Secretum

Day the Ninth

15th July, 1700

As though it were a sign of destiny, the ray directly struck Atto's tome, which refracted its luminous flood into a thousand blinding white rivulets.

Indifferent to this curious event, Sfasciamonti pointed his pistol downwards.

"Halt or I fire, I am a sergeant of the Governor!" he cried.

Then (or so it seemed to me) he tripped over the stool, which fell through the hole in the ball with a great and general clangour. Perhaps the catchpoll fell after it. Perhaps, in his struggle to break his fall, he dragged me with him.

Time was no more. From light I passed to darkness, the world and the ball whirled drunkenly and suddenly I was elsewhere.

While they were carrying me away, a bag of worn-out, weary members, my eyes strove to catch one last fragment of those sacred pinnacles, that eyrie consecrated to the Lord.

I was head down; but by one of those curious algorithms of consciousness that enables some to read perfectly from right to left or to compose impromptu anagrams, before I again lost consciousness, it appeared to me, and I recognised it.

Proud and enigmatic, anchored on the heights of the Janiculum, the Vessel was observing us.

"Behind every strange or inexplicable death there lies a conspiracy of the state, or of its secret forces," pronounced Abbot Melani.

My head was throbbing. My neck was hurting. To tell the truth, I was hurting all over.

"But also those cases of persons who disappear, or are kidnapped, or suffer incredible accidents, then miraculously reappear from nowhere safe and sound, all these things are clear signs of subversive plotting. No one can escape death like that save with the help of an assiduous practitioner."

Atto's voice was suspended in a naked crystalline void. My eyes were still closed and there seemed to be no urgency about opening them.

Some memories came to me: the sensation of my body, lying heavily in the back of a cart; the cold of daybreak; then the return to warm, familiar surroundings.

A few hours passed (or were they only minutes?) until I was awoken by the sound of the door handle opening and closing, and of footsteps in the corridor. My eyelids at last decided that it was time to wake up.

I was lying on Abbot Melani's bed in the casino of Villa Spada, still fully dressed. Atto sat nearby, on an armchair, lost in who knows what thoughts. He had not realised that I had come to my senses. Only after a few minutes did he detach his gaze from that imaginary point in mid-air on which he had fixed it and turn to me.

"Welcome back among the living," said he with a smile at once satisfied and ironic. "Your wife was very worried, she waited up for you all night. Even though it was dawn, I made sure she was informed that you had returned safe and sound.

"Where's Sfasciamonti?" I asked anxiously.

"Fast asleep."

"And Buvat?"

"In his little room. And snoring, to boot."

"I do not understand," I said, sitting up for the first time; "why did they not arrest us?"

"From what your catchpoll friend told us, you have been extremely lucky. Sfasciamonti threw himself at the sampietrino who was about to get into the ball, knocking you down in the process. After that, he disarmed him and, with a few kicks and punches, left him very much the worse for wear. Then he hoisted you onto his shoulders and carried you back down, without too much trouble, seeing his size. When he got there, nobody saw him. It was daybreak and there was not a soul about. Probably all the guards on duty had run after Buvat."

"After Buvat?"

"Yes, indeed. He took to his legs the moment they began to follow you, up on the terrace."

"What?" I exclaimed in astonishment, "I thought he had come up with us all the way to the…"

"Despite himself, he was quite brilliant. Instead of following you when you ran up the stairs towards the cupola, he turned and ran back down the stairs you had come from. One of the sampietrini who had been following you, a little fellow — oh, pardon me — followed him," explained the Abbot, excusing himself for his gaffe about my height. "But Buvat has long legs and he couldn't see him for dust. He ran out of Saint Peter's like greased lightning and no one even managed to get a glimpse of his face, he left them all standing. Then, typically enough, he got lost on the way back from Saint Peter's and arrived only a little while before you."

I was shocked through and through. I was convinced that I had two allies in my perilous rush up to the ball of Saint Peter's, but one had shamefully deserted while the other had collapsed on top of me.

"I know you bore yourself magnificently, you attained your goal."

"Your treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave!" I burst out. "Did Sfasciamonti give it to you?"

Atto's features became gently disconsolate:

"That was not possible. When he was carrying you, the book slipped out from your breeches and flew down. If I have understood correctly, it landed on a part of the terrace too far off to risk going there. He had to choose between safety and my treatise. He could not, I imagine, do otherwise."

"I don't understand… It had all gone so well, then… It is absurd," 1 commented, thoroughly distressed. "And then, why did he bring me here instead of taking me home?"

"Simple: he does not know where you live."

Still somewhat groggy, I had to wait for the stupor and disappointment beclouding my soul to settle. That dangerous chase, the fatigue, the fear… All for nothing. We had lost Atto's book. Then a vague memory came to me.

"Signor Atto, while I slept, I heard you talking."

"Perhaps I was thinking aloud."

"You said something about unexplained deaths, conspiracies of state… well, something of the sort."

"Really? I don't remember. But now you must get some rest, my boy, if you so desire," said he, standing up and moving towards the door.

"Will you be going into town with the other guests to visit the Palazzo Spada?"

"No."

"Will you really not go?" I asked, imagining that Atto might be afraid of meeting Albani. By then, some sampietrino at Zabaglio's orders might have recovered Atto's tome and be handing it over to the cerretani, who would in turn give it to the Grand Legator, namely Lamberg, who would hand it to the Secretary for Breves.

"It is not the moment for that," Atto replied. "I should love to examine the marvels of Palazzo Spada by the light of day, but we have other far more urgent matters to worry about."

The weather turned a little grey. A sudden gust of hot wind lashed our faces as soon as we entered the spiral staircase to the terrace of the Vessel.

Our preparations for this incursion had taken quite some time. Among the many possibilities, we had in the end opted for the essentials: Atto's pistol, a long dagger, which I had stuffed into my breeches; and, last of all, a net, one of those used during the merry hunt three days before. Thus we were equipped to hold the creature at bay, to injure him if there should — oh horror! — be hand-to-hand fighting, or even act like retiarii in the gladiatorial ring, trapping him under the net.

We stood outside the little penthouse, our legs almost rigid with fear. After exchanging looks of reciprocal encouragement,

Atto advanced first, turned the handle and pushed the door open. Within, shadows and silence.

For a moment we neither spoke nor moved.

"I shall go ahead," said Melani at length, drawing his pistol and making sure that it was ready to fire.

