Secretum

Evening the Fourth

10th J ULY, 1700

As we slipped into the park of the Vessel, once again undisturbed, our gaze scanned the heights rather than what lay before us. Without a shadow of a doubt, Caesar Augustus was somewhere up there, perched on some high branch, perhaps even keeping an eye on us.

The late afternoon was at last free of the burning influence of the summer sun but, as had happened on the occasion of our previous visits, no sooner had we entered the Vessel than the evening shadows, which seemed already to be lengthening over Villa Spada, vanished, swept away, together with the few clouds, by a sharp little breeze that left the field open to a pure, shimmering golden light. In short, twilight seemed to be an unwelcome guest at Elpidio Benedetti's villa.

After crossing the entrance courtyard, we moved towards the espaliered citrus trees, in the neighbourhood of which we began a cautious investigation. The vivid tints of oranges and lemons, the splashes of colour of vases of roses, the leopard-like shadows of the chequerboard pergolas and the little wood confounded not only the sense of sight, but of smell, and indeed all the senses. Light breaths of wind caused every leaf to murmur, every flower to vibrate, every stem to sway. After a few minutes, I seemed to be seeing Caesar Augustus everywhere and nowhere. We walked the length of the drive, which was covered by a barrel-vaulted pergola ending with the fresco of Rome Triumphant. We found nothing. Even Atto seemed discouraged. We changed direction and headed for the house.

"Damned bird," he murmured.

"I confess that in my view we are most unlikely to find him. When Caesar Augustus does not want to be found, there is usually nothing that can be done about it."

"Nothing to be done? That we shall see!" said he, brandishing his silver-pommelled stick at the heavens, as though he were admonishing some deity.

"I tell you that if he does not want to be found, not even if…"

"I know what we shall do and what we shall not do, my boy. I am a diplomat in the service of the Most Christian King," said he, silencing me.

I held back briefly, then decided to answer.

"Very well, Signor Atto, then explain to me why you tore the note from my hand when I had just got hold of it. If Buvat had not performed that clever trick, if he had not fallen on top of me, perhaps we should now have the note in our hands. Instead of which, you took it and allowed it to be snatched from you by the parrot!"

I awaited his response with my chest tight with emotion. As usual, my sallies against Atto caused me a fine bout of anxiety.

For a second he stayed silent, then he answered me with a cruel hiss.

"You really haven't got a whisper of a clue, and what's more, you've never had one. You would never have been able to hold onto that note. Albani was right there in front of you. They would all have seen you, you'd have had to return it to him. Only I and Buvat could have made it disappear, if your idiotic parrot had not been there to ruin everything."

"In the first place, the parrot is not mine but was left to the household by the late lamented Monsignor Virgilio Spada, Cardinal Fabrizio's uncle, may God keep him in glory. And besides, it was thanks to the parrot that I was able to take the note from Albani."

"I could have distracted Albani. In the meanwhile, Buvat would have taken advantage of the opportunity."

"Distract Albani? But you've done nothing except to make an enemy of him. For the second time today you have caused a scandal in his presence with your verbal excesses. They'll all be talking about nothing else at the Villa Spada."

"Silence!"

I became furious. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I knew that my outbursts were thoroughly justified. Atto could not reduce me to silence that easily. But this was about something else.

He was looking behind me, tense and on his guard, as though studying a wild beast at close quarters.

"Is he behind me?" I asked, thinking of Caesar Augustus.

"He is moving away. He is dressed in the same way as last time."

"Dressed?"

I turned.

He was a little over ten yards off. Under his arm, he held a heavy bundle of papers tied with a red ribbon and was walking swiftly, with an absorbed frown, in the direction of a young girl with a complexion as white as ricotta and with thick, curly brown hair. With a bow, to which the maiden responded with a broad smile, he then handed her a purse full of money and some papers.

I just had time to recognise them before they both disappeared behind a large vase containing a lemon tree. There was little room for doubt. It was the same pair again: the mature gentleman and the maiden with whom I had seen him in conversation on the first day when we had entered the Vessel. She was (identical to) Maria Mancini. He, now that I had seen him a second time, reminded me of someone; but who?

Just as they had appeared, the two vanished. Already instructed by the previous apparitions, we made no attempt to follow them or to understand how they had disappeared. I looked at Atto.

"Ahi, dunque'c'e pur vero, " he murmured.

Now I knew whom we had seen.

It would take too long to go over all the facts to which that phrase — "Ah, so it really is true" — referred. Suffice to say that seventeen years earlier, it had been uttered at the point of death by a guest at the Donzello, the inn where I was then working as an apprentice and where, in those same days, I came to know Melani.

The dying man who had pronounced those words was Nicolas Fouquet, the former Superintendent of Finances of the Most Christian King, who was imprisoned for life following a palace conspiracy and had, after untold hardships and turns of fate, found refuge in Rome: at the Donzello, to be precise. Atto knew full well that I had a perfect memory of those events, since the memoir which he had taken from me and then paid for in cash recounted them in detail.

"It was the same gentleman as the other day, with Maria…" I murmured, still shaken by that enigmatic manifestation.

He did not reply, letting silence assent in his stead. Our altercation of moments before by now forgotten, we kept looking here and there, sticking our noses between leaves and branches, hiding from one another the fact that we were no longer looking for Caesar Augustus but into the abyss of memory in which the apparition had, through some necromancer's arts, cast us. I was thinking of the time when I had come to know Abbot Melani. He, however, was thinking of yet earlier times, of his friendship with Fouquet, of his tremendous destiny and of his tragic end. That was why, I said to myself, the first apparition we had come across at the Vessel had shaken Abbot Melani even more than the subsequent ones. He had in one moment beheld that apparition of Maria, to whom he was tied by such a tangle of feelings, and of Fouquet, whose terrible death he had both witnessed and had a part in.

Merely by looking at him, I could clearly perceive the powerful clash of opposing emotions which was taking place in Atto's soul. He had seen his old friend, not old and exhausted by years of imprisonment, but in the flower of strength and maturity. The bundle which he carried under his arm must contain working documents which he, an indefatigable worker in the service of the kingdom, even brought home with him — that I knew from Atto — before the machinations of the court of France stripped him of his minister's place, his honour, his liberty and his life.

With erect carriage, determined gait, distinguished features, a frowning expression, but only because his mind was turned towards matters high and noble: such had been Fouquet's bearing when Atto had known him in his own youth. Seeing him again, the Abbot was once more cast back into the depths of a thousand remote events, a thousand motions of the soul and of history, into an agony of infinite pain, and perhaps no less remorse. In that villa, as in a limpid and placid pool, the past was wondrously mirrored and, arranging its hair, almost coquettishly said: I am still here.

I saw Atto walk awhile, no longer with the gay movements of a lively old man, but with the uncertain gait of a young man precociously aged. I felt incapable of confronting those ordeals of the heart and the spirit; if I were in his place, said I, my whole body would be all shaken with sobs. Yet, he was resisting, still pretending to look for the parrot. I could only pardon him, and I thought that his many defects (rashness, duplicity, arrogance) must be forgiven if I truly wanted to call myself his friend. This meant perhaps deluding myself about many things: for example, that he might be capable of sincere friendship and trust. "You are my truest friend": alas, that phrase, which I had heard during the first apparition of Maria Mancini and Fouquet, I could certainly never have uttered in relation to Abbot Melani. Yet, is not friendship perhaps the constant companion of illusion, an illusion which, nurtured for its own sake, thus prolongs the joys, ephemeral but necessary, which it brings to our lives?

"1 do believe that you are right. Caesar Augustus is not here, or else it is too difficult to find him," said Atto tonelessly.

"If he does not want to be found, this is perhaps the ideal place," I completed his reasoning, no less distractedly.

"Yet it is truly curious that he should have flown to this exact spot," observed Melani. "The three cardinals, the Tetrachion, your parrot: this place is becoming somewhat crowded."

"In the case of Caesar Augustus, I think that is fortuitous. He likes tall, leafy trees, and here there are the finest ones on all the Janiculum."

