Secretum

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  "It seems that they are amusing themselves by staying hidden," joked Atto.

  Thus we were able the better to admire the architecture of the Vessel. The fagade under which we stood was divided into three orders; the surface was broken by a recess which at ground level was filled by a fine portico, framed by arches and columns, above which, at first-floor level, there was a terrace. We reached the portico.

  "Signor Atto, look here."

  I pointed out to Atto that, above each of the lunettes of the portico, there was a Latin inscription. There were four of these in all:

  AERIS SALUBRITAS

  LOCI SUBLIMITAS

  URBIS VICINITAS

  DOMUS COMMODITAS

  '"Here, the air is healthy, the place is sublime, the city's nearby, the house is commodious,'" Atto translated. "A veritable hymn by Elpidio Benedetti to his villa."

  There were two other similar inscriptions above the two doors in the façade:

  Agricola semper in proximum annum dives est

  Laudato ingentia Rura, exiguum colito

  '"The farmer is always rich. . . next year. Let great fields be praised, and small ones, cultivated.' Amusing. Look, here too there are inscriptions everywhere."

  Atto invited me to enter the portico. There, running my eyes over the fagades, I found other proverbs, rather faded but most numerous, almost like a creeper that had invaded the walls, grouped three by three on each pilaster.

  I drew near to the first inscription and read:

  Discretion is the mother of virtue.

  Not all men of letters are learned.

  Better a good friend than a hundred kinsmen.

  One enemy is too many, and a hundred friends are not enough.

  A wise man and a madman know more than a wise man alone.

  It matters more to know how to live than to know how to speak.

  One thing is born of another, and the World governs it.

  With scant brains is the World governed.

  The World is governed by opinions.

  At either side of the loggia stood two half-pilasters, each with its corresponding proverb:

  At court, no one enjoys himself more than the jesters.

  In his villa, the wise man best finds contemplation, and pleasure.

  "I knew of the inscriptions at the Vessel," said Atto then, as he discovered them alongside me, "but I could never have imagined that there could be so many of them, and painted everywhere. A truly remarkable piece of work. Bravo Benedetti! Even if they're not all flour from his own sack," he concluded with a malicious smile.

  "What do you mean?"

  '"The World is governed by opinions,'" Atto once more recited in an insidious, strident voice, pulling down his clothes as though to mimic a surplice, his eyebrows arched in a severe expression and two fingers under his nose as though to ape a pair of moustaches.

  "His Eminence Cardinal Mazarin?" I guessed.

  "One of his favourite phrases. He never wrote it down, as he did with so many others."

  "And which other maxims do you recognise here?"

  "Let's see. . . 'Discretion is the mother of virtue': that was by my late lamented friend Pope Clement IX. Then. . . 'Better one good friend than a hundred kinsmen.' Her Majesty Anne of Austria, the late mother of the Most Christian King, would often repeat that. . . Did you say something?"

  "No, Signor Atto."

  "Are you sure? I could have sworn I heard something like. . . a whisper. .. Yes, that's it."

  We looked all around us for a moment, vaguely perturbed. Seeing nothing, we could but continue the visit while, quietly, almost inaudibly, the melody we had heard before began again.

  "A folia" commented the Abbot.

  "Yes, it is all rather weird in here," I concurred.

  "But what do you think I meant? I am speaking of the melody we're listening to: these are variations on the theme of the folia. Or at least that is what it sounds like, from the little one can hear of it."

  I said nothing, not knowing what the theme of the folia might be, in music.

  "It is a popular tune of Portuguese origin, originally a dance," said Atto, answering my tacit query, "and it is quite well known. It is all based on what one might call a musical canvas, a very simple musical warp and weave, on which musicians improvise a great number of variations and the most virtuosic counterpoints."

  We stayed a while again listening to the melody, which gradually unfolded as a deep, severe motif gave way to a warm, brilliant one, then to melancholy. This music was always fickle, forever on the move.

  "It is very beautiful," I murmured breathlessly, while the enchantment of the music began to make my head spin.

  "It is the basso ostinato, it, too, varied, which accompanies the counterpoint. This always captivates dreamy natures like yours," sniggered Atto. "However, in this case, you are perfectly right.

  Until now, I had always believed there were no better variations on the folia than those of maestro Marais at Versailles; however, these ones in the Italian manner are enchanting. The composer is really excellent, whoever he may be."

  "But who first composed the folia?' I asked, beset by curiosity, while the music vanished into thin air.

  "Everyone and no one. As I told you, it is a popular melody, a very ancient dance. Its origins are lost in the mists of time. Even the name "folly" is mysterious. But let me read now, here there's something by Lorenzo de' Medici," Atto continued, preparing to peruse a few verses, then breaking off suddenly.