I responded by brandishing the dagger and, spreading the net lightly across my left shoulder, I readied myself to throw it at the first opportunity.

Atto entered. Hardly had he crossed the threshold than he backed against the left door jamb, so as to reduce the number of directions from which he could be attacked. With one arm, he motioned me to advance. I obeyed.

So it was that I found myself once more in the monster's den, shoulder to shoulder with Atto. Panting and by no means any longer feline in his movements, the Abbot was, despite his advanced age and declining eyesight, as leonine as ever, behaving like the foremost among the King's musketeers.

The light was faint because of the smoked glass, and this time the passing clouds made it even dimmer than on the previous occasion. In the middle of the little building there were, as I remembered, two small pillars.

If it was there, it was well hidden.

A sharp pain made me jump. To catch my attention, Atto had jabbed me in the side with his elbow.

Then I saw it.

In the opposite corner, beyond the two pillars and close to the right-hand window, something had moved on the wall. Something rather like an arm, horribly deformed, and covered with a sort of scaly, serpentine skin seemed to emerge from the wall and had reacted to Atto's dig in my ribs. The beast was there.

Our view was partially obstructed by the two columns; we would need to get closer in order to understand what part of the monster had really moved and, above all, what it was doing so bizarrely stuck into the wall.

"Keep still. Don't make a move," whispered Abbot Melani, almost inaudibly.

A minute passed, maybe two, in total immobility. The Tetrachion's arm had ceased to move, as had its monstrous hand. The door was open. Both we and the creature could have broken and run. Whether out of courage or fear, neither dared resolve so to do. The air was humid because of leaks in the ceiling and the whole of the tight space seemed to be incrusted with saltpetre. Our bated breath seemed to make the atmosphere even damper, as did the heavy all- pervading silence, the materialised, fleshed-out fear.

While all this was happening (in reality, nothing whatever, save the storm in our hearts) I was fighting another battle. I was doing all I could, yet, despite the gravity of the moment, I knew that sooner or later I would have to give in. I absolutely had to, and yet I could not. In the end, I surrendered. I simply had to scratch my nose if I wanted to avoid something even worse — a sneeze. And I did so.

Never could any expression in human language convey the feeling of desperate amazement which seized me when I saw the monster's hand imitate mine in perfect synchrony, rising to its horrid face, which remained hidden behind the two small pillars. A terrible doubt came over me.

"Did you see?" I whispered to Atto.

"It moved," he replied in alarm.

I wanted to perform a second test. I freed the fingers of the same hand and made them flutter gaily. Then I moved a leg back and forth, rhythmically. At length, under Atto's stupefied gaze, I left my place and advanced towards the two pillars to look, free from all obstacles material or of the spirit, upon the mystery which had so cruelly enchained us.

"It is absurd. My boy, I forbid you to tell this to anyone," said Atto, without removing his eyes from the looking glass. "I mean, of course, not until we have made clear all that remains obscure," he prudently corrected himself to cover up the cause of his peremptory command: shame.

He again touched the gibbous surface of the deforming mirror, admiring how it alternately swelled up, hollowed out, curved or straightened his fingers, knuckles, palm and wrist.

"I saw something rather like this in Frankfurt a long time ago, when Cardinal Mazarin sent me there for some secret negotiations. But it did not have such a… tremendous… effect as this."

We had seen no Tetrachion. At least, so it seemed. Witty Benedetti, the ingenious creator of the Vessel, had for the greater amusement of his guests placed a number of distorting mirrors along the wall of the little penthouse which, thanks to the dim light and the dark, grim atmosphere of the place and the fact that they reflected one another, transformed the visitor's image into something like a monstrous being.

When I scratched my nose, I noticed that the presumed Tetrachion imitated my gesture with inordinate promptness. Likewise, my other little movements were mimed by the monster with quite incredibly exact timing. It could not be anything other than my own image reflected in some unknown distorting surface.

During our first incursion into the penthouse, our minds were full of the image of Capitor's dish, with Albicastro's voice, transmitted up there who knows how, and with the tales which Atto himself had recounted about Capitor. Faced with the absurd and alien features of a creature with four legs and two heads (in reality, myself and Atto, standing closely side by side) we thought we saw the Tetrachion. Instead, we were merely surrounded by curved mirrors. I heard Atto repeat:

This work I call a looking-glass

In which each fool shall see an ass.

The viewer learns with certainty;

My mirror leaves no mystery.

"Those are the verses we heard Albicastro's voice declaiming," said I.

"Quite. He knew of the distorting mirrors and he was taunting us," Atto replied, as he continued reciting:

Whoever sees with open eyes

Cannot regard himself as wise,

For he shall see upon reflection

That humans teem with imperfection.

"But where did his voice come from?" I asked dubiously.

Instead of replying, Atto began to feel the walls where there were no mirrors.

"What are you looking for?"

"It should be here… or a little further along… Ah, here we are!"

With his face full of the cheer engendered by his regained sagacity, he showed me a brass tube which ran vertically down the wall and then curved towards us, ending in a trumpet.

"How idiotic not to have thought of that earlier," he exclaimed, slapping his forehead in frustration. "Albicastro's voice, which we heard on that occasion, and which seemed like that of a phantom, came from this: the old tube used to pass orders to the servants on other floors and which I showed you on the ground floor. That mad Hollander must have been on one of the lower floors near to one of the mouths of the tube. When he realised that we might be in this wretched place full of distorting mirrors, he began chanting the verses of that damned Sebastian Brant and his Ship of Fools and froze the blood in our veins," Atto concluded, revealing how frightened he had been last time.

Atto's conclusions were incontrovertible. The "mirror of folly" cited by the bizarre Albicastro fitted in perfectly with the perverse game whereby the Tetrachion mentioned by the madwoman Capitor relived in the mirrors of the Vessel. What was more, did not the Dutchman's little song warn that what appears in a looking glass is not always worthy of our confidence? At that moment, Atto recited:

He's stirring at the dunces' stew;

He thinks he's wise and handsome too,

And with his mirror form so pleased

You'd think he had a mind diseased;

Indeed he cannot see the ass

That's grinning at him from the glass!

"Do you understand those verses now?" he asked. "Albicastro made idiots of us, and took great pleasure in so doing. I really want to look him in the face, that insolent Dutchman, and demand an apology," he added, with a warlike expression on his visage, as he motioned me to follow him downstairs.