"Well then, let us try to establish whether all the others came here fortuitously."

"The others?" I retorted, thinking apprehensively of the apparitions. "Starting with the Tetrachion," Melani hastened to make clear, directing his steps towards the entrance of the building.

Once again, however, he had to stop. The sweetest of melodies spread by an utterly aerial violin was softly filling the park. It was impossible to tell whence it came or for whose pleasure it was intended.

"Again that music… the folia," murmured Atto.

"Would you like to walk around the house and see where it is coming from?"

"No; let us stay here. We have done enough running for the time being. I would not be averse to a little break."

He sat down on a little marble bench. I thought he was about to justify himself with some pretext like "We all grow old" or "I am no longer a boy", but he said nothing.

"The folia. Like that of Capitor," I ventured.

"Did you too think of it?"

"It was you who explained it to me: Capitor, the Spanish lunatic, whose nickname 'Capitor' is, you said, only a deformation of lapitora, which is supposed to be Spanish for 'the madwoman'."

"Tout se tient.'* This, however, is a folia that seems never to come to an end. Every time we hear it there are new variations, while Capitor's folly did come to an end."

"Do you mean that she left France in the end?"

"Yes, one day she and the Bastard did go. But nothing was ever the same as before."

"What happened?"

"A series of unfortunate circumstances which may have led to the scene which we have just witnessed," Atto whispered, at last deciding to utter some words on the apparition of Maria and Fouquet.

After Capitor's spectacle, Abbot Melani told me, the Cardinal's attitude changed radically. The madwoman's obscure prophecy, "A virgin who weds the crown brings death", was breathing down his neck and terror's trumpet resounded in his ears: the *"It all holds together." (Translator's note.) union between Louis and Maria must be eradicated, crushed, prevented by all means. Frightened, the Cardinal thought, "My head depends upon it," hiding behind his usual pallor his new unavowable fear.

Thus, over the next two months, in the spring of 1659, ever more fearful obstacles came between the two lovers. In June, Mazarin formally decreed that Maria must leave the court. The Cardinal, who planned to travel to the Pyrenees in order to discuss a number of details of the peace treaty with Spain, would take his niece with him and separate from her during the journey, sending her on to La Rochelle, where she was to reside with her two younger sisters Ortensia and Marianna. The departure date: 22nd June.

The Queen, fearing Louis's reaction, took care not to break the news to him. Mazarin therefore charged Maria with announcing her departure to the King. Louis's wrath exploded: he threatened Mazarin with disgrace, and Maria's despair immeasurably increased his rage and thirst for revenge. For three days, he would not let his mother speak; in utter desperation, he cast himself at the feet of Mazarin and the Queen, begging them in tears to allow him to marry Maria. With consummate rhetoric and in a firm voice, Mazarin reminded the young King that he, the Cardinal, had been chosen by his father and mother to assist him with his counsel, that he had served him with inviolable fidelity and that he could never have done anything that might damage the glory of France and of the crown; and finally, that he was the tutor of his niece Maria and would rather have killed her than consent to such a betrayal.

The King, in tears, gave way. When they were alone, Mazarin said to the Queen: "What are we to do? In his place, I'd do the same thing."

Even after that day, Louis kept telling Maria that he would never consent to marry the Infanta of Spain, that he expected to overcome the resistance of the Cardinal and his mother and that only she would one day sit on the French throne. As a pledge of his faith, he gave her the most precious necklace which he had acquired from the Queen of England and which he had set aside for the day of his betrothal.

Maria, however, had no more illusions: deeply wounded by her loved one's weakness, she even went so far once as to urge Louis to wed the Infanta.

Louis tried to reassure her, swearing that he had thoughts for none but her and would surely find a solution. Such promises could no longer satisfy the woman who received them, nor even the man who pronounced them.

The days that followed were nothing but an alternation of contrasting sentiments and humours: of Maria's love for the King, on the one hand, and love for her honour, on the other. At court meanwhile, Louis constantly repeated that his pain at the separation was unbearable. But words no longer sufficed.

"Few men, my boy, have seen what I then saw, and none will ever speak of it, of that you may be sure," said Atto.

So that the looseness of his tongue would not cause his legs to grow heavy, Atto and I took a brief promenade under the pergolas of the park. In that place populated by the phantasms of the past, every drive seemed to elicit from him an episode, every hedge a phrase, every flower bed a detail.

On the eve of Maria's departure, the King was far from resigned. On 21st June, the day before the separation, the Queen Mother and her son had a long private conversation in the bath chamber. Afterwards the King was seen to leave with swollen eyes. Maria was to depart; Louis had lost a battle, yet hoped somehow to win the war.

On the next day, suffering from an exceptionally violent lovesickness, he was bled twice, on the foot and on the arm (in the days that followed he was subjected to four purges and to another six treatments with leeches). Sobbing unrestrainedly and promising in a loud voice that he would make her his wife, Louis accompanied Maria to her carriage.

"She, obviously, could not understand. He was the King, he could do what he wanted; and yet he was yielding to his mother and to the Cardinal."

"And what did Maria say to him?"

"Ah Sire! You weep: but you are the King, and it is I who am departing!'" said Atto with a thin smile on his lips.

"But why did the King not impose his will?"

"You should know that only the absence of the beloved reveals her importance. Louis felt in love but precisely because it was the first time he did not realise that it would be the only one. Queen Anne convinced her son that with time he would forget and one day he would be grateful to her for the hurt she was inflicting on him. He believed her. And the damage was irreparable."

We again sat down on a marble bench.

Once Maria had gone, there began between the two an intense, impassioned exchange of letters. She chose to leave her sisters at La Rochelle and to take refuge at the nearby fortress of Brouage.

It was August. Louis, with Queen Anne and the court in his train, set out for the Pyrenees where the treaty between France and Spain was to be signed; and the seal of that accord was to be the marriage between Louis and the Infanta.

"As I think I have already mentioned to you, I was part of that expedition which played an important role in the history of Europe," said Atto with ill-concealed pride.

On the 13th and 14th the Mazarinettes went to greet the King and his mother who were passing through those parts. Although they all spent the night in the same palace, Maria and Louis were not permitted so much as to exchange one word. And he, the King, put up with this in silence.

"It was then that the thought crossed my mind: His Majesty will never be any better than that weakling of a father of his, Louis XIII! The Cardinal can sleep quietly in his bed…" said Atto scornfully.

It was on that very occasion, when the young King was mounting his horse to continue the journey, that Melani was the bearer of a most secret letter from Maria: the last farewell.

"No one but me has ever known of the existence of that letter. It was long and heart-rending. I shall never forget the words with which it ended."

Atto recited from memory:

Des pointes de fer affreuses, herissees, terribles, vont etre entre Vous et moi. Mes larmes, mes sanglots font trembler ma main. Mon imagination se trouble, je ne puis plus ecrire. Je ne sgais ce que je dis. A Dieu, Seigneur, le peu de vie qui me reste ne se soutiendra que par mes souvenirs. O souvenirs charmants! Que ferez vous de moy, que feray je de vous? Jeperds la raison. Adieu, Seigneur, pour la derniere fois.'*

"And this was truly her last farewell to their love," he concluded.

"But," I suggested, "did you secretly read that letter?" "Eh?" murmured Atto, embarrassed. "Silence, and do not interrupt me."

While I laughed inwardly at having caught Melani out (it was clear that he had taken a discreet look at Maria's letter before delivering it to the King), the latter continued his narration.

Mazarin strove to persuade Maria to accept the proposal of marriage from the Constable Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, a member of the noble and most ancient Roman family which the Cardinal's own father had served. Mazarin himself had served Filippo Colonna, Lorenzo Onofrio's grandfather. It had been Filippo Colonna who had dissuaded Mazarin from marrying the daughter of an obscure notary with whom he had fallen in love and who had instead set him on the way of the soutane — the prelature — wherein he had, as his patron had predicted, found great good fortune. The young King's way seemed thus to be traced by and modelled on that of the Cardinal, who pitilessly bestowed on his ward the broken web of his own destiny.