  "Did you hear that?" he hissed.

  I had indeed heard it. Two voices. One masculine, the other feminine. Quite close to us. Then, footsteps on the gravel.

  We looked all around us. There was no one.

  "Well, after all, we are here on a friendly visit," said he, releasing the breath we had both been holding back. "There's no reason to be afraid."

  Once again we resumed our exploration. I had been impressed by those verses on the walls of the vessel which enjoined one to withdraw from the world's vanities and to seek truth and wisdom in the safe harbour of nature and friendship. How curious, I thought, to find in this very place, when we were on the trail of the secret meeting of three cardinals, thoughts and words which exhorted us to accord no value to the cares of politics and business. I had withdrawn far from worldly things; I had renounced my ambition to become a gazetteer and had enclosed myself in my little field with Cloridia. Seventeen years later, Atto was still attached to these things, quite intensely! Only now (but this might be an illusion) had these verses, with their suave insistence on the vanity of sublunary things, seemed to awaken in his countenance a shadow of doubt, of reflection and regret.

  "These verses. . . You know them, you reread them for the hundredth time, and yet they still seem to have something to tell you," he murmured, almost as though speaking to himself.

  We read, between the arches, fine verses on the seasons by Marino, Tasso and Alemanni, and distiches by Ovid. Our attention was then caught by a series of wise maxims on the wall between the windows:

  He who loses faith has nothing else to lose

  He who has no friends will have no great luck

  He who promises in a hurry spends a long time regretting

  He who always laughs often misleads

  He who seeks to mislead is often misled

  Whoever wants to speak ill of others should think first of himself

  Whosoever well conjectures guesses well

  He who acquires a reputation acquires stuff

  He who wants enough friends finds few

  He who nothing ventures nothing gains

  He who thinks he knows most understands least

  "Curses!" Atto hissed all of a sudden. "What's wrong?"

  "How could you not have heard? A sharp noise, here, right in front of me."

  "In truth. . . Yes, I heard it too, like a branch breaking." "A branch breaking on its own? Now, that would be really interesting," he remarked ironically, looking around himself with a hint
of annoyance.

  I was unwilling to admit it, but our exploration seemed to be taking place along two parallel tracks: the inscriptions which we deciphered and the mysterious noises which beleaguered us, as though those two heterogeneous realities, the written word and the murmurings of the unknown, were in truth but calling out to one another.

  Yet again, we summoned up our courage and moved on. The list of maxims continued in the second embrasure:

  He who wants everything dies of rage

  He who is unused to lying thinks that everyone tells the truth

  He who is inured to doing evil thinks of nothing else

  He who pays debts builds up capital

  He who wants enough should not ask for too little

  He who looks at every feather will never make a bed

  He who has no discretion deserves no respect

  He who esteems not is not esteemed

  He who buys in time buys cheaply

  He who fears not is in danger He who sows virtue harvests fame

  And in the third space:

  BEWARE

  Of a poor Alchemist

  Of a sick Physician

  Of sudden wrath

  Of a Madman provoked

  Of the hatred of Lords

  Of the company of Traitors

  Of the Dog that barks

  Of the Man who speaks not

  Of dealings with Thieves

  Of a new hostelry

  Of an old Whore

  Of problems by night

  Of Judges' opinions

  Of Physicians' doubts

  Of Spice Vendors' recipes

  Of Notaries' et ceteras

  Of Women's diseases

  Of Strumpets' tears

  Of Merchants' lies

  Of Thieves within the household

  Of a Maidservant corrupted

  Of the fury of the Populace

  "One must beware of old strumpets and judges' opinions, why, that's for sure," Atto assented with a little smile.

  Finally, in the fourth embrasure, another set of wise maxims was inscribed:

  THREE KINDS OF PERSONS ARE ODIOUS

  The proud Pauper

  The Rich and Avaricious

  The mad Dotard

  THREE KINDS OF MEN TO FLEE FROM

  Singers

  Old Men

  The Lovelorn

  THREE THINGS DIRTY THE HOUSE

  Chickens

  Dogs

  Women

  THREE THINGS MAKE A MAN SHREWD

  The transports of love

  A question

  A quarrel

  THREE THINGS ARE DESIRABLE

  Health

  A good reputation

  Wealth

  THREE THINGS ARE VERY FIRM

  Suspicion which, once it has entered, will never depart

  The wind, which will not enter where it sees no exit Loyalty which, once it has gone, never returns

  THREE THINGS TO DIE OF

  Waiting, when no one comes

  Being in bed, and not sleeping Serving, without enjoyment

  THREE THINGS ARE SATISFIED

  The Miller's Cock

  The Butcher's Cat

  The Host's Prentice

  "Bah, these are not on the same level as the rest," muttered Atto, who probably had not appreciated the saying that singers and old men, categories to which he belonged, were best avoided.