Armed to the teeth, we had been defeated by a few mirrors and our imagination. Now Abbot Melani wanted to unload his anger and shame on the only other occupant of the Vessel. The only flesh and blood one, at any rate.

Of course, we could not find him. Albicastro belonged to that rare class of persons who appear by surprise ("to make a nuisance of themselves," Atto added) and never when one looks for them.

Atto insisted on searching bath chambers, store rooms and the like, but it very soon became quite clear that there was no trace of the Dutchman in the whole of the Vessel.

"We fear what we cannot understand," I recited, reminding the Abbot of his own philosophising two days previously when I had taken the little dog in Borromini's perspective gallery for a colossus.

"Shut up and let us return to Villa Spada," he muttered, his face dark with anger.

We made the brief journey without exchanging a word. I was thinking. Every single one of the mysteries which we had encountered, and which had caused Abbot Melani or myself (or both) to tremble, had become clear in the end: the Dutchman had been walking on a cornice hidden from our view; the flowers from the mythical gardens of Adonis had turned out to be common plants like garlic and castor bean; the gallery of the Vessel which seemed to extend as far as the Vatican Hill was just a clever trick with mirrors; the infernal tongues of flame and the faces of dead souls which we had seen in Ugonio's den at the Baths of Agrippina, and which had succeeded in convincing me that I myself was dead, were the mere product of camphor vapours; the roaring monster which I feared was about to devour me at Palazzo Spada was in reality nothing but a lapdog, whose dimensions had been made to appear gigantic by the false perspective of the Borromini gallery; and, last of all, we had taken our own reflections in distorting mirrors for the Tetrachion. For one thing only we had found no explanation: the apparitions of Maria, Louis and Fouquet in the gardens of the Vessel. The Abbot had invoked his theory of corpuscles and hypothetical hallucinogenic exhalations, but nothing more; unlike all the other mysteries, we had found no concrete solution to this one.

While these thoughts were turning around in my mind, Abbot Melani continued to hold his peace. Who knows, perhaps he too was asking himself the same questions, I thought, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.

Flere, my reflections were brought sharply to an end. I saw Abbot Melani grow pale, paler than the ceruse on his face. We had come by now to the gates of the Villa Spada and Atto was staring at something in the distance.

Amidst the perfume of the flower beds, there reigned a great confusion of valets, porters, secretaries, with trunks and travellers' baskets of provisions being hauled onto departing carriages, and a going and coming of eminences and gentlemen amiably taking their leave of the master of the house, making appointments to meet at a degree ceremony at the Sapienza University, at some consistory, or at a mass for the repose of somebody's soul.

I was just wondering what could have so altered the Abbot's humour, when I saw one of Sfasciamonti's catchpolls pointing out a stranger to us. The shock to my heart was tremendous. I could already see myself accused by the parish priest of Saint Peter's of breaking into the basilica, identified by the Bargello's men, tried and cast into a dungeon for twenty years. Terrified, I looked at Atto. I did not even attempt to flee. At Villa Spada, everyone knew where I lived. The stranger's face was tense, tired, quivering. Soon he confronted us.

"An urgent message for Abbot Melani."

"He stands here before you, speak up," said I, feeling greatly relieved, while the Abbot said nothing, his face drawn, staring fixedly before him, almost as though he already knew — and feared — the message which the man was about to deliver to him.

"Madama the Connestabilessa Colonna: her carriage is a short distance from here. She begs you not to leave; within an hour, you will meet."

Rooted by my own legs, I expected some reaction from Atto, some free expression from his soul, some genuine impulse from the heart.

But the old Abbot did not open his mouth. He did not even quicken his footsteps; on the contrary, he seemed slower and more uncertain.

We reached his apartments without a word. Here, he took off his wig, slowly stroked his forehead and sat down, suddenly very tired, before the dressing table.

He began to whistle an unknown tune. His whistling was short of breath and uncertain, often breaking off in his throat as he looked sadly at his own naked, hoary and almost bald head reflected in the looking glass.

"This is a tune from the Ballet des Plaisirs of Maestro Lully," said he, continuing to explore his face; then he stood up and donned his dressing gown.

I stood open-mouthed. That messenger had just announced the imminent arrival of the Connestabilessa, and Atto was not getting ready?

Did Melani no longer believe in her coming? He was not entirely to be blamed; too many times already, he had awaited her in vain. This time, however, there seemed to be no doubt about it: Maria was already almost at the gates of the Villa Spada, there were no more impediments. Of course, what she was coming for now that the festivities were over may have been somewhat less than clear. Perhaps she was coming to offer her tardy tribute, and her apologies, to Cardinal Spada.

"Everyone at court was astonished when, a few months ago, they suddenly heard His Majesty sing this same music from memory. An air which he and Maria had sung together for a whole season during their amorous promenades forty years ago. Everyone was surprised, except me."

I understood. In fact, I knew perfectly well for what purpose Maria Mancini was coming: she was obeying the wish of the Most Christian King, as she herself had written to Atto; and she was prepared to listen to Atto's entreaties on the King's behalf and his offer that she should return to France. To assure himself of her attention, to move her, and lastly, to persuade, Atto must therefore call upon memory. He must be able to recall and report to the Connestabilessa, looks, moments, words pronounced by the King, of which she could not know but which the Abbot must at all costs be able to give life to in her eyes and in her heart.

"Since the time of the Affair of the Poisons, when he thought that the world was collapsing on his head, His Majesty has increasingly asked his ministers to request my services," Melani explained, "and ever more frequently in the missives which I received Madama the Connestabilessa Colonna was mentioned: How was she? What was she doing? And so on."

Maria, he continued in a bitter tone of voice, had for some time taken refuge in Spain, persecuted by her husband, the Constable Colonna, whom she had abandoned when she fled Rome. The poor woman spent her time in and out of convents and prisons.

"During all those years, I did not fail in truth to bring her news to the attention of the Most Christian King."

I held my breath. Melani was at last beginning to confess to being the King's go-between with the Connestabilessa. Perhaps he would soon tell me the whole truth, which secretly I already knew.

"Until one day," Atto continued, "when the King, after being compelled to suppress the Affair of the Poisons, began to show more vividly on his face that old secret trembling whenever he heard the name Colonna."