In order to persuade Maria to have herself married off to Lorenzo Onofrio, Mazarin was prepared to make concessions. Maria then requested to be allowed to return to Paris at once. Thus she did return to the capital. There, however, her uncle ordered her to be immured in his house. Destiny, however, so arranged matters that, while the Cardinal was busy elsewhere * Awful iron spikes, bristling and terrible, will stand between you and me. My tears, my sobs, cause my hand to tremble. My imagination clouds over, I can write no longer. I know not what I say. Adieu, my Lord, the little life that remains to me will be sustained only by memories. O charming memories! What will you make of me, what shall I make of you? I am losing my reason. Adieu, my Lord, for the last time. in France, Maria and her sisters had to leave the Palais Mazarin because of some rebuilding works. And where did they take up lodgings? In the Louvre, in the Cardinal's own apartments, while the latter learned the news in letters from one of his informants and was unable to do anything about it.

In the Louvre, Maria was once again the object of new, unexpected intrigues: she was passionately courted and received a proposal of marriage from the heir to the Duchy of Lorraine, Charles, the future hero of the Battle of Vienna. He was an eighteen-year- old, handsome, enterprising and brimming with ardour. She was prepared to marry him, far preferring him to Colonna, whom she had never seen and who would lock her up in Italy, where a husband's power over his wife was absolute. Mazarin, however, finding all manner of pretexts, vehemently refused. He feared that, even married, Maria would still be dangerous in Paris.

Meanwhile, preparations were proceeding for the marriage between Louis and the Infanta of Spain. There were seven months of negotiations and preliminaries before the ceremony could take place, in two stages, as required by custom, on either side of the frontier (all sovereigns being forbidden to set foot in the neighbouring kingdom, since that would be equivalent to a declaration of war).

The first act of the treaty was the solemn renunciation of her hereditary rights to the throne of Spain pronounced by the Infanta Maria Teresa. On the following day, still on Spanish soil, the proxy marriage was celebrated with the Most Christian King. Louis was represented here by Don Luis de Haro, the Spanish negotiator. No Frenchman was admitted, except for Louis's witness, Zongo Ondedei, Bishop of Frejus and Mazarin's evil genius.

Anne of Austria and the Cardinal could not bear the delay. A thousand times they had repeated to Louis that his Spanish fiancee was beautiful, far more beautiful than Maria Mancini. It was thus essential that she really should be beautiful. Madame de Motteville, a lady in waiting to Queen Anne and Mademoiselle de Montpensier, a cousin of the King, were therefore sent incognito on a mission: to evaluate the bride's womanly qualities.

On their return to the French camp on the frontier, they knew they would have to answer only one question: "Well, what is she like?"

"They did all they could to appear satisfied," Atto laughed derisively, "but it was enough to look at their faces, their drawn smiles, their assumed expressions… We knew the truth at once."

"In fact, she does not seem to be very tall: on the contrary, somewhat on the small side. To put it briefly, she's short," they confessed in unison. "But she is quite well made. Her eyes are not too small, her nose is not too big," they forced themselves to say, the one interrupting the other. "Her forehead is, in truth, somewhat ungarnished," a roundabout way of saying that the spouse was bald in the temples and her hair anything but orderly.

Madame de Motteville concluded brazenly: "If she had more regular teeth, she would be one of the most beautiful women in Europe." Mademoiselle de Montpensier, more scrupulous, seeing that very soon everyone would be able to judge the Infanta with their own eyes, allowed herself to let slip, "It hurts one to look at her." Then she hurriedly corrected herself, explaining that she was referring to that horrible coiffure and to the "monstrous machine": the enormous farthingale into which Maria Teresa's poor little body was forced.

"At that point, we were all terrified by how Louis might react on the next day, when he saw the Infanta for the first time."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing of what we feared. At the meeting with his future bride, he went through the ceremonial like a perfect actor. Under his mother's doting eyes, he followed her innumerable recommendations and acted out the ritual part of the lovelorn suitor consumed with impatience, as is the custom at royal weddings. He even galloped rather gallantly along the riverside, with hat in hand, following the bride's boat. Louis was splendid, so manly and ardent on his steed, and sent poor Maria Teresa into ecstasies.

Abbot Melani adjusted the buckle of one shoe, then the other, after which he raised his eyes to heaven.

"Poor wretched Infanta," he murmured. "And what a wretch, he."

By that impeccable conduct, Louis was striving to obey the exhortations of the Queen Mother: to silence the heart and lock his senses in a drawer. He venerated his mother and was confident that she and the Cardinal had made the best choice for him. Such was the outcome of the inexperience of life and love to which the pair had condemned him. Yet, from the moment he saw his bride, he began silently to be consumed by the worm of doubt and suspicion, the burning fear of having been deceived.

From that moment on, the fire within him burned down to cold ash. The young Sovereign's face gave nothing away, nor did his actions or words, although a thousand eyes watched and a thousand ears listened at every moment. It was not possible to detect any weakening in the man who, at barely twelve years of age, surprised by the fury of the populace during the Fronde uprising had, when on the point of fleeing the royal palace with his mother, gone to bed still dressed and managed not to open an eye all night, while the furious mob passed near his feet, silenced only by a sacrosanct respect for the innocent sleep of the boy King. What would have happened if someone had raised the coverlets a little and seen the deception?

To his companions who, after the visit to Maria Teresa, went to him in the hope of persuading him to open his heart, asking him what was his impression of the Infanta, he replied simply: "Ugly." And not another word could be got out of him.

"Who knows how much he was suffering," I ventured.

"Because his future wife was not as he expected her to be? No, not as much as you think. For him that changed little or nothing. He was awakening to the fact that his heart was not docilely following his mother's reassurances, as he had for a time wanted to believe. He had been warmed by the sun of a fine pair of black eyes, lost in the heather scent of Maria's wild brown hair, enchanted by her witty barbs and silvery laughter."

Nothing of this showed in the King's behaviour during the nuptial celebrations and festivities, except one single detail: for the liveries at the reception, Louis chose the colours of Maria's family crest.

He absolved his first conjugal duty without batting an eyelid, but on the very next day, with the court by now journeying back to the capital, the King abandoned his bride for two days. Where did he go? No one voiced the least allusion to this, but everyone knew: Louis suddenly made a deviation from the planned route and galloped towards Brouage, the castle where Maria had stayed in the Charentes, a region where she is still fondly remembered. At Brouage, Louis wept by the seashore. He asked to be shown the bed in which she had passed the night without closing an eye.

"But if no one spoke of this, as you yourself have said, how come you know all these details?" I asked in astonishment.

"In that chamber, Maria's bedchamber, I myself saw him. I had come with others on the orders of His Eminence. We found him overcome by a sort of agony. He was, I thought, like an image of the Deposition: the blankets torn from the couch, and he, crouching in a corner under the window, trembling with pain in the cold dawn of the Charentes."

We again took the avenue leading to the courtyard before the entrance, crossing it from end to end, accompanied by the murmur of the fountain at its centre; Atto measured the space with slow and measured paces.

"At Brouage, Louis at last tore his heart from his breast. There he wept all the tears he had to weep; there he bade farewell to love forever, without knowing that in so doing he was saying farewell to himself, to that quiet and calm self which I had known and appreciated, and which was now lost forever. I shall never forget him. The face which looked up at me was that of a pillar of salt under the grey light of that dawn at Brouage. That was the last act. The rest is… a morass."

"A morass?"

"Yes. The slow sinking of that love, its weary agony, the painful series of attempts by the King to forget Maria."

Back in Paris with his Spanish bride, Maria Teresa, who knew nothing of all this, Louis was informed by the perfidious Countess of Soissons that the young and passionate Charles of Lorraine was courting Maria amiably and probably with success. The King grew furious with Maria, despised her, mistreated her. She in her turn grew cold; then he returned to the fold and began to visit her at the Palais Mazarin in the rue des Petits Champs.

