anyone, just anyone, can do so. At that point, any plebeian will ask: Why not me?"

"Let us be seated a moment," suggested Atto, slumping onto a day-bed. "Let us rest awhile, then we shall resume our search."

I sat down too, in a great armchair, and at once gave a great yawn.

"Of course, the Most Christian King," I observed, picking up where Atto had left off, "consoled himself soon enough with all those mistresses after Maria's departure."

It was a provocation, in the hope that he might betray something of the current contacts between the Sovereign and the Connestabilessa. Atto took the bait.

"But what are you saying? Do you not listen when I am speaking? His first mistress, Louise de la Valliere, he used only to take his revenge on the Queen Mother, who had separated him from Maria by making him believe that he would soon forget her. But this affair with Louise was a triumph that came too late, a pointless reprisal against his old mother, the fruit of posthumous courage, a vindictive libation offered upon the sepulchre of his own heart," he declaimed with heartfelt pomposity.

What vain satisfaction, continued the Abbot, could the King gain from forcing the Queen his consort and the Queen Mother to dine at the same table as his mistress? Or by such behaviour as bringing her surreptitiously into his mother's apartments, or making her sit with him at the gaming table, together with his brother and sister-in-law, then making that known to the old Queen, like an insolent child? Yet Louis XIV was concerned to defend his own reputation, when he forced Louise to give birth with a mask over her face, assisted by chirurgeons who had been brought to her blindfold. Poor Louise was a docile instrument, unambitious and naturally modest, in the hands of a King with only pride where his heart should have been. Louis meant to impose her on his mother for as long as she lived, in a confrontation in which the real object of his vengeance — as with the hatred with which he persecuted Fouquet — was the looming shade of Mazarin.

When there was no longer anything to fight about, he dismissed her, already bored, despite the three children she had borne him.

"Louise was not made for the sophisticated social round, games and gossip, intrigues and all the coquetry and capriciousness of life at court," sighed Atto, yawning and stretching on his day-bed. "She was far from stupid, she loved reading, but she had no repertoire of jokes, no witty repartee, she coined no epigrams. In other words, she was not Maria," he concluded with an insolent little smile.

We rose and continued our hunt for Capitor's dish. We began by searching the room where there was a billiard table. On the walls it was adorned with various framed prints: some represented antique bas-reliefs, others were after the manner of Annibale Carracci, and included various portraits of famous men. We took them off the wall to see whether there might be a secret compartment behind them, but were disappointed. The felt of the billiard table, all covered in dust, had turned from bright green to the colour of dew. One solitary white ball lay in the middle of the table, abandoned and imprisoned, almost a metaphor for the heart of Louise de la Valliere, a hostage in the wilderness of Louis's indifference. Atto gave it a sharp tap, causing it to bounce on the opposite cushion, then continued his account.

Thus, the King very soon went to see Mademoiselle de la Valliere only to delight in the coquetry and provocations of another lady, Madame de Montespan, known as Athenais. One day, having to depart for the wars in Flanders, he left Louise alone at Versailles, four months with child, and took Madame de Montespan with him, in the Queen's retinue.

"Ladies of the court at war? And even the Queen?"

"But with all that you have read on your own account, did you not even know that?" he asked, as we left the billiard room and turned to the great dining hall.

Thence, we entered a room that led to the back of the garden, facing east. We went out. Here began a drive which led, as we were soon to discover, to a gracious little grotto."I tell you once more, I have been reading books, not false, lying newspapers," I replied, irked and trying to cover a certain embarrassment.

"Very well, like the Turks, the King enjoyed dragging with him to the wars all the conveniences he enjoyed at court: the finest furniture of the crown, the porcelain, the golden cutlery and all that was needed to organise ballets and firework displays in every town he came to; and, of course, women.

What a strange experience for villagers and country folk, I thought, to witness at close quarters that mad mixture of war and the festivities of the royal court, with plumed cavaliers escorting gilded carriages, unreal jewel cases concealing the most beautiful women in the realm!

"If only from the mud that spattered the decor, and from the King's face, thin and sunburnt," continued Atto, "and lastly from the tiredness of his women, exhausted by the voyage and the inhuman hours they were forced to keep, it was plain enough that this was no promenade in the park of Versailles. I remember one journey in particular. Passing Auxerre, where the women are rather good-looking, the inhabitants had all come out to see the royal family and the ladies in the carriage with the Queen. The ladies themselves put their heads out of the carriage windows to look. It was then that the good people of Auxerre burst out laughing: 'Ah, quelles sont laides' — 'How ugly they are!' The King laughed long and loud and spoke of nothing else that day," laughed the Abbot.

The Most Christian King brought the whole court with him during the War of Devolution, which Louis started after the death of Philip IV his father-in-law, to claim a part of Spanish Flanders as Maria Teresa's inheritance.

"He brought just about everyone, except Louise, you said. And what about the Queen?"

"Maria Teresa was the first to be compelled to go, seeing that, at least nominally, the war was being fought on her behalf. And whenever a city fell into French hands, she had to go and take possession of it officially."But Louise, a simple, passionate heart, decided to risk her pregnancy and brave the King's wrath by joining the court in Flanders. She arrived exhausted. The King, in no way impressed — on the contrary, much amused — listened to the description of the scene when the poor pregnant maiden slumped half dead, together with the ladies accompanying her, on the benches of Maria Teresa's antechamber, while the latter vomited out of fury and vexation.

Meanwhile, we had reached the little grotto. Surely, Capitor's dish could not be there, but we both felt the need to breathe clean air after all the dust with which we had filled our lungs.

In the purity of the breezes which my breast inhaled in the garden, I seemed to find the description of la Valliere: Louise the ingenue, the enthusiast; a timid zephyr soon swept aside.

"Was the King furious that his mistress had disobeyed him?" I asked as we left the grotto and continued along a little path.

"Apparently not; on the contrary, invited by the Queen to mount her carriage, he refused and went off to ride with Louise. And what was more, on the next day, going to mass, poor Maria Teresa found Louise entering her carriage, although everyone had to huddle together in order to make room for her, after which she had to put up with her presence at dinner that evening. On the next morrow, caring not a whit for his consort or for his mistress, he spent almost all day locked in his chamber. La Montespan did likewise. And it so happened that the two bedchambers were communicating."

The Queen did not yet know that, with the arrival of Athenai's, she would have to resign herself to the most painful proximity: journeys in a carriage with her consort's two favourites became the rule, and in all things an official cohabitation was imposed upon all three. The mistresses were no better off than the Queen. Louis, continued the Abbot, kept them strictly sequestered under lock and key, and even if the one enjoyed ascendancy over the other, he took good care to keep them in a permanent state of anxiety, with herds of nameless concubines coming and going through their apartments. Every day, the official favourites suffocated in uncertainty, and the wretched spectacle of spite and squabbling somewhat calmed Maria Teresa's jealousy.