Colonna: that name, the Abbot revealed, bore more of a sting for Louis XIV than the familiar "Maria". "Colonna" carved into his regal flesh, always as though for the first time, the knowledge that their separation was forever: she belonged to another; and then there were the three sons by that prince, the Grand Constable Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, whom Maria had conceived and given birth to.

"And above all, the cruellest torment was to know that she had never forgotten him, so much so that she fled from the yoke imposed upon her by that husband, despite the strong passion of the senses which, as I had not failed to inform the King, he aroused in her." Thus Atto concluded, his mouth watering as one compelled ever to live such passions vicariously, with his nose glued to the monastic grate which separates his unfortunate kind from ordinary men and women.

"Signor Atto, you've told me nothing about Prince Colonna, Maria's only husband."

"There is not much to be said," said the Abbot, cutting me short, thoroughly irritated.

Atto, too, I thought with a snigger, hated to speak of the man who had fathered Maria's children and had made her flesh thrill, if not her heart. Nevertheless, I had already heard a great deal about the stormy ten-year long marriage between Constable Colonna and his indomitable consort.

"Did you not fear the King's ire, passing him news that might injure his feelings?"

"I have already told you, word by word and blow by blow, how Louis lived in the twenty years that followed his marriage with Maria Teresa: his heart was sunken into a deep, disturbed sleep. I did no more than to throw pebbles of light, sharp crystal splinters which, cutting through that torpor with the stiletto of jealousy, for a brief instant struck the King's heart and veins with the blinding lightning of Maria's memory, more brilliant than all the brocades and jewels with which he covered his mistresses, all that astounding machinery with which his pageantry and fetes, his plays and ballets were filled and all those deafening orchestras with which he surrounded himself. Dreams, moments, soon upset by the magnificent hubbub of the court, too brief for him to become fully aware; and yet there they lay, lurking in a corner of his soul, whispering to him, perhaps on nights when he lay between waking and sleep, that she existed."

I was moved by the fidelity with which Abbot Melani had humbly sacrificed his impossible love for Maria Mancini. For twenty years, alone and in secret, he had maintained the silver thread which still joined those two unfortunate hearts, without them so much as realising it.

Perhaps the Abbot would now reveal to me his current task as go-between; but he remained silent, overcome by his memories.

Then he drew forth from his pocket a richly wrought little box shaped like a golden seashell. He opened it and took out a few citron pastilles which he threw into the carafe of water in order to make a refreshing beverage. As soon as the pastilles had dissolved, Atto drank deeply.

"Ah, this citron-juice is truly delicious," he commented with a sigh, wiping his lips. "Marchese Salviati sends me these regularly. And don't you find my little seashell lovely, eh?" said he, alluding to the box which I was in fact admiring. "It comes from the Indies and it is as fine and pleasing as can be, do you not think so? Maria sent it to me as a present a few years ago."

The Abbot's voice was tinged with emotion.

There was a knock at the door: a valet asked if the Abbot required anything.

"Yes, please," Atto answered, clearing his throat. "Bring me something to eat. And what about you, my boy?"

I accepted willingly, seeing that hunger was causing my stomach to complain, as no little time had elapsed since lunch.

"Just think how different France and all Europe might have been," Atto resumed, "if Maria Mancini had reigned happily at Louis's side. The invasions of Flanders and the German principalities, the brutal destruction of the Palatinate, hunger and poverty within France's borders to finance all those wars, and who knows what else might have been spared us."

"Well," I could not help provoking him, "you regret so much what happened, yet were matters not as they now stand, France would have no claim to the the Spanish throne."

The Abbot was cut to the quick.

"There is no contradiction whatever," said he, rising to his full height. "The past is the past and can be altered only in our imagination, as happened at the Vessel. We can only so arrange matters that past events should not have been in vain."

"What do you mean?"

"If His Majesty's separation from Maria Mancini were now to bring Bourbon blood to the throne of Spain," Atto declaimed pompously, waving his index finger as he spoke, "their suffering, from the blind and pointless torment of forty years ago, would be sublimated into a supreme sacrifice for the good of the royal household of France and, plainly, to the greater glory of God from whom the monarch's power emanates."

At first, I found it difficult to grasp what he was getting at in that obscure oratorical display. One thing, however, was perfectly clear to me: for the first time since his arrival at Villa Spada, Atto was talking with me of the succession to the Spanish throne.

"Only thus will they not have been separated in vain," he added.

The war in Flanders, for example, Melani continued, could only have been undertaken by the Most Christian King in his capacity as consort of Maria Teresa, seeing that the purpose of that conflict was to claim his wife's dowry from the Spaniards.

"In other words, then as now, the Most Christian King has been determined to extort, if needs be by violence, all that he could lay his hands on which might serve to avenge him of the violence which he himself once suffered. The violence of which I spoke to you: once suffered, then inflicted upon others, do you remember?" the Abbot reminded me.

"Yes, from what you've told me, I know that his favourite ways of getting his own back have been through women and wars."

"Queens and raison d'Etat. the very things which once separated him from Maria Mancini forever."

That was why, Atto continued in a hoarse voice, Louis XIV never held back whenever there was any opportunity to make women suffer; even better if he could mix the matter up with politics, as in the case of the Princess Palatine and the Grande Dauphine.

"These were two women whom the King admired greatly. They were not fragile and forever sighing like Louise de la Val- liere or social climbers like Athenai's de Montespan. Worse, they were independent spirits, fighting for their ideals with all their strength, just as he himself had once tried to do against his mother and his godfather."

Louis identified no little with those two rather masculine and idealistic young women. But he, in his own time, had lost his battle; and now he could not allow them to win theirs. The King was unhappy: at court, none could allow themselves the luxury of being happy, or even serene. The King was small of stature: none dared wear heels or more imposing periwigs that would make them taller than he.

"The King is small? But you told me that he was tall and good looking, and…"

"What does that matter? I told you what they all say and always will say and what will always be depicted in court portraits. Besides, with those red heels and those towering wigs, I challenge you to find a single monarch in Europe taller than he. The Most Christian King, my boy — and this is really in confidence between the two of us — when he takes off his shoes and that false hair, is not very much taller than you."

They brought us a dish with two pairs of roast francolins accompanied by green beans, artichokes and sour fruit, with wine and little flat breads with sesame. Atto started with the greens, while I immediately got my teeth into the francolins' breasts.