"In other words, just in front of my present home," said Atto with calculated nonchalance. "And the courtiers, led by those two gossips Madame de La Fayette and Madame de Motteville, who still detested Maria out of envy, insinuated that Louis was going there more for the beauty of Ortensia, the youngest of the Mancini girls, than for love of Maria."

"Was that true?"

"What did it matter? Louis XIVwas now married. The promises had been broken, the dream had vanished. Only a year before the lovelorn couple competed with poetic verses, now they went for one another with barbed, venomous remarks. They had become the eidolon, the phantasms of themselves. They had let life slip away from them, and the loss was final."

"Excuse me, Signor Atto, but you mentioned the Countess de Soissons?" I asked, wanting to be certain of the name.

"Yes, so you know her?" replied Atto with irony, irritated by my interruption. "Now listen and keep silent."

So I did keep silent, but my thoughts were straying elsewhere, to the letter from Maria in which she had spoken of the dangerous poisoner, the mysterious Countess of S., the memory of whom was so painful to the Connestabilessa. Was she perhaps this Soissons? The Abbot's tale, however, was already galloping on its way and distracted me from my reflections.

It was in the year between the marriage with Maria Teresa and the death of Mazarin, explained Melani, that Louis understood his error, and what was more tragic, that there was no remedy for it. His mother's prophecies had not come true: happiness had not come. But there could be no turning back.

"All or nothing — that was the King of France. And still is. Maria was his all and they took her from him. Since then Louis has been nothing."

"What do you mean?"

"The dissolution, the destruction, the systematic and deliberate dismantling of the monarchy and of the figure of the King himself."

With a grimace, I betrayed my dissent. Was not Louis XIV the Most Christian King of France, not the most feared sovereign in Europe?

I did not contradict Atto. Other thoughts were racing through my mind.

"Signor Atto, what has all this to do with the apparitions of Superintendent Fouquet and Maria Mancini?"

"It has indeed plenty to do with them. Louis was almost twenty-two years old in 1660, when he married Maria Teresa. He was still an indecisive, inexpert young man, incapable of opposing Mazarin and his mother. Barely one year later, as you well know, he celebrated his twenty-third birthday on 5th September by having poor Nicolas arrested; then he imprisoned him for life in the remote fortress of Pinerol, inflicting a thousand torments on him. Now, I ask you, how is it possible that the timid, dreaming young man he had been twelve months before should have suddenly become such a fury?"

"The answer, in your opinion, is the loss of Maria Mancini," I anticipated him, "yet the meaning of the two scenes we have just witnessed still remains obscure to me."

"What you and I saw a little while ago? Nicolas handing a purse full of money to Maria. And, in their first apparition, Maria saying: 'I shall be grateful to you for the rest of my life. You are my truest friend.' Well, you should know that today's apparition explains why Maria expressed those words of affection and gratitude to Fouquet."

"Meaning?"

"I shall take it step by step. When Cardinal Mazarin died, Maria found herself unable to obtain payment of her own dowry from the universal successor to His Eminence's fortune, that dangerous madman the Due de la Meilleraye, the husband of her sister Ortensia. This was a painful situation, because apart from that money, Maria possessed absolutely nothing. She went for help to Fouquet, who had admired her and valued her company since her arrival at court. And it was directly owing to the

Superintendent's timely intercession that Maria at last gained her dowry from her brother-in-law."

"So that bag of coins and all those papers were Maria's dowry?"

"Yes, the papers will have been letters of exchange or things of that sort."

"So that is why Maria, as we saw on our first visit here, said to Fouquet: 'I shall be grateful to you for the rest of my life. You are my truest friend.'" I concluded with passion.

I realised at that moment that the Abbot and I were now talking about these visions as though they were utterly normal phenomena.

"Signor Atto, it seems almost as though the facts which you are narrating to me here in the Vessel are actually congregating in this very place and… they are in fact restoring the past to life."

"The past, the past, if only it were more simple," groaned Atto with a sigh. "That past never happened."

I was shocked.

"That meeting between Fouquet and Maria about the dowry, and even Maria Mancini's thanks to Fouquet are not just the manifestation of some past event, do you understand? For it was not thus that Fouquet delivered her dowry to Maria, nor did she ever pronounce those words to the Superintendent."

"How can you be sure of that?" I asked dubiously.

"Because Maria wrote those very words of thanks and esteem in a letter which, moreover, the Superintendent never read: the letter was intercepted by Colbert, who had already plotted Fou- quet's downfall, with the King's complicity. As you know, when the news of Fouquet's arrest came, Maria and I were already in Rome; I received the dreadful news in a note from my friend de Lionne, one of His Majesty's ministers.

"And the dowry?"

"Likewise. Maria was already on the point of leaving for Italy, driven from Paris and destined to wed Constable Colonna by the Cardinal's will, albeit posthumous: the dowry was sent directly to Rome, such was the haste of the Queen Mother and the court to be rid of her."

"In other words, the Superintendent never gave Maria her dowry in person, nor could he ever have heard or even read those words: 'I shall be grateful to you for the rest of my life. You are my truest friend.'"

"Exactly."

"So we have then witnessed two events which never took place."

"That is not quite correct, or rather, it is incomplete. If Maria had not been driven from Paris, if Fouquet had not been arrested, then they might perhaps have been able to meet: he would have delivered in person that legacy of her uncle's and she would have expressed those thanks directly to him. Maria's departure was, moreover, a matter of great pain to Nicolas, who foresaw the disastrous consequences to which it would sooner or later lead; even if he, I think, could not imagine that he would be the first victim of the new King's vengeance arising from the ashes of that love."

"So we have seen what should have happened between Maria and Fouquet if malign conspiracies had not wrecked the natural course of their lives…" I understood in a flash, while the breath stopped in my breast.

"Seen, seen…" the Abbot corrected me, abruptly changing his tone, and suddenly denying the turn our thinking was taking. "How you let your mind run away with you. I'd say that we simply imagined these things. Do not forget that we might simply be the victims of vapours released from the ground, and perhaps encouraged by my tales."

"Signor Atto, what you say may certainly be true of the second of the three episodes we have witnessed: Maria Mancini in the company of the young King. But neither for the first nor for the last: how could I have imagined with such exactitude circumstances of which I did not even know the existence? Or do you mean to tell me that our hallucinations have the quality of clairvoyance?"

"Perhaps: rather, you have simply shared a hallucination of mine."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, it might have been an episode of transmission of thought. Recently in France and England, a number of treatises have come out, like that of the Abbe de Vallemont, which explain that this is a real phenomenon readily explicable by the laws of reason. This takes place through the action of the most subtle and invisible corpuscles emitted by our thoughts, which sometimes meet with those of others and impregnate their imagination."

"So they say, then, that we are surrounded by invisible parcels of others' thoughts?"

"Exactly. A little like the exhalations of quicksilver."

"I know nothing of that."

"Nothing better than quicksilver demonstrates the subtle nature of vapours and exhalations. This metal, which is both liquid and dry, exhales fumes so subtle and penetrating that if you move it with one hand, you will see that a piece of gold tightly held in the other hand will be all covered with quicksilver. The same thing will happen to the piece of gold even if you hold it in your mouth. If then you place it in contact with gold, silver or tin, you will see that these metals soften and are reduced to a paste known as amalgam. If you place quicksilver in a leathern tube and heat it a little, it will penetrate the leather and emerge as though through a sieve."

"Really?" I exclaimed in astonishment, having never heard anything of the sort.

"Yes, and I have read that exactly the same thing may happen with the imagination."

"So I may simply have witnessed some unconscious fantasising on your part?"

Atto nodded in confirmation.

We walked a while longer, one beside the other, in silence. From time to time, I would glance at him out of the corner of one eye: frowning, Atto appeared to be plunged in grave meditations, in which he did not, however, include me.