The path had brought us to an amphitheatre, far smaller than that which had been prepared at that time at Villa Spada for the spectacles accompanying the wedding, but graceful and delightfully mysterious. It was surrounded by a little portico decorated with antique bas-reliefs and with many vases of flowers; in the middle there was a little fountain, so that the portico, between one arch and the next, echoed its gentle splashing and gurgling.

"Around his heart, the King had built a tower of ice," continued Atto, deeply absorbed in his narration and almost completely unmoved by so much beauty. "Only great suffering could shake him a little, as on the death of children, and many of them did die. Of the six legitimate children, only one, the Grand Dauphin, is still living. When, about thirty years ago, his youngest son, the little Due d'Anjou, died, I saw him utterly broken: I feared that this might be a sign of God's wrath, but it did not last long. Even when Louise de la Valliere decided to enter a convent, the King was incapable of reacting with any sentiment other than anger.

"A convent?" I asked, as I slaked my thirst, gulping down great mouthfuls of good fresh water from the fountain.

"Yes, poor woman, hers was a sincere heart, and she had really asked nothing more than to love the King and be loved by him in return. She was the only favourite who loved Louis for himself alone, which greatly flattered him, but no more than that. She, however, had taken that feeling very seriously indeed; when she decided to take the veil as a Carmelite, she publicly begged the Queen's pardon. "My sins were public and so must be my penitence." She knelt at Maria Teresa's feet; deeply moved, the Queen raised her and kissed her. A multitude of persons were present. It was a moment of intense emotion. Only the King was absent."We returned to the house, and in a very short time we completed our search of the ground floor. The Abbot looked disconsolately at our reflections in a great mirror. With our apparel whitened with dust and all the cobwebs in our hair, we looked like a pair of rag-and-bone men.

"What are we to do now, Signor Atto, shall we go up to the first floor?"

"Yes, and not only to look for the dish."

Once on the first floor, Atto guided me to the bath chamber near the little chapel.

"Hie corpus," exclaimed Atto, repeating the motto over the entrance, which we had already read three days earlier. "We shall take advantage of the wonders of hydraulics, if they still work."

So he opened the tap marked calida, hot water, but nothing came out. He tried the tap marked frigida and was more fortunate.

"Open up those chests: perhaps there are still some towels."

Atto had guessed correctly. Although old and dried up, the cloths had remained free of dust. I even found some hard lumps of soap. Thus we were able, first he and then I, to wash and cleanse ourselves to our heart's content.

Yet again, we set out in search of Capitor's treasures, but above all the dish.

On the first floor, composed of four little rooms and the great gallery which lines of mirrors seemed to prolong all the way to the Vatican palaces, there was indeed much to inspect. We opened the drawers of massive ebony chests inlaid with ivory and brass, or oak roots with inlays of briar, full of old porcelain cups; we turned back shutters painted in bright colours and with great difficulty shifted huge dark cupboards, carved with spirals and leaves, with stags' heads on either side, or columns carved in the form of satyrs; we moved grim chests and dusty crystal mirrors. We removed the imposing mirror above the mantelpiece, first taking from it a multitude of statuettes in the finest porcelain, such as a blonde and delicate shepherdess with a pannier on her shoulders and, among the more bizarre ones, a young chimney-sweep complete with beret and ladder, and even a Chinese mandarin with the index finger of his right hand (visibly broken and glued back on) raised in warning. In the chests beneath the windows, we rummaged among blackened silver teapots, cords and braiding for curtains, even a pack of playing cards from Paris. Abbot Melani even stuck his head into the stoves, emerging stained with soot.

Coughing at all the dust, we unrolled carpets and French drawings and lifted enormous tapestries with scenes mythological and pastoral, always hoping to discover some secret hiding place or a concealed entrance to some intimate little room (after all, it is not easy to hide a globe!), in our dogged search for Capitor's presents.

After Louise de la Valliere, continued Melani with his lips curled in a supercilious little smile, there began the reign of Madame de Montespan. Exceptionally beautiful, witty and always at the height of fashion, with a seething sensuality and a heart of ice, la Montespan meant to conquer the King at all costs, and this was quite obvious. He knew at once, but resisted her. He went further and teased her: "Madame de Montespan desires me to desire that which I do not."

Then, however, the King's senses, and his intellect, the orphans of his heart, gave in. The ascent of Madame de Montespan coincided with the death of every feeling or appearance of such a thing. Not only was Louis no longer capable of loving; from Madame de Montespan onwards, he was unloved.

"Only much later did the Most Christian King come to understand that no woman had really loved him," said Atto enigmatically.

With Athenai's there began the ten years of the apogee of Louis XIY the era of splendour and arrogance, which was to end with the Affair of the Poisons, when the King realised that he was the prey of his mistresses, not they his. Years in which he gave the worst of himself, bedding hosts of other damsels with high hopes, ever ready and ever different. Not all of them deserved censure; some acted under the illusion that they could save a young husband or fiance from being sent to the wars or in an attempt to recover for their father the family fortune unjustly confiscated by the treacherous Colbert. Louis never failed to take special pleasure in crushing the latter in his bare hands."My boy," the Abbot addressed me, perceiving the horror painted on my face, "the Most Christian King had suffered one day in a far distant past as he could never have imagined it possible to suffer; he who had already known the terror of the Fronde."

Now, like a cruel boy who inflicts unspeakable suffering on a little bird, the King watched the shipwreck of those wretched women's illusions to see whether they were suffering as he had suffered, and whether indeed it was possible to suffer so much. He wanted to tear from those hearts the secret of their pain, the only thing that once defeated the magnificent Sun King.

"But all that happened in the secrecy of the King's bedchamber," warned Atto, as we proceeded along the gallery, with the great vault echoing our footsteps.

At court, however, Athenais reigned undisturbed: the "reigning Mistress", they called her, paraphrasing the title of "reigning Queen" which distinguishes the King's consort from the Queen Mother. They were not so mistaken. With Madame de Montespan, Louis had presented the court with a surrogate Queen: here at last was one who possessed the exceptional beauty and wit needed to enhance the splendour of the French court.

"She radiated luxury and magnificence, just like the Aurora of Pietro da Cortona," said the Abbot, pointing to the splendid fresco on the ceiling of the gallery.

Atto's attention was suddenly drawn to the fresco of Midday which, between Aurora and Night, occupied the middle of the gallery. It depicted the fall of Phaeton, struck down by Zeus's thunderbolt for having dared drive the Sun's chariot.

"The first time I came here, I passed over this: to celebrate the culmination of the day, Benedetti chose an event of pride punished. On the walls below, he placed sayings praising the King of France. How very singular."

"Yes," I acknowledged in surprise, "it seems almost a warning to the Sun King."

'"Thy destiny is to be mortal, Phaeton, but what thou de- sirest is not for mortals,'" Atto quoted from Ovid's Metamorphoses in confirmation of my remark. The Abbot then continued his tale. Without being one, Athenais played the part of a Queen: she received, she entertained, she fascinated all the ambassadors. The King showed her off with extreme pleasure and gloried in her: all in all, she was a service to the monarchy.