So, heaven help anyone whom the King found to be at peace for too long, even if this were out of resignation. And such was the character of the Princess Palatine (so called, because she came from the Palatinate): young, ugly and perfectly aware of the fact, the King's German sister-in-law was the second wife of Monsieur, in other words, his younger brother Philippe, and, unlike his first wife, the restless and unlucky Henrietta of England, she had been able to find a peaceful modus vivendi with that strange husband of hers. He did not like women, but she was sufficiently masculine not to disgust him. And, with the miraculous help of some holy image in the right place at the right time, he had even managed to make her pregnant and thus to provide the male heir his luckless late wife had been unable to conceive. Thereafter, the couple separated their beds by common accord and to their mutual satisfaction, united only by their love for their children. Madame Palatine's serene resignation was, however, to be shortlived.

"The dirty trick that was played on her, a little over ten years ago, was one of the most horrendous crimes of French military history," Atto stated, without mincing his words, by now engrossed in his tale. "The methodical and ferocious sacking of her land, the Palatinate, and of the castle of her birth, perpetrated in her name but without her consent. This was a masterpiece of devilish perfidy."

As he had once done with Maria Teresa and her supposed right to receive Spanish Flanders as part of her dowry, Louis claimed the Palatinate on behalf of his sister-in-law and against her will. She begged him desperately for an audience, but he would not receive her. Meanwhile, he ordered the French troops to conduct a scorched-earth campaign, but in the towns rather than the countryside, where that had previously been military practice. Thus, instead of a few scattered peasants' hutments, he had whole cities razed to the ground: Mannheim, and especially Heidelberg, where the magnificent pink sandstone castle was thrown into the waters of the Neckar.

"Years have passed since then, but the thing was so unheard-of that the French officers who took part in the campaign are still ashamed of it. It is only thanks to the spontaneous compassion of the Marechal de Tesse that, at the very last moment, when the fires were already burning, the gallery of the princess's family portraits was saved, in an effort to mitigate the desperation which he knew would overcome her when she heard of the disaster."

In vain did Louis' confessor whisper such expressions as "love for one's neighbour" in his ear, in the shadow of the confessional: the King would rise angrily, muttering "Chimaeras!" and shrugging his shoulders, before brusquely turning his back upon the father confessor without so much as a farewell.

On the contrary, the King continued in the same vein quite unperturbed. He inflicted the same torments upon the other German in his family: the Grand Dauphine, his daughter-in-law.

"She had it in her to become a queen one day, the real queen whom France had so long lacked. She had both the qualities and talents which could one day have enabled her to bear the weight of government. I still remember the King's admiring stare whenever she spoke."

Quite by surprise, however, Louis XIV told her that she was no longer to be informed of matters pertaining to government and, shortly after that, he did not disdain to enter into conflict with the Grand Dauphine's native land, Bavaria, rejecting with subtle pleasure every one of the young woman's attempts at mediation. For her, this was the end. Melancholy undermined her spirit and pervaded her whole body: from the waist downwards, it swelled up and within a few days she died amidst convulsions.

"This was a nemesis for the kingdom," moaned Abbot Melani. "With the death of the Grand Dauphine, France was left without the figure of a queen: no longer was there a queen mother or a reigning queen, nor was there a dauphine. The past, present and future of the royal family are the sphere of women and the force behind this destruction was in great part the King himself. Nor does he show any sign of regretting what he has done. Indeed, by marrying Madame de Maintenon, not only has he removed any possibility of seeing a new sovereign on the throne, but he has even gone so far as to exhort the Dauphin, now a widower too, to marry an old mistress of his, an actress," said Atto, listlessly fishing in his plate for a few scraps of artichoke.

"In other word, the Queen has been… abolished," I exclaimed, depositing on the tray the well-picked skeleton of the francolin and helping myself to another one.

"Only the old man who stands before you knows the origin of these excesses, in those remote, bitter days long, long ago. They go back to that dawn at the fortress of Brouage when the supreme pain of the separation from Maria suddenly engendered the need for hardness of heart: a mask which the King donned then and has never since removed. Only in these last few years, with advancing age, His Majesty has no longer been able completely to conceal that ancient, unassuaged suffering. Madame de Maintenon's confessor, to whom she complains every morning, knows all about this."

"And what do you know of it?"

"The confessor complains to me," laughed the Abbot. "What everyone can see is that the King goes to see Madame de Maintenon three times a day: before mass, after lunch and in the evening on his return from the hunt. What very few, however, know of is the mysterious bouts of weeping that regularly seize him at the end of the day, when he goes to bid his wife goodnight: he becomes sad, then his temper flares up, and ends up weeping uncontrollably. Sometimes, he even faints; and all this, without the couple exchanging so much as one word."

"Surely Madame de Maintenon must nevertheless have guessed what it is that so worries him?"

"On the contrary, that is precisely the source of her own worries: 'I am quite unable to get him to talk,' she is wont to repeat when she feels worn out by the struggle to communicate. For Madame de Maintenon, the King is a sphinx."

That is why, Abbot Melani continued, the King's enigmatic goodnight to his wife has become for her a cause of anger, even disgust. The King likes to conclude his sentimental and lachrymose outpourings with brief outbursts of quite another, far more vulgar nature which she, given her age, finds repugnant. "These are painful moments," she confides to her confessor. Only after obtaining physical satisfaction does the King go on his way, with his cheeks still lined by tears and without uttering a syllable.

"On the next day, however, he is the same tyrant as ever. Indeed, with age his tyranny has become ever harsher; so that, by now, life at Versailles, especially for the women of his family, has become a torment. Whenever His Majesty undertakes the smallest journey, even only to go to Fontainebleau, he insists on taking daughters and nephews with him in the same carriage, just as he was once wont to drag a party of mistresses in his wake. He treats them all with the same hardness of heart, deaf to their lamentations, blind to their fatigue; he makes them eat, converse and be gay on command. Pregnancies do not exempt women from having to travel in the King's retinue, and so much the worse if there is a miscarriage. None dares keep count of the pregnancies which never reached term because of those unreasonable journeys by carriage."

I was horrified.

"And what is one to say," the Abbot continued with a smile, "of the torments to which he subjects Madame de Maintenon? He has made her travel under conditions which one would not impose on a servant. I well recall one such journey to Fontainebleau when we feared she might die on the road. Supposing that Madame de Maintenon has a fever or a headache, what does he do? He invites her to the draughty theatre where the icy blasts and the glare from a thousand candles reduce her to a wreck. Or she's lying sick in bed, all muffled up against her proverbial draughts. He visits her and throws all the windows wide open, even when it is freezing outside."