I meditated for a long time on the explanations furnished by the Abbot. So we had seen, not what happened between Maria Mancini and Fouquet, but what might have happened if Maria's destiny and that of the Superintendent had followed their natural and benevolent course. If I had had the leisure and the means to philosophise, I should have asked myself: does a chaste hand restore in some Utopian place the broken threads of history? Does some merciful refuge give shelter to events which will not take place? All these were questions which, like the pikes of an armed battalion, seemed to point to the place where we were.

"Look at this," said the Abbot suddenly, stopping abruptly before a fine, broad flower bed. "Look at these plants: each one of them has a plate before it with its name."

"Hyacinth, violet, rose, lotus…" I read mechanically. "And what of it?"

"Just go on: ambrosia, nepenthes, panacea, even moly," he insisted, growing pale.

My attention wandered from those names to Melani's face, questioningly.

"Do these mean nothing to you?" he insisted. "These are the plants to be found in the mythical gardens of Adonis."

I remained silent and perplexed.

"In other words, they do not exist!" exclaimed Atto in a strangled voice. "Ambrosia is the food of the gods of Olympus, which gave immortality; nepenthes is a legendary Egyptian plant which, according to the ancient Greeks, gave serenity to the soul and made one forget suffering. The panacea…"

"SignorAtto…"

"Silence, and listen to me," he interrupted me brusquely, while fear at last appeared on his face. "The panacea, as I was saying, but perhaps you too know, is a fantastic plant which the alchemists have been seeking for centuries; it is capable of healing all diseases and preventing old age. As for the moly, it is a magic herb which Mercury gave to Ulysses to make him immune to the potions of the witch Circe. Do you understand now? These plants do not exist! Tell me what they are doing here, on show, with their names before them?"

He turned suddenly, hastening nervously towards the villa. I moved to catch up with him. Hardly had I done so than we witnessed a spectacle which made the hairs stand up on our heads.

A waxen spectral figure, playing the violin, hovered in the air behind an arcaded open loggia on the battlements of the villa's outer wall. An impalpable mantle of black gauze billowed capriciously from his shoulders, moved by a sudden, turbulent wind. The music which sprung from his bow was none other than the folia which had so many times accompanied us on our peregrinations through the Vessel.

We drew back instinctively, and I felt my flesh grow as cold as marble. A moment later, however, the Abbot, ashen faced, advanced again. He then stood awhile staring open-mouthed and tense with shock, almost as though transformed into a tragic mask.

"Oh thou!" cried Melani at length to the apparition, stretching out his arms in front of him as to an apocalyptic vision and brandishing his walking stick at it. "Whence comest thou and what is thy race? What troubles bring thee here? By the Numina, I beseech thee and by all that is dearest to thee: respond to my request, hide nothing, that I may know at last!"

"I am an officer of the armed forces of Holland!" thundered the being up above, without putting down his violin, and in no way put out by our presence or by the Abbot's singular manner of addressing him.

Melani seemed to be on the point of fainting. I rushed to support him, but he at once resumed his speech.

"Thou Flying Dutchman!" cried Atto with all the breath that remained in his body, almost as though these must be his last words. "From what spectral world didst thou come to embark here in this phantom Vessel?"

The stranger stopped playing and said nothing, scrutinising us attentively. Suddenly, he bowed, disappeared behind the loggia and reappeared immediately after with a rudimentary rope ladder which he unrolled on our side of the wall.

Atto and I stood silently with bated breath.

The being who had appeared before our eyes in such spectral guise and who had seemed to float freely in the air now, however, to our great wonderment came down to us, violin and bow tucked under one arm, prudently stepping on the rope ladder like any other mortal.

"Giovanni Henrico Albicastro, soldier and musician, at your service," he introduced himself, bowing slightly to Abbot Melani, and showing no sign of noticing our pallid expressions.

Atto, after the great shock he had suffered only moments before, could not find the strength to do or say a thing, and stayed silent, leaning heavily on his walking stick.

"You are right," said the curious stranger, addressing the Abbot. "This villa is so faded and tranquil that it seems a phantasm. That is why I like it. When I come to Rome, I take refuge here, on the cornice of that little loggia. To play standing up there is not very comfortable, I must confess, but the panorama which one can descry does, I guarantee you, provide the best of inspiration."

"A cornice?" said the Abbot, shivering.

"Yes, 'tis a little walkway, on the other side," said he, indicating with his eyes the outer wall from which he had just descended.

The Abbot lowered his eyes, looking exhausted.

"Was it yours, the folia which you were playing a moment ago?" he asked in a broken voice.

Albicastro replied only with a questioning look.

"Sir, you have the honour to be speaking to Abbot Atto Melani," I intervened, overcoming my reticence.

Having at last learned the name of the person before him, Albicastro added: "Yes, Signor Abbot, 'twas I who composed it. I hope that I have not unduly offended your ears. You seemed to be in a state of great agitation when you addressed me."

"Far from it, far from it," replied Melani weakly, while the pallor of fear gave way to the purple of shame.

"I would not wish to detain you, Sir," said Albicastro. "You seem to me to be rather tired. With your permission, I shall take my leave of you. We shall be seeing each other later: after all, you too are visiting the villa, is that not so? There's no end to discovering it."

Accompanying his words with a slight bow, the musician strode away from us.

Alone once more, silence reigned between the Abbot and me for several moments. I resolved to go and see. I scaled the rope ladder which Albicastro had left hanging down the outer wall and, reaching the loggia, clambered over to the far side.

"Is it there?" asked Atto, with a vague, nervous air, without taking his eyes off his fine shoes.

"Yes, it is there," I replied.

The cornice was there, obviously. Nor was it even that narrow. Albicastro was anything but a flying Dutchman.

The Abbot said nothing. The thought of the scene of terror which he had imagined only moments before filled him with shame.

"That Dutchman is, nevertheless, a trifle eccentric," I observed. "It surely is not every day that one finds a violinist playing up on a shelf."

"And those mysterious flowers, which made me…" continued Atto.

"Signor Atto," I interrupted, "with all due respect, permit me to say that those flowers are by no means as mysterious as you believe them to be."

The Abbot started, as though I had stung him.

"And what do you know of that?" he protested, visibly annoyed.

"It may indeed be true," I replied with all the modesty of which I was capable, "that ambrosia, nepenthes, panacea and moly were, as you say, all present in the mythical garden of Adonis; that I do not doubt. And perhaps that is precisely why Elpidio Benedetti chose these plants. But it is quite untrue that they do not exist. Of course, I speak only in my capacity as an assistant gardener, and on the basis of such humble experience as I have gained over the years in the plantations of the Villa Spada, as well as from a few manuals on flowers which I enjoy reading from time to time. Nevertheless, I can tell you that ambrosia, if it was once the food of the gods of Olympus on whom it conferred immortality, I know today as a mushroom which the ants are gluttons for. The same with nepenthes: it is described as a carnivorous plant which the Jesuit fathers brought back from China; whether it comes rather from Egypt and, as the ancient Greeks believed, makes the soul serene and enables one to forget pain, that, I'm afraid, I do not know. The panacea may have been sought for centuries by alchemists, but I know it as a medicinal plant that cures warts. As for moly, 'tis merely a form of garlic, which does not of course mean that it could not immunise Ulysses from Circe's magic potions. Everyone knows the infinite virtues of garlic…"

I broke off, when I became aware of the grave humiliation painted in dark tints on Atto's face.

Poor Abbot Melani. In the face of the mysterious apparitions which we had repeatedly witnessed in the Vessel, he had always espoused scepticism, attributing those inexplicable apparitions to corrupted vapours, corpuscles, imaginings and who knows what else. Yet tension and fear had grown in his breast no less than in mine, of this I now had the certain proof.

These had, however, materialised at precisely the wrong moment: before the plants in the flower bed in which the Abbot had thought to see the legendary flowers of the gardens of Adonis, and immediately after that, through a bizarre set of circumstances, before the image of that singular individual Albicastro, musician and soldier, seemingly suspended in mid-air. Atto had, in other words, given in to fear of the unknown just when there was nothing unknown involved. He had deceived himself several times over and now the shame of it was gnawing cruelly at his liver.