"She knew perfectly well that the King did not really love her," said Atto with a certain bitterness, "but he had great need of her 'to show himself loved by the most beautiful woman in the kingdom', as she herself liked to say. An ornament like so many others, when all's said and done."

"In common with Maria, Athenais had the courage to stand up to the King," added Atto. "She was not afraid to speak her mind, and she had good taste, like a true Queen."

During the decade of her 'reign', the Palace of Versailles became what it is today. The papier mache of ephemeral architecture which, in Louise's day, lasted for the duration of some fete, was transformed into rocks, travertine, bronzes and marbles, arranged according to the secret order of surprise and the unexpected, bringing to life new groves, fountains and flower beds. The Grand Canal was populated by a tiny fleet of gondolas and feluccas, brigantines and galleys. The park, stifling under the mantle of the summer heat, was dotted with the white and azure of Chinese pavilions.

But above all, Athenais dedicated herself to her personal residence, not far from Versailles, repeating the splendour of the palace in miniature: the great Le Notre (the sublime genius of architecture, he who had laid out the palace gardens and, before them, those of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fouquet's ill-starred chateau) was called upon to surpass himself, with gardens of tuberoses, narcissi, jasmine, violets, anemones, and basins of tepid water perfumed with aromatic herbs…

"And that which you simply cannot imagine if you have not seen it. Alas."

"Why do you say that?" I asked, hearing that melancholy moan."Because all that grandeur came to no better end than Fouquet's chateau. It all fell in ruins with the disgrace of its patroness, just as Vaux was wrecked when its lord was arrested. And this too confirms what I am telling you."

"Why? What happened?"

"The Affair of the Poisons broke out, my boy, the greatest trial of the century, as I have already mentioned to you. Almost everyone had a part in it; and, after Olimpia Mancini, Athenais was the most deeply involved. Witnesses emerged who had seen her participate in black masses, in which children were sacrificed, all to keep the King's love. All this was hushed up, but for her it was the end. And the hunter understood at last that all along he had been the quarry."

Learning of what iniquities his mistresses were capable, hearing of satanic rites and of witchcraft performed to gain orgasms in his bed, Louis understood that in all his amours there was very little love. From that revelation he never recovered. He had imagined that he had reversed the roles since the time of Maria Mancini, when he himself had been sacrificed on the altar of power. Instead, his destiny had been repeated: once again he had been a pawn on the chessboard of those who swore fidelity to him. And this time, he was alone; he had not even the consolation of sharing his sad fate with the woman of his life. It was thus that the doors of old age opened up for him.

We had completed our exploration of the first floor and we were now climbing the grand staircase. We continued right to the top, coming to the third floor, where the servants' quarters had once been. By comparison with the rest of the villa, this was another world: there was no furniture, no mouldings on the walls and ceilings, no embellishments. There were a number of mezzanines for the servants, others for the saddlery, and various service rooms. Spiders, flies and mice were the undisputed lords of those sad, empty rooms. It seemed just the squalid image of the Most Christian King's old age.

We began patiently to beat on the walls with our knuckles in search of secret rooms and to check whether some floorboard concealed a trap door, or if a windowsill contained a strongbox. We then moved on to a chest of drawers. It would not open; unlike all the furniture we had hitherto inspected, it was locked.

"Ah, here, perhaps, we have it!" exclaimed the Abbot, recovering his good humour. "Go down to the first floor and find me a knife in the cutlery drawers. I seem to have seen some in that great cupboard held up by old Generalissimo Goatleg," he sniggered, alluding to the imposing and severe wooden satyr carved on it.

I went down to the first floor but found nothing. I then went down to the ground floor and there I found a knife. Before returning, my attention tarried a moment on one of the portraits of women hanging on the walls which had hitherto escaped my attention.

It was a lady no longer young, a little too plump, with features that were not repugnant, yet so wan and ordinary that they contrasted no little with the pomp of the portrait, from which one gathered without the shadow of a doubt that this must be a person of great consequence. I read below, on the frame:

Madame de Maintenon

It was the fourth time that I had come across that name. Was she not the lady whom the Most Christian King had secretly married, as Atto Melani had told me? She was. I looked once more at the portrait: the face was absolutely anonymous, contrasting oddly with the vivacity and aristocratic grace of the other royal favourites depicted beside her. I returned to the third floor.

"Madame de Maintenon," I murmured. "How could the King of France have married her? I mean, after all those fascinating women…"

"You saw her portrait down below? Incredible, eh?" commented Atto as he grasped the knife I held out to him. "The King married her one October night seventeen years ago, just two months after the death of Queen Maria Teresa."Secretly," I repeated. "You told me that a few days ago, the first time we visited the Vessel. However, I fear that I did not fully grasp your meaning. Is she some kind of a wife but not the Queen? I seem already to have heard of this kind of royal marriage in which the king's wife does not reign beside him and her children have no right of succession to the throne…"

"No, that is a morganatic marriage: you are not on the right track. Madame de Maintenon is, more modestly, an 'undeclared' wife, in other words, an unofficial one. Everyone at court knows of the marriage, and the King is happy with that. He simply wants it never to be mentioned. Tamquam non esset, as though it did not exist."

"But who was she before?" I persisted, recalling that the Abbot had described her as "socially unpresentable".

"A governess who, as I said, had as a child begged for alms," he said to me, raising his eyebrows and looking at me with a little smile while, having slipped the blade into the crack, he tried to open the lock.

Francoise d'Aubigne, later invested by the King with the title Madame de Maintenon, Abbot Melani continued, had for ten years been the governess of the many children Madame de Montespan bore the Most Christian King. There was not a drop of noble blood in her veins. She was an orphan of the humblest birth, born in a porter's lodge where her mother, the wife of a Huguenot whose life was spent passing from one prison to another, had been granted lodgings out of pity. She had spent her childhood with her two brothers dressed in rags, begging for a bowl of soup at the gates of convents. Fortune so arranged matters that, at the height of the Fronde, she met an old cripple, Scarron, an unseemly satirical poet who was fashionable in those days of barricades. Scarron, confined to a wheelchair, was not capable of looking after himself and was a dreadful sight to see. Unceremoniously, he asked the sixteen-year-old to be his nurse, in exchange for which he would marry her. She accepted without thinking twice.

After the fires of the Fronde, however, Scarron fell on hard times. He was reduced to writing eulogies on commission for various personages. His young and fresh little wife served as a lark's mirror. She attracted potential patrons, allowing them to entertain hopes, but without (it seems) giving in to their entreaties. In exchange, he fed and instructed her. When he died, she was barely twenty-five years old. She inherited only a mountain of debts. After selling her few pieces of furniture, the young widow was left on the street. But she had gained something. Now she had to her credit the art of coquetry, and the education necessary to tell tales to some rich protector who might save her from indigence.

Proof of this was her friendship with Ninon de 1'Enclos, an influential bawd to high society," sneered the Abbot, "from whom she inherited a pair of fiery lovers, thanks to whom she came to the attention of Athenais de Montespan."