"One would not think that for the past forty years he has been the greatest king in the world," I commented in some perplexity after a few moments of silence.

"The Most Christian King is still struggling against the old defeat inflicted upon him by his mother, Queen Anne; while torturing all the women of his family, it is on her that he would really like to turn the tables. But the King's is a lost battle. The dead, my boy, are quite invincible in that one can't answer them back."

Atto's long narration, which had seemed like a river in full spate, came now to a halt. He had meant to tell of the love which Louis XIV still bore Maria, and in speaking of her, to relive it. Instead, he had ended up expatiating upon the old King's misdeeds. Yet the essence of the tale remained unchanged: the wives, mistresses, rancours and revenges of the Most Christian King all tended towards her: Maria. That name encapsulated forty years of European history. For that woman, invoked so belatedly and so vainly, le plus grand Roi du monde had put Europe to fire and the sword. A heart torn to shreds had fed on the hearts of entire peoples, even the King's own kith and kin. And now she, the innocent cause of it all, would soon be among us.

Someone knocked at the door. It was Buvat. The Connestabilessa had arrived.

"She is walking in the garden," said the secretary with ill-concealed embarrassment.

"Very well," replied Atto, dismissing his secretary without asking him for further details, as though he were reporting the arrival of just any visitor.

But it was hard for him to pretend. He had the slightly stifled voice of one unwilling to admit an upheaval of the soul, and striving at all costs to show equanimity.

"How stuffy it is today," he commented, as soon as the door had closed. "Rome is always too hot in summer. And it is so humid. I remember that in the first years when I came here I suffered tremendously from that. Do you not feel hot too?"

"Yes… I do feel hot," I answered mechanically.

He went over to the window, looking into the distance, as if pausing for thought.

I was astounded. Maria was there outside; he could join her at any moment. It was unquestionably up to Atto to go and look for his friend. Yet he was doing nothing. After all the tales I had heard, after he had told me of all the stages in the love between Maria and the Most Christian King and indeed of his own castrato's crippled love for the selfsame woman, after waiting for her for days on end, after all those letters overflowing with passion, after thirty years' separation… After all this, Atto was not moving an inch. He was looking out of the window, still in his dressing gown, speaking not a word. I looked at his plate: he had left the delicious meat of the francolins untouched, eating only some greens. His stomach must be beset by very different ferments.

I stood up and went to his side. It was as I thought. There was no risk of mistaken identity, for all the guests from the week's celebrations had left. Accompanied by a lackey and a maid of honour, she moved gracefully through the garden, admiring Tranquillo Romauli's flower beds with bemused wonderment, from time to time caressing some plant, observing with pleasure the luxuriant and refined ambience of Villa Spada, even now that the festivities were over and there was much disorder all around. She seemed untroubled by the goings and comings of servants and porters, dismantling platforms or carrying sacks of rubbish. She must be rather weary after her journey but this did not show.

"Even if we're to judge only by the number of people working there now, these celebrations must have cost your Cardinal a fortune," said Atto with a hint of irony.

"Perhaps we should… I mean, perhaps you should…" I stammered.

But Abbot Melani ignored the suggestion. He wandered wearily over to the wardrobe, opened it and began carelessly to review all the rich apparel within. Then he opened a little medicine chest and looked, with a sceptical expression that I had never before seen in him, at the whole collection of balms, ceruses and little boxes of beauty spots. Turning again to the wardrobe, from the darkness of the interior he brought forth a few pairs of shoes into the light of day. Rather scornfully he turned them over with his foot, rolling these beribboned creations onto the floor in disorder. Atto examined them impotently, as though he knew they could do nothing to satisfy his desires. He then began unwillingly to pull out suits of clothes.

"With the dead, 'tis too late to cry out 'You were wrong!'" said he suddenly.

As he stared at all those rich materials, Atto's mind was still dwelling on the phantasms of the past. Maria awaited him in the gardens, but he remained glued to his memories like a limpet clinging to a rock and (the image was his own) refusing to let go "The Queen Mother was mistaken in her plans, but it was Mazarin who did the greatest wrong," he continued, distractedly caressing a tabby shirt hanging in the wardrobe. "If the Cardinal had not been there, Louis would certainly have overcome his mother's resistance and married Maria, and the Queen of England's necklace would have been his gift for their betrothal, not their parting."

"The greatest wrong, did you say?"

"Indeed. A wrong for which the Cardinal paid with his life."

"What are you referring to?"

"Do you recall what I told you about Capitor and her enigmatic warnings to His Eminence?" he asked, while his interest was aroused by a waistcoat with a ruffle in pleated Venetian lace.

"Yes, if my memory does not deceive me, Capitor said A Virgin who weds the Crown brings death.'"

"You have not remembered the whole message. She added that death would take place when 'the moons join the suns at the wedding'," he recited, feeling his way through breeches, cuffs, caftans, collars and tunics.

"Ah yes, I remember but, to tell the truth, you never explained that last riddle to me."

"At the time, it was not understood, so that not much attention was paid to it. Everyone was concentrating upon the 'virgin', Maria, and Louis's 'crown' which would, supposedly, bring death to the recipient of Capitor's vaticination, namely Mazarin. They all wondered how he would react to that dark presage."

"That was why Mazarin separated Maria and the King," I remembered.

"Exactly. Louis married Maria Teresa, the Infanta of Spain, on the ninth of June. But, like lightning falling from a blue sky, nine months later, on the ninth of March, Mazarin died. Capitor's prophecy had come true."

"I do not understand."

"My boy, with age, you seem to have grown slower on the uptake," said the Abbot, mocking me. The contact with his precious treasures of apparel seemed to be restoring his good humour: "Nine, nine and nine."

I stared at him, perplexed.

"Come, do you still not understand?" said Melani, growing impatient. "The number of 'moons', or months, was equal to that of'suns' or days, from the wedding. The number of suns of the nuptials was nine, for the marriage between His Majesty and Maria Teresa was celebrated on the ninth of June. Nine moons (or nine months) later, the Cardinal died, on the ninth of March, the very day of the ninth moon."

While my face showed plainly how disconcerted I was by all this, the Abbot tried to match a pearl-coloured sash with a pair of violet-red stockings.