"That is what I meant to say," he commented at last, perhaps sensing my thoughts. "All this confirms what I have been preaching to you since the very first day we set foot in this place: superstition is the daughter of ignorance. Every single thing in this world can be explained by the science of things and phenomena; had 1 possessed sufficient knowledge of floriculture, I could not have made so dreadful a mistake."

"Of course, Signor Atto, but permit me to point out to you that, in my modest opinion, we have not yet found a convincing explanation for the apparitions we have seen here."

"We have not found one because of our ignorance. Just as we thought we saw a flying man, when he was simply walking along a cornice in a strong breeze."

"Do you think that someone has been playing tricks on us?"

"Who can say? The scope for disguising the truth is infinite."

A few moments later we had entered the ground floor of the building.

"After the shock which Buvat gave us yesterday, you should have put a few questions to me," said Atto.

"That is true. How the deuce did Buvat manage to locate and get to us without being either seen or heard? He appeared so suddenly that he seemed to have descended from heaven."

"I too could not believe my eyes, but then I found the explanation," said he, drawing me into a little room to the right of the main door.

"Now I understand," I exclaimed.

The room was in fact the base of a minuscule service staircase. Unlike us, Buvat had not taken the main stairs on the opposite side of the building (in other words at the end and to the left, for those entering it) but these little service stairs. That was how he had appeared unexpectedly just in front of us, at the end of the first-floor salon that gave onto the Vatican. Although we could hear them, we could not understand where his footsteps were coming from, and this was not only because of the echo produced by the high vault of the gallery but because we were quite unable to conceive of the presence of another way up, of which we knew nothing.

So we went up to the first floor by the service stairs which were, like their more spacious counterpart, of spiral construction. We were just climbing the last steps when we were transfixed by a powerful siren, accompanied by a deep and menacing reverberation. Instinctively I brought my hands to my ears to protect them from the powerful shock.

"Damn it," cursed Abbot Melani. "Again that folia!”

Upon reaching the first floor, we found ourselves facing Albicastro. He had begun to play just at the top of the little spiral staircase which thus acted as a sound box, amplifying the violin and transforming the bass into gigantic lowing sounds and the treble into vertiginous whistling. The music ceased.

"It seems that the theme of the folia gives you more joy than any other music," said Melani, plainly enervated by the latest shock.

"As the great Sophocles put it, 'life is more beautiful when one does not reason'. Besides, this music is suited to the Vessel, the stultifera navis, or Ship of Fools, if you prefer," he replied with Dutch brio, dusting down his instrument and then beginning to tune it, thus emitting a series of mewing sounds at once comical and irritating.

Atto's sole response was to begin to declaim:

On streets or highways you can find

A pack of fools who vaunt their shame

And yet prefer to shun the name.

Thus have I thought this was the time

To launch a ship of fools in rhyme:

A galley, bark, skiff, ketch or yawl -

But one ship wouldn't hold them all.

Atto, with those verses, seemed plainly to be calling Albicastro a madman.

"So you know my beloved Sebastian Brant?" asked the Dutchman, surprised and in no way offended.

"I have been received too many times at the court of Innsbruck or that of the Elector of Bavaria not to have understood your allusion to Brant's Stultifera Navis, the most widely read book in Germany over the past two hundred years. One cannot claim to know the German peoples if one has not read that book."

Once more I was taken aback by Atto's encyclopaedic knowledge: seventeen years ago he had admitted to having few clear notions of the Bible, but when it came to matters political and diplomatic, he always knew everything.

"You will therefore agree with me that the Stultifera Navis goes well with the villa in which we now stand," replied the musician, who then recited:

Know, foolishness is ever bold

And fools themselves for wise men hold,

But should a man himself despise,

Why then, at last, a fool's made wise!

And Abbot Melani responded:

But what fools are, we plainly see,

The fools themselves don't want to be.

Whereupon, Albicastro, eying with amusement the thousand pleats, leather embroideries and tassels and decorations on Atto's ceremonial dress:

Right now I will not mention those

Who gad about in foolish clothes;

Indeed, were I to count the same,

I'd anger legions by the name.

They have no taste for wearing twill

Or simple jerkins void of frill

Prefer to wear the Holland stuff

With slitted sleeves and bright enough

With colours woven in, befurred,

And on the sleeve a cuckoo bird.

"Nevertheless, 'tis quite true, many strange things do happen here," I swiftly interposed, fearing that the tourney might all too easily degenerate, what with the pair calling one another mad. "I mean," said I, correcting myself at once, for Atto was showing signs of impatience at my observation, "that 'tis said that corrupt vapours circulate here, or other strange exhalations able even… how can one put it?… to produce hallucinations."

"Exhalations? Perhaps. That is the beauty of this place. Did not nature's prudence perhaps bestow upon children the seal of folly wherewith to increase the pleasure they can give their educators and to soften the latter's trials? Likewise, this villa lightens the cares of travellers who find solace therein."

As he spoke, he placed the violin in its case, from which he drew a series of sheets of music.

"Do you perhaps mean that the Vessel possesses magical qualities?" I asked.

"No more than love possesses."

"What do you mean?"

"Did not Cupid, the god of love, take on the guise of a thoughtless and crazy little child with flowing locks? And yet love, as the poet puts it, moves the sun and the other stars."

"You speak in riddles."

"No, no, 'tis quite simple. One needs only a child's innocence to move the world. Nothing is more powerful."

Abbot Melani raised his eyebrows smugly, looking at me through half-closed eyes as though to tell me that Albicastro seemed to him somewhat touched.

Meanwhile, the musician continued:

The world was Alexander's fief:

A poisoned drink brought quick relief;

And likewise King Darius fled

His troubles: Bessus struck him dead;

And Cyrus' pride had no duration:

His blood supplied his last potation.

On earth no ruler comes so high

That termination isn't nigh.

In history, at least my version,

The realms Assyrian and Persian,

And Macedonian and Grecian,

And Carthage and the Roman nation,

They all have come at last to dust.

The verses recited by the Dutchman struck me no little; they seemed closely to echo what Melani had told me of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin's fear of dying.

"Again your Brant. You speak always of folly, you love playing the folia," the Abbot intoned with ill-concealed scepticism.

"Scorn not folly, for 'tis no defect. Do you not, too, concur with my ancient compatriot of Rotterdam that to pardon one's friends' errors by trying to hide them, deceiving oneself about them and doing one's best not to see them — even going so far as to appreciate their vices as great virtues — is all too similar to folly? Is that not the greatest wisdom?"

Atto almost imperceptibly lowered his eyes: Albicastro had struck home. He seemed almost privy to the talks between Melani and me and my musings concerning our tormented friendship.

Meanwhile, the Dutch musician, turning back to rummage among his sheets of music, began to recite to himself:

We don't find friendships like the one

That David had with Jonathan,

Or of Patroclus and Achilles,

Orestes and his friend Pylades,

Like Pythias, to Damon true,

And King Saul's armour-bearer too,

Or Laelius and Scipio.

Self-seeking is our chief est sin,

Ignoring friendship, kith and kin.

No Moses now among our brothers,

Who, as himself could love all others,

No Nehemiahs to be found;

And pious Tobits don't abound.

The Abbot raged inwardly, but uttered not a word.

"And if folly is the highest wisdom," resumed the Dutchman, turning again to us, "where could it find better lodgings than in this Vessel which, as you yourselves acknowledged yesterday, is literally plastered with proverbs of wisdom?"

"Did you spy on us?" exclaimed Atto with a movement of surprise and disdain, beginning to suspect that all Albicastro's uncomfortable allusions to friendship might not be a matter of pure coincidence.

"I heard you when you raised your voices. Your words resounded up into the tower," he replied without any loss of composure. "But you will have other matters with which to occupy yourselves, so permit me now to leave you."

He descended the spiral staircase and within instants we had lost even the echo of his footsteps. Abbot Melani's features were livid.

"Quite insufferable, that Dutchman," he muttered.