The latter had just borne the King her first child, a daughter. Having to bring her up in great secrecy, she offered Frangoise a post as governess. Subsequently, more children followed and, after a few years, a stroke of luck: the bastards were made legitimate. By the will of the King, Madame de Montespan moved to court with all her baggage and all her children; needless to say, governess included.

"She then proved sly enough to pass herself off as a very pious lady, even a zealot," commented Atto bitterly. "A fine piece of effrontery when one considers that a few years earlier Madame de Montespan had unleashed her on Louise de la Valliere to dissuade her from becoming a Carmelite, trying to scare her with the life of privations into which she would be entering."

"But she could surely not hope to please the King in a saint's guise!"

"She was far-sighted. For years, the clergy and zealots at court had been grumbling about la Montespan and the King's excesses. She became their mouthpiece, working in the shadows. For years, she had been living side by side with AthenaTs: the classic serpent in one's bosom. When the Affair of the Poisons culminated, her time came. Madame de Montespan was by now ruined and the King had undergone a sudden awakening."

"Do you mean that the King converted to a more sober life?" Not exactly," Atto hesitated. "In fact, the King's conduct was never so libertine as at the time when the Affair of the Poisons concluded, almost as though he hoped thus to exorcise his fears. He would move from one strange woman to the next, a different one every night, all of them, it was rumoured, very young. It was then that he suffered another grievous blow, too soon after the previous one. His most recent favourite, the beautiful Angelique de Fontanges, gave birth to a stillborn child and herself died very soon after that, suffocated by a flood of blood from a horrible pain in the chest. She was only twenty: she could have been his daughter."

The King's health reeled under all these blows. What was more, in those years, he was suffering from continual boils in the loins after a fall from horseback, which were removed with red- hot irons, so that he was constrained to promenade along the avenues of Versailles on an armchair with wooden wheels. He felt surrounded by hostile forces: first betrayal and now death, along with his own illness, cried out to him that he was dramatically alone.

"In the midst of all those poisoners and shrews, whom was he to trust? He desperately needed someone. But he had had enough of beautiful favourites. In middle age, they had proved too dangerous a game."

Meanwhile, we had opened the chest of drawers, only to find that it contained nothing whatever. We threw open all the windows to let in some clean air and the sweet sounds of the Roman afternoon. We sat briefly on a windowsill facing west. The soft and gentle foliage of the tallest trees was spread out below us. I again turned my eyes to the servants' quarters: after Abbot Melani's narration, they no longer seemed so squalid to me. Like the face of Madame de Maintenon, they were extremely plain, which was precisely why they showed more signs of wear and tear. But the absence of pomp and splendour gave the visitor's soul a rest from sentiments of emotion and wonderment, inspiring instead peace and familiarity. Francoise de Maintenon, continued Atto, had in the meantime become a true mother to the royal bastards and that gave the King an unparalleled feeling of security. She was the only one, in those restricted court circles, of such ordinary origins that she could not aspire even to the role of official favourite, as the latter must always be chosen from among the families of the best nobility. Her conversation, too, was pleasant, without being brilliant. The King, in other words, felt himself in no way either attracted or threatened, which pleased him greatly. Thus, he took to enjoying ever more frequently a few hours chatting with her, talking of the children and about other subjects, none of which were ever too demanding. He could relax with this governess, who did not physically excite him in the least, while neither did she displease him.

"Frangoise, in other words," Abbot Melani summed up, "gave him peace without taking up any room in his soul. His senses were tired; his spirit, mistrustful. What was more, when he became a widower, he was horrified by the idea of being pressed on all sides to remarry and give France a new Queen. He had already been subjected to one forced marriage. So he decided that the time had come to take his revenge: as I told you, he imposed that tramp of an ex-prostitute on the same kingdom that had imposed Maria Teresa on him and taken Maria from him. And he took no little pleasure in the scandal to which his choice gave rise at court; his minister, Louvois, even threw himself at his feet, begging him not to marry her."

We came down from the windowsill on which we had been sitting and continued our search.

"But this time too, a nasty surprise awaited the Most Christian King. His spouse was far less placid than he had thought…"

"What do you mean?"

"A few years ago, the King discovered that Madame de Maintenon had for years been passing information, obtained in confidence from himself, to her own private circle of priests, bishops and miscellaneous devots, of whom a number were even suspected of heresy. The purpose of all this: the King's 'conversion'; or, to put it more clearly, the infiltration of the clergy into government."

I was left open-mouthed. Of course, I reflected, one could hardly say that the King of France had been fortunate with women: first Madame de Montespan with her black masses, and now this Madame de Maintenon, whom he was even so good as to marry, was betraying state secrets to churchmen in order to bring them to govern the land. Once more, the place we were in seemed squalid and hostile and I wanted to return to the magnificent rooms below. Likewise, perhaps, the King of France may have missed la Montespan's beautiful face when he found that his colourless wife was in reality no less poisonous than she had been.

"Just think of it," continued Atto, "the King had already had quite enough of Cardinal Mazarin. The blood went to his head. How dare this nondescript little woman whom he had amused himself imposing upon the court as his wife, conspire behind his back and reveal to that handful of zealots the most secret affairs of state; she whom the King had never even permitted to eat at his table! She who to this day occupies a mistress's apartments in the Palace of Versailles. She who, if she may be addressed as 'Your Majesty' in private, must in public be content with taking last place."

"And why did he not dismiss her, as he did with Madame de Montespan?"

"He would have had to have her put on trial. The accusation in the air was one of political conspiracy. But that would have meant exposing to ridicule he who had insisted on flouting all good sense by marrying her."

What did the King then do before the court, which awaited his reaction with bated breath? He surprised everyone by pretending that nothing had happened; instead of exiling the traitress, he moved his daily meetings with ministers… to her bedchamber!

King and ministers, seated, faced each other. Behind the latter sat Madame de Maintenon, crouching in the shadows of her "niche", the padded wooden cabin she had had built for her, hypochondriac that she had always been, to shelter from draughts. Every now and then, the King would even ask her opinion. But this was only for show. The proof of that is that she had perforce to answer in the most general terms. And there would be trouble if she spoke without having been asked explicitly for her opinion by the Sovereign. She would at once be confronted with her spouse's most extreme fury."His Majesty is not prepared to admit before the court that he allowed himself to be hoodwinked by that counterfeit saint, so he has chosen to impose her even more than before," the Abbot concluded.

Behind an old stove, we found an improvised palliasse, with next to it a box of fresh figs, some of which were still intact, a canvas bag with a few slices of bread and another bigger one full of cheeses. Next to that, stood a half-empty bottle of red wine, with a fine goblet of historiated blue glass. A fat, half-consumed candle completed the refuge.

"So our Flying Dutchman sleeps here," observed Atto scornfully. "That is why he's always in our way. Look at how much cheese he eats. Too much, like all Dutchmen. Can one be surprised that he rants so much after that?"