"In that case, Capitor's prophecy did not come true," I then objected. "She said that Mazarin would die if 'the virgin' married 'the crown', but that did not happen."

"On the contrary, it did," retorted Atto. "The virgin was not Maria but the King himself, and do you know why?"

"The virgin… the King?"

"Tell me, on what day was His Majesty born?"

"In September, if my memory does not fail me; you told me that on his birthday he had Fouquet arrested… Yes, that would have been the 5th September."

"And in which sign of the zodiac is the 5th September?"

"In Virgo?"

"Bravo, you're getting there. The King is a native of Virgo, the sign of the virgin. On the other hand, 'the crown' is that of Spain which Maria Teresa brought with her in her dowry and which now enables France to advance claims to the Spanish throne."

"How did you deduce that?"

"I was not alone in doing so," Melani retorted, trying on a blackish Brandenburg cassock, then a mother-of-pearl-coloured Bohemian cape and a short gris castor cloak, which, worn too long in front of the mirror, were making him almost die of heat. "What was worse, the Cardinal himself realised that, by separating Maria and Louis and compelling the latter to marry the Infanta, he had signed his own death warrant. But that came too late; he was already on his deathbed. With the little strength that remained to him, he cried out and struggled, suffocated by the revelation and trying to tear off his sweat-soaked clothes, as though he could thus undo the fatal nuptials for which he had striven so hard. With my own eyes, I saw him despair. I remember that at one point his eyes, which by then had grown opaque, stared intensely at me and I read in his terrified look how he and 1 had struggled side by side during the negotiations at the Isle of Pheasants to obtain Maria Teresa's hand despite the claims of the Emperor Leopold. He did not survive that last lightning bolt of memory: his poor body was shaken as by a thunderbolt and Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Italian by birth, Sicilian by blood and French by adoption, gave up the ghost."

"From your manner of speaking, it seems you placed the greatest possible trust in Capitor's words," I remarked with a hint of sarcasm, while in my mind the horror of that lugubrious tale was mixed with no little irony for the Abbot, who was as sceptical about the apparitions at the Vessel as he was convinced of that Spanish madwoman's prophetic powers.

"One moment, one moment," Atto hastened to correct me, tottering on a pair of high-heeled shoes which his swollen feet would not fit into, "I never said that I believed in Capitor's magic."

"But if now…"

"No," he interrupted me haughtily, "listen to me carefully. Do you know why Mazarin died on the ninth of March? Because he had realised that on that day there fell the ninth moon after the ninth of June, the day of the Most Christian King's wedding."

"I don't understand."

"He was already very ill, that's true; but this revelation, together with the fated date, brought about a renal colic which cut his life short in the small hours. In other word, Capitor's prophecy was indeed the cause of the Cardinal's death, which was, however, brought about by his superstition, not her powers," declaimed Abbot Melani, with a huge blond periwig sitting askew on his head and another chestnut brown one in his hand, undecided as to which to choose. "For better or for worse, we are, my boy, affected only by what we believe."

Atto imagined that he had silenced me with his exegesis. He wanted at all costs to avoid any close contact with the kind of occult phenomena which had so irritated and confused him during our incursions to the Vessel.

This was not, however, the truth: I well recalled how enthusiastically Melani had, when he first spoke of Capitor, described the prophetic powers of that Spanish madwoman who had come to court in the retinue of Don John the Bastard. However, I held back and refrained from pointing this out to him.

"And yet," he himself admitted after a moment's silence, without, however, breaking off his minuet of trying out new periwigs, "I must confess that something else in Capitor's words really came very close to being prophetic."

This was, Melani explained, the sonnet about the globe as the wheel of fortune, which we also read above one of the doors at the Vessel. Atto recited the last lines:

Behold, one to the heights hath risen

Et alter est expositus ruinae;

The third is stripped of all; deep down, to waste is driven.

Quartus ascendet iam, nec quisquam sine

By labouring he gained his benison,

Secundum legis ordinem divinae.

"This happened after the Cardinal's death," said Atto, grasping a perfume for periwigs and rapidly perusing a belt and two pocket watches: "Colbert's ascent must inevitably bring to mind, 'Behold, one to the heights hath risen', while the brewing storm that preceded the fall of Superintendent Fouquet seemed to fit perfectly with ' et alter est expositus ruinae ' or, 'the other is exposed to ruin'. The fourth prefigured the coming to power of the Most Christian King in person who ' ascendetiam' or, 'is now ascending'. In fact, the young King did gird up his loins immediately after Flis Eminence's death and take personal control of the government of the state, as the sonnet says, 'nec quisquam sine' By labouring he gained his benison', in other words, on the strength of his own efforts, but also, ' secundum legis ordinem divinae'' or, 'according to the order of divine right' precisely upon which the King's power rests."

"In your interpretation of the sonnet, the third personage is, however, missing, the one who's 'stripp'd of all; deep down, to waste is driven'."

"Bravo. I see that you may be slow on the uptake, but you are by no means inattentive. The third character is Mazarin himself."

"Did he really die poor?" I asked, utterly astonished. "When we first met, I seem to recall you telling me that he left a fabulous inheritance."

"Your memory is absolutely correct. Only, he chose his heir badly. Armand de la Meilleraye, Ortensia Mancini's husband, was mad," he exclaimed, trying out all sorts and colours of capes, cloaks and cowls, in all materials from jujube-red Ormuz muslins to scarlet ferrandine silk and wool blends, brocaded cloth of gold and silver, bicoloured moire satins, and so compulsively that it truly seemed he too had taken leave of his senses.

Armand de la Meilleraye: almost indifferent to the dubious spectacle which the Abbot, by now almost naked, was making of himself, I was deep in thought. I already knew from Buvat that, when Maria left Paris, Atto had transferred his attentions to Ortensia, thus enraging her mad spouse, who sent out ruffians to hunt him down and give him a beating and thus caused him to flee from France. Melani had taken advantage of this to go to Rome and, with the King's blessing and financial assistance, to seek out Maria, newly married to the Constable Colonna.

"'Tis almost risible," continued the Abbot, by now lost in his dance of the costumes which, from a graceful minuet, had degenerated into an unseemly sarabande: "Mazarin had sought far and wide the best match for the most beautiful and sought-after of his nieces and had decided to make him his universal heir. The choice fell upon a nephew of Richelieu, the Due de la Meilleraye, who thus became master of the Cardinal's boundless and ill-gotten fortune. They married barely ten days before the death of Mazarin, who thus had no idea of the sad individual to whom he had abandoned his fortune."

