"And there was Mademoiselle de Villcroy, purée de diamants, and
Mademoiselle de Gourdon, all covered in emeralds, accompanied by the Due de Roquelaure, the Comte de Guise, the Marquis de Villeroy and the sparkling Puyguilhem (later to become the notorious Comte de Lauzun), they too costumed and coiffed avec les houlettes de vernis, like the peasants of Bressannes, and this was yet another silent seal which the great architect, Love, placed, 'midst scornful celebrations, upon the failure of Louis's planned nuptials with Margaret of Savoy.
"And the offer in marriage of the Infanta of Spain?" I objected.
"The negotiations had not yet begun. Between the Spaniards and Mazarin, secret contacts were taking place, but only gradually did they become public. All still remained to be decided. What was more," added Atto pensively, as we went through the San Pancrazio Gate under the watchful eyes of the guards. "What was more, I have always had the impression that the Cardinal had very different plans from these matrimonial arrangements for bringing Spain to heel and imposing peace on terms entirely favourable to himself. At least, until. .."
"Until?"
"In March 1659, something unforeseen took place. Don John of Austria, the King of Spain's bastard son, arrived in Paris. He was coming from Flanders, of which he was the Governor, on his way to Spain. I recall those days very well, because Don John arrived incognito, at Vespers, and at court excitement was at its height. Queen Anne received him in her chambers, and I too was able to be present."
He was a small man, slight in build, well made, with a fine head and black hair - just a little rotund. Noble was the aspect of his face and agreeable to behold. The Queen treated him with great familiarity and in his presence spoke almost entirely in Spanish. She also presented to him the young King Louis. Don John, however, the son of King Philip of Spain but born of an actress, ever over-proud of his birth, behaved with excessive haughtiness, disappointing and arousing the indignation of the entire court which was playing host to him.
"The same embarrassing situation was repeated the day after,"
Atto recounted, "after he had had the honour of sleeping in Mazarin's apartments. Don John came at length to the Louvre, where Anne and the Cardinal received him with a friendliness which was not reciprocated. Monsieur, the King's brother, lent him his own guard without receiving the least thanks in return. Everyone was astounded and shocked by the Bastard's effrontery. Yet that was as nothing when compared with what was to happen later."
"Was there a diplomatic incident?"
Atto drew breath and raised his eyes, almost as though to force the riotous flock of memories into the sheepfold of logical discourse.
"An incident?... Not really. Something else. What I am about to disclose to you is a tale known to very few."
"Do not worry," I reassured him, "I shall tell no one."
"Good. You do well to behave thus - in your own interest, too."
"What do you mean?"
"Like all scalding hot information, you can never quite tell what awkward potentialities lie concealed in it."
Meanwhile, we had covered a good distance along the Via San Pancrazio. I had guessed where we were going. This was confirmed when Atto came to a halt. We were before the entrance.
"It is here. Or at least, it should be," said Atto, inviting me to cross the threshold of the Vessel.
We stood yet again in the fine courtyard, made gay by the ever renewed gurgling of the fountain. This time, no sign of any human presence came from within the villa; neither music nor even the slightest vague rustling that might stimulate one's imagination.
We advanced towards the tree-lined drives which we had explored on our first visit, near the espaliered citrus trees. After the amiable hubbub at Villa Spada, the silence here seemed designed to dispose Atto even more towards narration. Only a timid breath of wind caressed the foliage on the treetops, the sole witnesses to our presence. As we walked in the park of the Vessel, Abbot Melani spun out the thread of the tale.
Don John, or the Bastard, as many called him, had in his retinue a curious being, a woman who was known to all as Capitor.
"A mangled name, for in reality they called her la pitora or something of the sort - a word which, I believe, means in Spanish 'the cretin'."
Capitor was mad. Hers, however, was no ordinary madness. It was rumoured that she came from a family of clairvoyant lunatics who, among the folds of a distorted vision, mysteriously captured gleams of occult truth. The Bastard had made of her a sort of domestic animal, an entertainment for the cruel, rough amusement of his soldiery and, sometimes, the gentry.
"Her fame as a clairvoyant, but also as an outlandish, entertaining madwoman, had preceded her to Paris," said Atto. "So much so that, soon after his arrival, the Bastard was asked whether he had brought her with him."