  "But," I asked, with my mind cluttered up by so many sayings, "in your opinion, what are all these inscriptions here for?"

  He did not reply. Obviously, he was asking himself the same question and did not want to admit to being in the same ignorance as I, whom he regarded as inexpert in the things of this world.

  The wind, which had already been rising for some time, suddenly grew stronger; then, after a few moments, almost violent. Capricious eddies rose gaily, stirring bushes, earth, insects. A cloud of dust buffeted my face, blinding me. I leaned against the trunk of a tree, rubbing my eyes. Only long moments later did I recover my vision. When I could see again, the scene had changed sharply. Atto too was wiping his eyelids with a handkerchief to remove the dirt which had likewise deprived him of his sight. My head was spinning; for a few instants, the world, and with it the villa, had been taken away from us by that tremendous gust, the like of which I had never in all these years come across on the Janiculum.

  I raised my eyes. The clouds, which had hitherto been lazily trailing behind one another in a sky furrowed with the orange, rose and lilac of the approaching sunset had now become the powerful, livid masters of the heavenly vault. The horizon, grown opaque and milky, shone limpid and strangely formless. The music seemed now to be coming from the great open space at the entrance to the park.

  Then all became clean and clear again. As suddenly as it had vanished, the diurnal luminary reappeared, projecting a fine, golden ray onto the façade of the Vessel. For a few instants, a light breeze wafted the notes of the folia across to us.

  "Curious," said Atto, dusting down his badly soiled shoes. "This music comes and goes, comes and goes. 'Tis as though it were nowhere and everywhere. In the palaces of great lords there sometimes exist rooms constructed using stonemasons' artifices deliberately conceived so as to multiply the points at which music can be heard, thus creating the illusion that the musicians are somewhere other than the place where they really are. But I have never heard of a garden endowed with the same qualities."

  "You are right," I assented, "it is as though the melody were simply, how can one put it. . . in the air."

  Suddenly, we heard two voices and silvery feminine laughter. These must have been the same voices as we had already heard, which had strangely been accompanied by no human presence.

  The view was blocked by a tall hedge. Atto arranged the pleats of his justaucorps, making himself presentable and ready to answer to any question. At one point, the hedge was thinner and through it we at last discovered, two almost transparent figures, and with them, two faces.

  The first was a gentleman no longer in the first flower of youth, yet vigorous, and - although the apparition was fleeting - I was struck by his open expression, his gentle lineaments, and his decisive yet courteous manners. He was conversing amiably with a young girl, to whom he seemed to be proffering reassurance. Was hers the woman's laugh we had heard when we made our entry to the Vessel?

  "... I shall be grateful to you for the rest of my life. You are my truest friend," said she.

  They were dressed in the French manner, and yet (I would not have known how to explain exactly why) there was something singular about them. They remained so unaware of our presence that it seemed as though, protected by the barrier, we were spying on them.

  They turned slightly, and then I could see the girl's face well. Her complexion was smoother than a crystal; her skin was not in truth extremely white, but combining candour with sanguine vivacity, blending fair and brown, it made her seem a new Venus (because, as the proverb says, brown does not diminish beauty but rather augments it). The oval of her face was not elongated, but possessed rather a roundness that equalled all the beauty of the celestial spheres. Her hair, almost disdaining the gold so common in this world, was of lustrous raven black with deepest blue reflections, and not a hint of coarseness to it; if anything, it seemed black only to presage the obsequies of whosoever should be caught up in its inexorable snares. The forehead was high and large, well in proportion with her other charms; her eyebrows were dark, but while in others this might have rendered the regard over-haughty, when her iris was revealed, it was like clouds giving way to the sun after a shower.

  I looked at her, stealing the view from the accidental gap between the leaves, and those great eyes, round rather than slit, incomparable in their vivacity, capable of ferocity but not of rancour, seemed to me the sweetest and most cruel of instruments: fatal comets, casting pitiless amorous rays capable of blinding even the most lynx-like; yet, for all that, not harsh, because accompanied by myriad marks of
innocent tenderness. Her lips were of animated coral, such that cinnabar could not be lovelier in colour, and vivacious. Her nose was perfectly proportioned and the whole aspect of her head was of incomparable majesty, supported by the marvellous pedestal of her neck beneath which rose two hills of Iblis, if not two apples of Paris, which would have sufficed for her to be declared instantly the Goddess of Beauty. Her arms were so lusciously rounded that it would have been impossible to pinch them; her hand (of a sudden, she raised it to her chin) was an admirable accomplishment of nature, the fingers being perfectly proportioned and with a whiteness comparable only to that of milk.