"Holland is no country for you, Signor Atto," I could not help observing. "Why, once, if my memory does not betray me, you could not bear even the presence of Flemish cloth."

"Now, thanks be to heaven, that is no longer the case, ever since that people of stingy heretics improved their techniques for dying cloth, at long last attaining the quality of France's royal manufactures. But this time, I'd rather have been assailed by three hundred sneezes than have to put up with that Albicastro's nonsense."

We took the main stairs then to the floor above, where we were setting foot for the first time and where no few unforeseen events awaited us. The first surprise in truth found us even as we were making that ascent. The spiral stairs were carpeted with inscriptions:

So many friends. No friend

Be a friend to your own soul

Correct the friend who errs, but abandon the incorrigible Believe only the friend with whom you've old acquaintance Place not new friends before old

To adulate friends does more harm than to criticise enemies

Amity is immortal, enmity mortal

Attend to your enemies, but fear them

Be slow to form new friendships. Once forged, be steadfast

As I climbed, and those proverbs ran before my eyes, I was once more assailed by the bizarre impression that something in the Vessel, like an obscure and impersonal sense organ, had read my thoughts concerning friendship and was now dictating, if not the answer, at least an acknowledgement of my secret ponderings. I remembered: had I not already, during our first incursion, read sayings about friendship carved on the pyramids in the garden? The series of events that had unfolded was coherent, it was perfectly clear. First, the quarrel with Atto; then Albicastro's words and verses on friendship; the latter were perhaps more a consequence of having listened to the music than some enigmatic manifestation of cause and effect, but here now were new phrases which seemed to be trying to rub salt into my inner wound.

Climbing those stairs, I felt myself like Cardinal Mazarin persecuted by the nightmare of the Capitor: the more I rejected the hints implicit in those proverbs, the more they obsessed me.

So many friends. No friend. With so many at the Villa Spada I exchanged pats on the shoulder; yet I could in truth count none as true friends, least of all the Abbot. Be a friend to your own soul. Atto and I shared the same soul — was that not so? — thought I sarcastically, the Prince of Dupes and the King of Intriguers… Correct the friend who errs, but abandon the intriguer. Yes, that was easy enough to say, but was not Abbot Melani the classic exemplar of the friend who is as incorrigible as he is skilled at not allowing one to let go of him? He too, climbing those stairs in front of me, must surely have read all those proverbs. As I expected, he made no comment on them.

On reaching the second floor, we found one other detail that called attention to itself. Above the arch through which one entered that floor was an inscription more singular than all those which had preceded it.

For three good friends, I did endeavour

But then I could not find them ever.

"'Tis just as well this inscription did not escape us," commented Atto to himself.

"What did Benedetti mean?"

"The inscription says I did endeavour' that seems to explain why he built the Vessel."

"Who are the three friends?"

"You should not necessarily think of three persons. They could also be…"

"Three objects?"

Atto responded with a satisfied smile.

"Capitor's gifts!" I deduced excitedly. "Then you are right to seek them here."

"Obviously, it would be excessive to interpret the proverb literally and to regard the Vessel as having been built specifically for the three objects. In my opinion, the phrase means only that the building is, or was, the natural receptacle for Capitor's presents."

"It still remains for us to understand the meaning of ' I could not find them, ever" I retorted.

"That too will emerge, my boy. One thing at a time," he replied as we left the stairs behind us.

The second floor was subdivided very differently from the two lower floors which we had already visited. From the grand staircase we entered a vestibule, which to the left gave onto a terrace facing south, onto the road. This was the flat roof of the covered loggia on the first floor, and the generous gurgling of the fountain at its centre was clearly audible. For an instant we regaled our eyes and our spirits with the view, which encompassed and dominated all the surrounding estates and vineyards and reached in the far distance the silvery shimmer of the sea.

"Fantastic!" commented Atto. "In all Rome I have not enjoyed so generous a panorama. The Vessel is incomparable. So recondite within its walls, so free and airy without."

We returned indoors and followed a corridor towards the opposite, northern, end of the building. In the middle of this floor, there was an oval room, with windows lining its two longer sides. Beyond this room, the corridor continued, leading to a little room with a balcony giving onto Saint Peter's and the Vatican; in a corner was the top of the service stairs. We returned to the oval room.

"This room must have been used for meals during the cold season: there are four stoves in it," observed Atto.

"I do not understand why the proportions are smaller than those of the first floor, just underneath. We must have missed something."

"Look here."

My intuition was correct. Atto returned to the first of the two corridors and then to the other one. In each of these were two doors which we had at first failed to notice. We discovered that they led to four apartments, two in each corridor, each with a bedchamber, a bath and a little library.

"Four independent lodgings. Perhaps Benedetti had his friends sleep here, as Cardinal Spada does for his honoured guests at the festivities," I ventured.

"That is possible. However, it is clear now why the main room, here on the second floor, is markedly smaller than those on the two floors below. It is in fact merely the place where the four apartments meet."

While we were exploring those dusty premises, wherever our eyes came to rest, they were amiably assailed by the sentences, maxims and proverbs which Benedetti's extravagant mind had capriciously disseminated on the walls, columns doorposts and window frames. 1 read at random:

Lose not your peace of mind for others' gossip

Nobility ' s of little worth unaccompanied by wealth

Not to the Doctor for every ill, not to the Lawyer for every quarrel, not to the bottle for every thirst

Even above the doors of the four apartments a number of witty aphorisms met the eye:

All things are contained in commodious freedom

Little and good are worth more than much and bad

The sage knows how to find all in little

One cannot call little that which suffices

I sought Atto with my eyes: He had gone off to inspect one of the four apartments. I entered after him.

He was leaning against a doorpost. He greeted me staring, without a word.

"Signor Atto…"

"Silence."

"But…"

"I am thinking. I am thinking, how the Devil is it possible?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your parrot. I have found him."

"You have found him?" I stammered incredulously.

"Here, in this apartment," said he, pointing to a little adjoining room, "along with Capitor's presents."

It was true. They were covered with a fine layer of dust; but there they were. Caesar Augustus was there, too. Time had not spared him. Covered with that immaterial shroud, he had been waiting for who knows how long to be rediscovered and, given his nature, admired.

"My boy, yours is a great honour," said Atto as I entered the little room. "With your hand you are touching one of the greatest mysteries of the history of France: Capitor's gifts."

A picture. We had found a picture. It was big: over four foot six high and six feet wide. It had been placed on the ground in the little room, unbeknownst to all save the walls and inscriptions of the Vessel.

The subject of the picture consisted of various fine objects harmoniously arranged with a clever mixture of order and disorder. In the lower part of the centre of the picture, in the foreground, there was a large golden dish rather richly worked in the Flemish style, placed obliquely on a step. On it two silver statuettes could be distinguished: Neptune, the god of the sea, trident in hand, and the Nereid Amphitrite, his spouse. They were seated one close to the other on a chariot drawn over the waves by a pair of Tritons. I knew already what this was: one of Capitor's presents, that in which she had burned the pastilles of incense.

Further to the right, depicted above the step, was a golden goblet, the stem of which was in the form of a centaur, the equine half of which was in gold and the human half in silver. This was obviously the image of the goblet which Capitor had handed to the Cardinal filled with myrrh.

Behind the first two objects stood a great wooden terrestrial globe with a golden pedestal: the third gift. Before this the madwoman had recited the sonnet on fortune which had so indisposed His Eminence.

In the painting one could also admire other exquisitely fashioned objects, whose images provided the pictorial key to its meaning. In the background, one could descry a table on which were placed a red carpet, a lute, a viol, a cymbal and a book of musical notations, open on who knows what page, perhaps that lugubrious Passacaglia of Life which Capitor had made Atto sing and which had so terrorised the Cardinal. On the far left, elegantly bending its paw, a hound of noble breed was nuzzling the great red carpet with shy curiosity.