Hunger, however, took the upper hand. The Abbot indolently reached out for a fine piece of caciocavallo, placed it on a slice of bread and added half a fig (for nothing is more pleasant than sweet fruit, offsetting the saltiness of the cheese) and greedily bit into it. I too felt the pangs of hunger, so I took the same ingredients and imitated him, sharing with him both wine and glass. But while I had soon devoured that meagre dinner, 1 saw Atto chewing more and more unwillingly until, in the end, he threw away the cheese and contented himself with the bread and fig.

"I cannot bear cheese any more. In France, too, they serve it up with everything. I have come to detest it."

While I was finishing my picnic, Melani rummaged under the palliasse, drawing out a comb and ajar of salted sardines.

"Stuff bought from street vendors," observed Atto without disguising a certain disdain for Albicastro's frugal habits.

At long last we moved on. At the northern end of this floor, we found a great walnut table, with an enormous drawer set in it which, like the previous one, looked somewhat suspicious to us.

"'Tis truly massive," observed Atto. "There might be something inside it."

The Abbot tried with the knife.

"It is not locked, only jammed," said he. We then tried to get it out with our bare hands, which cost us much time and trouble.

"What with poisons, conspiracies and betrayals," I commented, "the gallery of the Most Christian King's wives and mistresses really does him scant honour."

"Despite that, even to this day, I have to put up with hearing the court speak with disdain and scorn of my Maria," Atto replied hotly, as he puffed and panted, trying to extract the drawer from the table by brute force. "They say that the shipwreck of her life has unmasked her for the cold, ambitious, scheming and calculating woman they suspected her of being all along. The most indulgent among them maintain that she has proved less intelligent than her brilliant conversation let one suppose. 'She had wit,' they laugh, 'but no discernment. Ardent and impulsive, her angry outbursts drew one to her for a while, but ended up provoking disgust.' All this 1 have had to hear from those ferocious slandering tongues. Their spite for Maria has never died down. Not even now, after fifty years and many more than fifty lovers in the King's bed."

"How do you explain that?"

"Because Maria was a foreigner, and what was more, Italian, like Mazarin. And the French had had enough of the Italians imported en masse by the Cardinal. Add to that the fact that his niece made the Sovereign fall for her!"

"But as you were saying, the King has had so many lovers since then! Is it possible that the court should still remember the Connestabilessa to this day?" I insisted, in the hope of gleaning some hint of the current secret contacts between the King and Maria Mancini.

"And how could one forget her? To take just one example: only once did Queen Maria Teresa and Madame de Montespan join in alliance. This was about thirty years ago, and the alliance was against Maria Mancini. Maria, fleeing her husband, asked for sanctuary in Paris. The King, however, was not at court. He had gone off to war with Holland and, according to custom, had entrusted the regency to Maria Teresa. Maria's request thus fell into the hands of the Queen, who turned it down. But it wasAthenai's who convinced her to do so. She had understood everything: Maria had not only been the King's first love, but his last; some flame might still have remained alight."

Meanwhile, we had completed our (somewhat violent) examination of the walnut table. In our attempt to force its more intimate parts, we had grazed our hands and wrists. Inside, as we found in the end, nothing was hidden.

"By the time that news of Maria's request reached the King's ears," continued my companion, bandaging his scratches with a handkerchief, "it was already too late to revoke Maria Teresa's veto.

"But Louis did not decide to return Maria to her husband, although the latter was claiming her. He instructed Colbert to place her in a convent far from Paris and assigned her a pension. Maria, who knew nothing of the manoeuvres of Maria Teresa and Athenai's, exclaimed: 'I have heard of money being given to women to see them, but never not to see them!'"

"But you said all this happened thirty years ago," said I, egging him on.

"Then listen," countered Atto, irritated by my caution in the face of his passionate assertions, "I know for certain that Madame de Maintenon has for some time been trying to persuade the King officially to invite Maria to Paris. Now, why do you think she should do that, she who is so jealous?"

"I would not know," I replied, with feigned hesitation.

"She is doing this because he is more and more frequently muttering half-phrases, or half-sighs, calling for Maria, now that at sixty-two years of age he is wearied and disillusioned and drawing up the balance sheet of his life. Maria is the same age as he. If the King should see her now, or so la Maintenon hopes, perhaps his angelic memory of her will be shattered. Only, she has not taken account of Maria's timeless fascination," Atto exclaimed pompously, despite the fact that he could know little of Maria's physical appearance, since he too had not seen her for thirty years.

"Presumably Madame de Maintenon has never seen her?" On the contrary, they knew one another and were friends. Maria even brought her with her to watch from a balcony the triumphal entry of the King and Maria Teresa into Paris, immediately after their wedding. But one must live shoulder to shoulder with Maria in order to understand that not a thousand years in time or a thousand leagues in space could ever make her memory pale," said the Abbot, all in one breath.

"Such an irony of fate: the first woman and the last in His Majesty's life, both together on the same balcony," I commented. "But Signor Atto, I must insist. Is it possible that the King's feelings should have remained unchanged for thirty years? After all, he never saw her again." This I added in the hope that he might at last give something away.

He hesitated for a moment, looking pensive.

"Nor have I seen her for thirty years," he answered quietly.

"Now at last she is coming," I encouraged him.

"Yes, so it seems."

The minutes that followed passed in total silence. Atto was musing.

"I shall go outside again to catch a breath of air," said the Abbot all of a sudden. "I cannot take all this dust any longer. You, do whatever you feel like; we shall meet here in twenty minutes."

I looked at him questioningly.

"Of course, you have no watch," he remembered. "Come, let us go downstairs."

We stopped on the second floor where Melani began to open the drawers of a tallboy.

"I saw a carriage clock somewhere around here. Ah, there we are."

He placed it on the edge of a nearby desk and began to wind it up. Then he set the time and handed it to me.

"There, this way you can make no mistake. I shall see you later."

Atto was exhausted. We had spent hours rummaging. But the true reason for his going out was the rush of memories which had swelled his chest. He now needed a little solitude in which to calm his emotions. Thus it was that I soon found myself in complete silence, holding the clock in my hand like a lantern.

I sat down on an old cordovan leather stool and set to thinking once again about Abbot Melani's long narration. Three were the Sun King's women of whom he had spoken to me, and three the storeys of the Vessel which we had inspected. This might have seemed too bold a leap of fantasy, but as I had already sensed, the three floors of the Vessel were just like the three women: the gardens on the ground floor, the secret garden and the little grotto, airy and graceful as la Valliere; on the first floor, the decep- tiveness and sophistication of the splendid gallery of mirrors and the magnificent, breathtaking Aurora of Pietro da Cortona were like la Montespan, "the most beautiful woman in the kingdom", the "reigning mistress", while, next to the Aurora, the fresco of Midday with the fall of Phaeton from the Sun's chariot seemed to be a warning against the arrogance of Louis XIV who, at the time of Madame de Montespan was at the very height of his reign. Finally, the third floor was as bare and ordinary as the face of Madame de Maintenon, as sad as the King's life beside her, as empty as the Sovereign's old age.