Armand de la Meilleraye, Atto narrated with acid sarcasm for his one-time enemy, was without question utterly mad. He was ashamed to have inherited from Mazarin, whom he regarded as a thief destined for hellfire. He therefore took an extreme pleasure in accepting the inheritance with the secret intent of destroying and delapidating it. He sought out the victims of the Cardinal's depredations and exhorted them to sue his heir, namely himself. In this way, he collected over three hundred lawsuits and did his very best to lose them all, thus restituting the great man's ill-gotten gains.

For that purpose, he obtained the advice of the best and most costly lawyers, and then did exactly the opposite of whatever they recommended. One morning, what was more, he put paints and hammers into the hands of a group of servants and led them to the gallery where His Eminence had lovingly collected extraordinary works of art: and there he began violently to strike Greek and Roman statues, because they were naked, and ordered the servants to cover the paintings depicting nudity with black paint: Titians, Correggios and who knows what else. When the King's minister, Colbert, arrived distraught, hoping to save those masterpieces, he found the madman, exhausted but calm at last, in the midst of all the wreckage; midnight had struck: it was Sunday, the day of rest. The destruction had come to a halt, but almost nothing had survived.

"As cruel irony would have it, in the last days of his life, Mazarin was seen wandering around his gallery, caressing those very statues and those marvellous paintings, sobbing and repeating over and over: And to think that I must leave all this! To think that I must leave all this!'"

"It seems almost as though he was struck down by a curse," I observed.

"The schemes whereby great men try to make their memory eternal, are utterly ridiculous," exclaimed Atto in response.

He fell silent, shaken by the very phrase which he himself had just pronounced.

"Ridiculous…" he repeated mechanically while, despite himself, his lips drooped, forming a tragic mask.

The old castrato lowered his gaze to his chest. He looked at the breeches, the sash, the Venetian lace jabot and all the other things he had put on — more than one would ever place on a tailor's dummy. He moved slowly to the window and glanced into the park, where, I supposed, the Connestabilessa must still be waiting.

Suddenly, there came flying capes and cloaks, sashes and jabots, the Bohemian cape, the cuffs, the pleated silk cloak and the stockings. The precious silks, the shining satins, the amber fur, the cloths enriched with gold and silver thread, the moire satins, the Milanese salia and the Genoese sateens, all flew into the air, flung by Atto in handfuls. There followed what looked like a bewitched aerial army of empty costumes: tabbies, grograms, striped and flowered linens, muslins, ferrandines and doublets all flew menacingly upwards. My eyes were confused amidst the colours of pearl, fire, musk, dried roses, ginger, scarlet, maroon, dove-grey, grenadine, berrettino grey, nacre, tan, milky white, moire and gris castor, and blinded by the gold and silver braiding and fringes which Atto was hurling to the floor in a silent, desperate frenzy.

I was utterly at a loss in the face of Melani's assault on his sartorial masterpieces; all the more so when I recalled how, many years ago, he had cursed in the honeycomb of underground galleries beneath Rome every time a splash of mud dirtied his lace cuffs or his red abbot's stockings.

When at last the curious army of costumes lay lifeless on the ground and the entire wardrobe was scattered far and wide, Atto's old body lay, like that of a half-naked satyr, slumped on the divan at the foot of the bed. Hardly had I overcome the icy grip on my members and rushed to the Abbot's assistance than the latter suddenly raised his face from his hands where he had plunged it and, standing up once more, moved away from me and slipped on his dressing gown.

"Now do you understand the verse in the sonnet on fortune recited by Capitor?" he asked me, as though nothing unusual had taken place.

He went to the console and poured two glasses of sweetened red wine, one of which he handed me.

"The third is stripp'd of all, deep down, to waste is driven," said he, seeing that he was unable to get a word out of me: "Hardly was he dead, than Cardinal Mazarin lost all that he had intrigued for."

"Yes," was all I was capable of saying.

I gulped down the wine in one go. My hands were trembling. Atto poured me another glass. He was avoiding my eyes. Fortunately, the fumes of alcohol soon dispelled those of emotion and I found myself once more at peace.

"That was a true prophecy," I exclaimed, once I had digested the Abbot's revelations concerning Capitor's words.

"Either that or a diabolical coincidence," he replied.

I smiled. The old castrato was irredeemable; he would not admit in my presence to the inexplicable nature of certain phenomena; I would leave him that little satisfaction.

"There is one so-called 'prophecy' of Capitor's that certainly has not come to pass," the Abbot insisted, for any such flaw corroborated his convictions. "That which she pronounced before the charger with the Tetrachion: 'He who deprives the crown of Spain of its sons, the crown of Spain will deprive of his sons.'

What does that mean? Who has deprived Spain of heirs? King Charles II has no heirs; no one has been deprived of any. Capitor was talking nonsense, and that is the fact of the matter."

"But, if I remember well," I objected, "Capitor, when she presented the dish, said first of all 'Two in one'. And in doing so, she pointed first to the couple formed by Neptune and Amphitrite, then to the sceptre in the form of a trident, is that not so?"

"What are you getting at?" Atto grumbled, sounding as though he wished to set the matter to one side once and for all.

"Does it not seem to fit in rather curiously with the monstrous Tetrachion of whom Cloridia spoke?"

"I do not see how," the Abbot retorted drily.

"Perhaps the Tetrachion is a pair of twins attached to one another at the side, like the two deities on the charger, and like the image we saw reflected in the mirrors," said I, illustrating my idea, myself surprised by the theory which had suddenly arisen in my mind. "After all, Capitor did say 'Two in one', did she not?"

"Yes, but she was referring only to the figures on the charger; and that, my boy, is the one and only Tetrachion in this tale, for what we thought we saw in the penthouse at the Vessel was merely an optical illusion — or have you forgotten?"

He turned his back on me, signifying that the conversation was at an end, and returned to the window.

"Is she still there?" I asked.

"Yes. She always loved gardens, man's hand bending the beauties of nature to his will and surpassing them," said he with a tremor in his voice.

"Perhaps it is time for you to go down…"

"No. Not now," he retorted at once, revealing which thoughts had triumphed in that cruel inner battle which had taken place before my eyes; "I shall see her tomorrow."

"But perhaps you could…"

"My mind is made up. Please leave me alone now. I have many things to deal with."