But proudly showing off, right in the middle of the whole composition, was quite another animal: a splendid white parrot, its head surmounted by a great yellow crest, perched on the wooden globe, likewise with one foot raised and its head turning towards the dog, almost as though it were mimicking it and marking its own indifferent superiority It was the faithful portrait of Caesar Augustus, perfect even down to the somewhat derisively haughty expression.

"This is the painting that Mazarin had made by that Dutch painter before getting rid of Capitor's three gifts…" I remembered, attaching the thread of what Atto had narrated to the web of recent events.

The Abbot fell briefly silent, utterly absorbed by the singularity and significance of the moment.

"Boel. He was called Pieter Boel. Years later he was to become an official court painter. I told you that he was good and now you see that I did not deceive you."

"The picture is… really splendid, Signor Atto."

"I know. They told me of it, but I myself never saw it. You can see that even the description of Capitor's presents which I gave you was faithful. My memory does not betray me," he added with ill-concealed satisfaction.

"I had, however, thought that the painting had remained in Paris. Did you not say that Mazarin kept it with him?"

"I too thought that it was in France. But as we explore the Vessel, I am becoming more and more convinced of one fact."

"And what would that be?"

"That Capitor's gifts are not here, or rather that they are no longer here."

"What do you mean?"

"I too believed that they had been entrusted to Benedetti to be kept here, at the Vessel. The picture was to stay with Mazarin as a surrogate. Instead, here I find the surrogate and no trace of the presents. That is not, of course, what we hoped to find but it is still better than nothing. As one of the maxims we have just read put it, ' The sage knows how to find all things in little'."

Once again, I reflected in astonishment, the Vessel had had the bizarre capacity to foresee (and to respond to) the intimate questionings of persons visiting it.

"The presents must have been sent to some other place," Abbot Melani was meanwhile thinking aloud. "But where? The Cardinal never left anything to chance."

We again turned to the painting, at once sublime, enigmatic and ill-omened.

"It is unbelievable. The parrot really does seem to be Caesar Augustus," I observed.

The Abbot looked at me as though I were an idiot.

"It does not seem. This is Caesar Augustus."

"What are you saying?"

"I did not remember you as being so slow of understanding. Do you think it possible that there could exist two parrots like this, one painted on canvas and a second, identical one, in two almost neighbouring cities without the one being a portrait of the other?"

"But this picture was painted in Paris," I protested, irked by the Abbot's sarcasm.

"It cannot be a coincidence. If you remember properly, I told you that the madwoman Capitor had a passion for all things feathered. She always had a flock…"

"… of birds that kept her company, 'tis true, that you told me. Then you yourself, many years ago, perhaps saw Caesar Augustus! Many years have passed since then, but parrots are rather long- lived."

"Of course, I may have seen him then — who knows? She had so many parrots around her, the madwoman. Besides, I have never been too fond of those beasts. To tell the truth, I have never understood the vogue for keeping them in one's house, as so many do, what with the filth, the stink and the noise they make. I may even have seen your bird, but my memory would not hold such things today."

"It is simply impossible to believe that Caesar Augustus could have ended up in the aviary of the Villa Spada!" I exclaimed, still sceptical in the face of the Abbot's reasoning.

"For heaven's sake, it could not be clearer. Evidently, Capitor left Caesar Augustus in Paris, perhaps as a present for someone, or else she somehow left him behind, who knows? You can well imagine what Mazarin decided to do as soon as he learned that the madwoman had also left that wretched bird on his hands, in his city."

"Well, he'll have… sent it as far away as possible."

"Together with the three gifts. So much so that he had his portrait painted alongside them. And now, you tell me, what do you know of the creature?"

"I know only that the parrot was once the property of Cardinal Fabrizio's uncle, the late lamented Monsignor Virgilio Spada. It seems he was a strange man, a lover of antiquities and various sorts of curiosities. I do know that he also had a collection of natural curios."

"I know that too. I had been in Rome for about a year when Virgilio Spada died. He was very keen on castrati. I think he had studied with the Jesuits and they wanted him in their order; but Virgilio chose the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neri because he was in love with the voice of the great Girolamo Rosini, the famed cantor of the Oratory. Virgilio was also friendly with Loreto Vittori, the castrato who was master of Christina of Sweden, and he personally took another young singer, Domenico Tassinari, into his service, who however abandoned music in the end and became an oratorian like his patron."

While Atto was complacently boasting of Spada's friendships among his castrato colleagues, I was reflecting.

"There is one thing I do not understand, Signor Atto: how come Caesar Augustus changed owners, passing from Benedetti to the Spada family?"

"Elpidio Benedetti and Virgilio Spada knew one another very well: 1 heard at the time that the Vessel contained many of Virgilio's ideas, for instance the fact that the villa should contain far more curiosities than luxuries, and that it should be a fortress of deep speculations on the Faith and on knowledge, whereby to attract the visitor and induce him to reflect."

"The Vessel as an Ark and school of wisdom, in other words," I commented, with a touch of surprise at the bizarre correlation.

"So, in exchange for Monsignor Virgilio's suggestions, Benedetti may have given him his parrot to place in his aviary."

"Or perhaps that extravagant creature, instead of flying away from the Villa Spada to the Vessel was wont in those days to flee in the opposite direction and may have ended up by being adopted by the Spada household, with Benedetti's consent. On our own, we have no means of knowing, and Caesar Augustus will not tell us, all the less so as we've not yet succeeded in catching him. But his time will soon be up."

"How do you think you'll capture him?" I asked, perplexed by the Abbot's certainty.

"What a question… For example, with a parrot caller, if such a thing exists. Or with with the help of his favourite titbits, like chocolate. Or perhaps with a fascinating female parrot made of straw, why not?"

I avoided commenting on Atto's complete incompetence in the matter of fowls.

Meanwhile nightfall, to which the Vessel too had at last yielded, made it necessary to get back to the Villa Spada. As were retraced our footsteps, we heard Albicastro's voice in the distance:

Who would be wise by reputation

But isn't blessed with moderation Engages in pursuit absurd;

His falcon is a cuckoo bird.

Melani turned sharply in the direction of the voice. Then, taken with a sudden idea, he smiled and set off once more on his way.

"How are we to capture Caesar Augustus? We shall need a little help. I already have an idea of how to begin, and with whom."

We were both utterly worn out when we reached the gates of Villa Spada and without the least desire to get involved in the festivities and their trivial sophistication. All the way back, Atto had uttered not a word. He seemed weary of prying and meddling among the guests and desirous of retiring as soon as possible to his own chamber, there to meditate upon the many and surprising events of the day, which had multiplied unceasingly until our latest discovery of the painting by Pieter Boel.

We took leave of one another almost in haste, agreeing to meet the next day, but without specifying any time. Better thus, thought I. Perhaps I might tomorrow wish to take another solitary walk, as I had that morning. Or I might at long last get a chance to see my Cloridia and our two little ones. Or again (but this secret preference, I dared not admit even to myself), seeing that my adored consort and the little ones were in no danger, and Cloridia was surely rather busy, I wished I could find the time and the means to reflect deeply by myself upon all that was happening. The day which was now drawing to an end had dispensed a series of strange and suggestive occurrences which needed to be sorted out, yet the means of understanding them all were still missing; just as children know that they have human faculties of understanding and reasonably enough ask to be treated like adults, forgetting that they are still infants.

First, before awakening, there had been the nightmare of the old mendicant; then the procession of the Company of Saint Elizabeth, the brief conversation with the priest and the longer one with the innkeeper and the shoe-vendor about beggars true and false. After that came Atto's new revelations about the Most Christian King and Maria Mancini, the pair of encounters with Albicastro, the inscriptions in the Vessel which seemed to appear in unison with my thoughts, and the picture with the three presents: what was more, containing the image of Caesar Augustus… Of course, the parrot had disappeared along with with Albani's note, and now we had returned to the Villa Spada empty-handed.

It was too much, really too much, said I to myself as I went to sleep in my bivouac at the casino of the villa. Only the new day could bring me light and counsel, a clear picture of things, or at least a semblance of greater clarity.

As it turned out, I was mistaken.