By now, I knew everything, or almost, about the Most Christian King's intimate life, with the exception of what mattered most to me: his current relations with the Connestabilessa and the purpose of the love mission which the King (as I had by now guessed) had confided to Atto. It was just then that I discovered I was not alone.

Does the day the night surpass?

And can a human make an ass?

Did Socrates or Plato run?

Such learning's in our schools begun.

He is a fool who doesn't falter

At trying what he cannot alter.

I turned sharply: the voice which had recited those verses was Albicastro's and he stood on the threshold with his violin hanging from one hand.

"Are you calling me mad too, now?" I asked him, surprised by that speech. "Have I perhaps offended you in some way?" Far from it, son, far from it. I was only joking. On the contrary, I wanted to pay you a compliment. Does not Christ thank God for having hidden from the wise the mystery of beatitude, manifesting it rather to the little children, that is, to the fools. For in Greek, nepiois means both little child and fool and is the opposite of sofois, or sage."

"Perhaps, Sir, my small stature makes me like a little boy, but you should know that you and I are about the same age," said I with a certain embarrassment. "You should also know that you have not offended me in this."

"I thank you, son," insisted Albicastro, nonchalantly installing himself on a porphyry console, "but I was referring to your spirit, which I find to be still as pure as a child's. Or a fool's, if you prefer," he added with a little laugh.

"In that case, I'd be in the best of company. Was not Saint Francis called 'God's buffoon'?" I replied, by now completely distracted from my previous meditations.

"Even better, as the apostle said: 'Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?' and 'God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.'"

"What should one then do, become mad?"

"No, not become it, just simulate it."

"I do not understand you."

"In the first place, everyone is agreed on the well-known proverb: 'Where reality is missing, the best thing is simulation.' That is precisely why our children are taught early on the verse: 'To simulate folly at the right time is the highest wisdom.'"

"Simulation does not seem to me to be a great virtue."

"It is, however, when used to save oneself from cunning schemers. And pretending to be mad is a sign of the greatest wisdom, as well the young Telemachus, Ulysses' son, knew. He was the author of his father's triumph, and do you know how? He simulated madness at the right moment."

I did not understand what he meant, but just then something else was on my mind.

"Signor Albicastro," I broke in, "please be so kind as to answer my question: why do you always speak of folly?" To this, the Dutch musician's sole response was to shoulder his violin and start playing his folia.

"Said Saint Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians," he recited slowly, as he produced the first slow sounds with his bow. '"Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.' And do you know why? Because, through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, the Lord warned: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will set at nought.'"

I was intrigued and fascinated by this good-humoured and bizarre disputation on the topic of folly, into which the Dutchman seemed to be taking pleasure in dragging me, while in the background he continued to play the notes of the folia. Perhaps Atto was right: he ate too much cheese.

"So, in your opinion, true wisdom is masked under the semblance of folly. And why ever is that?" I asked, standing up and approaching him.

"As Sertorius demonstrates so well, it is impossible in one go to tear out a horse's tail, but one can perfectly well attain that aim by pulling out the hairs of his tail one by one," Albicastro candidly answered, giving three light touches of his bow to the strings of his violin, as though to reproduce the sound of horsehairs pulled out one by one.

I could not restrain myself from laughing at that funny idea.

"If during a play someone were to tear off an actor's mask to reveal his true face, would he not perhaps spoil the whole show?" the violinist went on to explain, "and would he not deserve to be driven from the theatre with brickbats? To raise the veil on that deception means to ruin the spectacle. Everything on this earth is a masquerade, my boy, but God has determined that the comedy be played in this manner."

"But why?" I insisted, while in my soul there awakened a sudden and impatient thirst for knowledge."Just imagine: if some sage, fallen from heaven, were suddenly to start clamouring that, for example, one of the many whom the world adores as lord and master is in truth no such thing and that he's not even a man, because he's nothing more than a piece of living flesh in thrall to the basest passions, like a beast; or worse still, he is nothing but one of the vilest slaves, because he spontaneously serves other infamous lords and masters above him, whom we down here cannot even imagine; tell me, what else would he obtain thereby, save to become odious to all peoples and, what is more, ignored and unheard? There is nothing more damaging, for oneself or for others, than untimely wisdom."

Having said which, Albicastro descended from the porphyry console and, whirling to the notes of his folia, moved towards the spiral staircase.

And well we can with Terence state: Who spawns the truth gives birth to hate.

After declaiming those verses which I guessed must come from his favourite poem which he was forever reciting, Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, he turned once more to me:

"The world is one enormous banquet, my boy, and the law of banquets is: 'Drink or begone!'"

I heard Albicastro go down the stairs. I stayed still for a while, with his words still humming in my head.

"We must yield to evidence."

I raised my head. Atto Melani had returned.

"The gifts are not here," he chanted.

"Perhaps we have not searched thoroughly enough, we should try to.."

"No, no use. It is not a matter of searching. It is the very idea that's mistaken."

"What do you mean?"

"You told me that Virgilio Spada, the uncle of the Cardinal your master, was the first owner of the parrot."

"Yes, and what of it?"

"The good Virgilio, as you too know very well, had a collection of curiosities."

"That is true, yes, at Villa Spada, everyone knows of it. Virgilio Spada was very religious, but also a man of learning, a sage, and he had this collection of mirabilia, of curious and rare objects, which was rather famous, and…"

"Quite. I think that it must by now be clear to you too: when Benedetti decided to rid himself of the three presents and to give them to someone, Virgilio Spada was the ideal candidate."

"But why should Benedetti have wanted to give away the presents? Was he not instructed by Mazarin to keep them here at the Vessel?"

"To keep them, yes, but… there is a detail I've not mentioned."

It was thus that Atto disclosed to me what he had passed over in silence four days before, when we came to the Vessel for the first time and he spoke to me of Elpidio Benedetti, the builder and master of the Vessel, and his relations with Atto himself.

"Well, my boy, every person of influence must every day confront the most varied and unforeseeable intrigues," said he, as a prelude, "and so, he needs faithful and trusted men who accompany him through the myriad uncertainties of daily business."

"Yes, Signor Atto, and so?" I replied, without concealing overmuch my irritation at that verbose introduction, which served no other purpose than to distract attention from Atto's past reticence.

"Well, Cardinal Mazarin had, in addition to his official secretaries and officials, a host of… staunch and trusty factotums shall we say, among whose number I myself had the honour to serve."

These factotums, as Atto explained with a series of elegant circumlocutions, were in fact nothing but spies, straw men and schemers whom the Cardinal used for handling the most delicate and secret personal matters. Money was one of these; indeed, it was the main one.

"If I told you that the Cardinal was rich, I'd be lying to you. He was… how shall I put it?" said Atto, turning his eyes heavenward. "He was wealth incarnate."Years and years spent in power over the kingdom of France had enabled him to amass a mad, vertiginous, outrageous fortune. Moreover, an illegal one. The Cardinal had nibbled away here, there and everywhere: at taxes, tenders, grants, exports. He had mixed his own property freely with that of the crown and, when separating the two, much money from the royal coffers had remained stuck to his fingers.

Obviously, this enormous estate (at the death of Mazarin, they spoke of tens of millions of livres, but no one will ever know exactly how many) had to be invested with the greatest discretion.

"My poor friend Fouquet was calumnied, arrested for embezzlement, torn from his family and all he loved and incarcerated for life. Meanwhile, the Cardinal, who was really responsible, was never made to pay for his depredations, which were both heinous and innumerable," the Abbot commented bitterly, "but he must be credited with having succeeded in keeping completely out of trouble."

Mazarin concealed his clandestine, illegal assets. This secret capital was entrusted to a network of bankers and men of straw, largely abroad, so as to prevent anyone from setting traps for His Eminence. The money was not deposited only with bankers. Mazarin instructed his henchmen to invest in pictures, precious objects and property. They had only to choose. There was nothing His Eminence could not permit himself, and his host of acolytes operated throughout Europe.

"Here in Rome, for example, Mazarin acquired sixty years ago from the Lante family the grandiose Palazzo Bentivoglio on Monte Cavallo, which thus became the Palazzo Mazzarino. For the past twenty years the Rospigliosi family has rented the palazzo, and my good friend Maria Camilla Pallavicini Rospigliosi has from time to time extended me the exquisite favour of receiving me there as a house guest."

"So the Palazzo Rospigliosi is really Palazzo Mazzarino!" I exclaimed, a little shaken, thinking of the splendid building near Monte Cavallo which I had again seen when I accompanied Buvat to collect his shoes.

"Exactly. He paid seventy-live thousand scudi for it."

"Quite a sum!" That is just to give you a small inkling of what was possible for the Cardinal. And do you know who convinced him to buy that palace?"

"Elpidio Benedetti?"

"Bravo. On the Cardinal's behalf, he bought books, pictures and valuables. Among other things, I recall some fine drawings by Bernini, which he made him buy, but at rather too high a price. What are we to say, then, of the Palazzo Mancini on the Corso, where Maria passed her childhood? Benedetti had it restored and enlarged at huge expense; all charged to Mazarin, obviously.

"When His Eminence sent Monsieur de Chantelou here to buy a few fine works of art, it was Elpidio Benedetti who sent him to Algardi, Sacchi and Poussin, whom you may remember."

"Of course, the famous artists."

"Quite. Then he recruited musicians on his master's behalf, to send to Paris, like that simpering Leonora Baroni."

This time, Atto did not ask me whether I knew that name, but I recalled that many years ago he had told me of this lady, a highly talented singer who had been his bitter rival.

"Elpidio Benedetti also acted as a secret go-between on Mazarin's behalf. On the latter's death he found himself endowed with funds of which no one knew the real ownership. The Vessel is too large and fine to have been paid for out of Benedetti's pocket. It is no accident that he had it built immediately after the Cardinal's death."

"So, the Vessel is…"

"It was built with Mazarin's money. Like everything that Elpidio Benedetti possessed, including his little house in town. It is, as I have already told you, no accident that Benedetti bequeathed it to the Duke of Nevers, Mazarin's nephew and brother to Maria."

"He returned the ill-gotten gains."

"Come, let us not get carried away: is one a thief if one robs another thief?" laughed Melani. So, when the Cardinal had entrusted Benedetti with keeping Capitor's presents, he had imposed an additional condition: those three ill-starred objects were not to be kept on his properties. Forever a prey to his guilt, and to the phantasms which it evoked, he had the obscure presentiment that not only his person but also his property should be kept physically separate from those infernal devices.

All this, Elpidio Benedetti executed to the letter. He himself was not insensible of the need to ward off evil influences. Thus, when the time came to choose the place to keep the three gifts, he gave up the idea of placing them in his own town house, which in reality also belonged to Mazarin. The Vessel did not yet exist (it was to be completed six years after the death of His Eminence), so that Benedetti had no other choice but to give the presents to someone else: Virgilio Spada.

"Do you recall the inscription that we read here? 'For three good friends, I did endeavour, but then I could not find them ever.' We already suspected that the three friends might be Capitor's three gifts, but that 'then I could not find them ever' refers perhaps to the fact that only their portrait is here, while the objects themselves cannot be found."

"Because they ended up in the hands of Father Virgilio," I concluded briefly.

"Of course, this will not have involved a sale but the placing in trust of the objects," Melani made clear. "For, as I told you, the Cardinal wanted to keep the three objects available for all eventualities. That is why it is possible that the gifts may still be among Virgilio Spada's things."

"But where?"

"Villa Spada is small. If Capitor's great globe were there, you would certainly have seen it."

"True," I agreed. "But wait: I know for certain that Virgilio Spada did possess a large terrestrial globe, among other things, and that, unless I am mistaken, it was made in Flanders."

"Just like Capitor's."Exactly. It is now in Palazzo Spada. I have never seen it but I have heard tell of it. I know that visitors come from all the world over to admire the rare and precious collections in the palace; Cardinal Spada is very proud of that. If the globe is in Father Virgilio's museum of curiosities, we shall also find Capitor's dish there. But you should know all this. When we met at the Donzello, I seem to recall that you were writing a guide to Rome…"

"Alas," sighed Atto with a grimace of displeasure. "Do you remember when I broke off writing it? Since then I have not added a word. And, among all the palaces I have visited in Rome, that of the Spada is one of the few that I had still to see. Of course, I know from books and from other guides to Rome of the architectural treasures in which it is so rich, but no more than that. Now we shall have to find a way of getting in there."

"You could take advantage of the visit to the Palazzo to which Cardinal Fabrizio has invited all the guests next Thursday, the last day of the festivities."

"For the purpose of completing my guide to Rome, that would suit well; but not for finding Capitor's dish. Only three days remain until Thursday. I cannot wait that long. And then, what an idea! Can you imagine me fluttering from room to room like a butterfly, rummaging in chests and opening cabinets, with the house overflowing with guests?" said the Abbot miming with his arms the flight of a curious butterfly.

"Palazzo Spada, did you say? That would be no problem!" said a familiar, silvery voice.

The Abbot started.

"At last we have found them, Signor Buvat! I told you that they would both surely be here, my adorable little husband and your master."

Cloridia, followed by Buvat, had come looking for me, and had found me.

She had news for us. She had obtained all the information that she needed about where Atto and I were going from our two little ones (who, in their Mama's absence, always kept their ears well pricked up, ready to report all that they had heard in the finest detail), had co-opted Abbot Melani's secretary, who was also looking for us, and had entered the Vessel. Such were the strange circumstances under which Cloridia and Atto, after having avoided one another several times over, met at last. Melani was about to repress a outburst of impatience upon hearing her voice when, turning towards her and seeing her face after so many years, his face suddenly changed its expression.

"Good day to you, Monna Cloridia," Atto greeted her, bowing, and with unexpectedly good grace, after a few moments of silence.

At the Locanda del Donzello, the old castrato had left a provocative, shameless courtesan of nineteen, and now he found himself facing a radiantly beautiful spouse and mother. My wife was very beautiful, far more so than when he had met her, but it was only at that moment, through the Abbot's admiring look, that I really saw her in all her splendour for the first time, free of the veil of conjugal habit, sweet though that might be. Her locks, no longer blonde and curled with an iron, but naturally brown, fell simply on her neck, freely framing Cloridia's face. Her eyelids free from cosmetics and her pale pink lips gave her a freshness which Atto did not remember in the young harlot of many years before.

"Forgive us for bursting in on you like this," began my consort, returning Atto's salutation with a curtsy. "I have news for you. The day after tomorrow, there will be a meeting in these parts between the three cardinals who interest you," she announced, coming straight to the point.

"When, exactly?" Atto asked at once.

"At midday. Take care, I beg of you," said Cloridia, with a slight hint of anxiety in her voice.

I smiled to myself. The news was too important for my wife not to pass it on to me. At the same time, my suspicions about Cloridia were now confirmed. Her initial impulse to help us had already cooled: she feared for me.

"Fear not, I shall watch over your husband," said Melani in honeyed tones, lying brazenly.

"I thank you," replied my wife, bowing her head slightly. "How magnificent! This is the first time that I have set foot in the Vessel," she added at once, looking all around her in astounded admiration.

Fortunately, the beauty of the villa had distracted her from her fears."Our Buvat cannot say as much. After all, I do not think he saw very much last time he was here," laughed the Abbot, remembering how Buvat had come to us covered in blood from the Princess of Forano's childbirth.

Atto's secretary did not hear what was said; he was already engrossed in reading the inscriptions on the walls of the room in which we stood.

"This villa is in rather good condition for one that has been abandoned for years: one would say it belonged to the Fortunate Isles, also known as the Isles of Folly, for there that goddess was born, there everything grows without sowing or ploughing, nor is there weariness, old age or disease; not, at least, according to my countryman, the learned Erasmus," added Cloridia quite spontaneously.

Atto and I gave a start. I was shocked by Cloridia's bold observation. I had not yet had occasion to tell her of the extravagant Dutch musician or his obsessive playing of one tune, the folia, spiced with curious maxims on folly. Yet she seemed to have guessed at all that, and what was more, as though it were the most natural thing in the world: the Vessel and folly. Not only that, she too, who had grown up in Amsterdam, had, like Albicastro, often heard of the encomium which their countryman from Rotterdam had composed in honour of madness. Certainly, I thought, my spouse's long familiarity with the arts of divination must have played its part. Atto seemed of the same opinion:

"You were once a past-mistress at reading the lines of the hand, if I remember rightly," said he, hiding his unease. "May I ask you what, in your opinion, bestows eternal youth on this uninhabited villa?"

"Simple: it is what the Greeks so rightly called a 'good state of mind' and which we for our pleasure may call folly."

"So you possess some arcane art which enables you to judge that the place in which we stand has a soul, a mind of its own?"

"What woman worthy of the name does not possess that art?" replied Cloridia with a facetious smile. "But now, tell me, I hear that you want to enter Palazzo Spada."I summarised for her the complicated situation in which we found ourselves (and she listened with many expressions of wonderment); then I explained to her that we should need to search in the museum of the late Virgilio Spada.

"You happen to be talking to the right person: within a few days, the wife of the Deputy Palace Steward is due to give birth. For months now, I have been going regularly to check on her. It will be a long, difficult thing, the woman is very fat and I shall certainly need her husband's help. Thus, the palace will be unguarded."

"But there will be other servants around," I observed.

"You seem to have forgotten that they have all been transferred to Villa Spada as reinforcements for this week's festivities," retorted Gloridia with a sly smile. "Indeed, I'll tell you more: the Deputy Steward and his wife are temporarily lodging in a room on the ground floor, the better to keep watch now that the palace is empty. They, too, were supposed to be sent to Villa Spada, but because of the pregnancy they were left in the caretaker's lodge. That opens up a golden opportunity for us," she concluded confidently.

How sure of herself my Cloridia had become, I thought with some amusement. She feared for me when I was going around without her, but if, as now, she could accompany me or be nearby, she became emboldened, almost as though she felt herself to be a powerful goddess whose presence alone sufficed to make me invincible.

"And is there really no one else in the palace?" Atto asked dubiously.

"Of course, the guards are still there, but they make their rounds outside the palace, and that's all," explained Cloridia.

"We, however, need to enter Palazzo Spada as soon as possible," objected Atto. "We cannot wait for your delivery to arrive at its term."

"And where's the problem? I'll go and visit her today for a check on her progress: a few tisanes with good stimulating herbs… and 'tis done."Do you mean that you can make her give birth earlier?" I asked, taken aback, for my wife had never told me that midwives had that ability. "How is that possible?"

"Easy. I shall make her womb sneeze."

Atto and I fell silent, fearing that Cloridia was mocking us.

"Do you mean that a woman's uterus can sneeze?" the Abbot asked circumspectly.

"Of course. Just as though it were the nose. Take a dram of marjoram, half a dram of love-in-a-mist, add a scruple of very finely pounded cloves and white pepper for luck, half a scruple of nutmeg, white hellebore and castor and mix it all to prepare a fine, almost impalpable powder. One must blow several times into the woman's womb with a quill, and that will provoke sneezing marvellously. If that should not prove sufficient, one can throw a paste prepared by mixing the same powder with fat onto hot coals so that it produces smoke to make the womb sneeze. Obviously, it will first be necessary to open up the passage as wide as possible in advance, and that can be done by attaching a sheet tightly to the woman's navel."

"Excuse me," interrupted Abbot Melani anxiously, "are you sure this is not dangerous?"

"Of course not. On the contrary, these are remedies greatly appreciated by women's wombs, just like bringing odours of musk and amber before them: they have the effect of pulling them downwards, for they are attracted by such odours. I am sure that, thanks to such stratagems, the Deputy Steward of Palazzo Spada will soon be calling for me with all haste, as the infant will be about to come into the world."

"And what if it should not work?"

"It will work. Otherwise I shall make use of some simples which work extremely rapidly because of their occult properties, such as the aquiline stone tied to the thigh, or the doeskin, or seed of porcelain to be drunk mixed with white wine, or even a bitch's placenta pulverised and spread on the vulva; or the skins that serpents leave in March, to be fed into the womb. But this last remedy is less prudent."

Abbot Melani paled on hearing Cloridia list all those venereal manoeuvres so insouciantly."When would you expect that…" I began.

"Judging by appearances, as she's so fat, labour should not begin before tomorrow afternoon. Is that too late?"

"No, that will do well. Only, how shall we manage to enter and leave the palace?" asked the Abbot.

"Today, when I go to Palazzo Spada, I shall discreetly gather information and study the situation; tomorrow morning, I shall be able to tell you. There is only one thing you will have to see to on your own: the keys to the rooms."

"That will not be a problem," answered Atto with a little smile.

I knew who he had in mind.