Thus it was that Capitor was presented at the Louvre. She was dressed in men's clothing, with short hair, a plumed hat and a sword. One eye swore at the other: she was, in other words, cross-eyed. Her skin was yellow and full of pock-marks, framed by a mousy mane, with a hooked nose and a dark window in the middle of her front teeth, all of which made her quite phenomenally ugly. Hers was an ungainly, pear-shaped figure, with minuscule withered shoulders, while her hips spread into enormous parentheses, all of which combined to render her disastrous appearance the more droll and ridiculous.
She was always accompanied by a flock of birds of all kinds, which took shelter on her shoulders and in the ample fold of her hat: goldfinches, parrots, canaries, and so on.
"But what was so special about her?"
"She was all day long at the Louvre," replied Atto, "where the Queen Mother, the King and his brother had a wonderful time joking and teasing her. She would often respond with strange strings of words, meaningless riddles, queer rhymes and incantations. Often she'd burst out laughing without rhyme or reason, in the midst of a banquet or a speech by a member of the court, just as one would expect from a lunatic. But if someone reproved her, she would at once become as sad as a funeral and, pointing her index finger at her opponent, she would whisper incomprehensible, menacing anathemas. After which she'd again roar with laughter, mocking with odd and truly funny witticisms the poor unfortunate who had thought to punish her. Often, she would play the castanets and dance after the manner of the Spanish gypsies. She would dance in the most curious fashion, without any accompanying music; but she did it with such passion that, more than a dance, it seemed to be an arcane rite. At the end, after the last pirouette, sweating and panting, she would let herself fall to the ground, ending with a raucous cry of victory. Everyone would applaud, bewitched and perturbed by the madwoman's magnetism."
There was a strange atmosphere in those days, since that indefinable being had arrived at court. While in the beginning everyone thought they could play games with her, it was by now the contrary that had become the norm.
With her bizarre behaviour and her caprices, Capitor amused everyone; with only two exceptions.
"The madwoman had no favourite topics of conversation. Indeed, she had none at all. If she was sad, she stayed in a corner, all dejected, and there was no way of conversing with her. Otherwise, she would wait for someone to ask her something, for example: 'What is the time?' She would reply, if she was on form and she liked the questioner, with some absurd pronouncement, such as: 'Time doesn't wait for time, for otherwise it would have to wait for those who no longer have any time, or to let them die in their non-time. I shall not die, because I am already in Capitor's non-time. You, on the other hand, are in today's time, and that seems fine to you because you have the illusion that you can see it, whereas what you are really seeing is the nothingness of your own non-time. Have you ever thought about that?'"
"But that doesn't mean a thing!"
"Indeed it is not supposed to. But, believe me, when that bedevilled madwoman gushed forth her incantations, you'd be taken in like some silly child and suspect there was some sense to it, even some revelation of which only she was capabl
e. And that suspicion was not mistaken."
"What do you mean?"
"The madwoman, Capitor, had. . . how can I describe it? Let us say, she had some special faculties. I shall explain. More than once, she was asked where some lost object was to be found, which the owner had for a long time been seeking in vain. In a trice, she'd find it."
"But how?"
"She'd think of it a moment, then she would move directly behind a wardrobe, or rummage in some drawer, and there was the thing they were looking for."
"Good heavens, and how did she manage to. .."
"She could do even better. She could guess at the contents of sealed envelopes or the names of people who were being introduced to her for the first time. She had premonitory dreams which were extraordinarily detailed and genuine. She invariably won at cards because, as she said, she could read the cards on her adversary's face."
"This seems to be almost a case of witchcraft."
"What you say makes sense. But no one ever pronounced that word. It would have caused a scandal; besides which, everyone took Capitor for what she was: a rather strange toy with which to amuse the Bastard's soldiery and, for a few days, the royal family. At the Louvre, they were many who enjoyed the entertainment during Don John's stay. When she left, the Queen, the King's brother and Madame de Montpensier bestowed on her their portraits painted on enamel and decorated with diamonds. Madame La Baziniere, who had even invited her into her home, gave her silverware and boxes full of ribbons, fans and gloves. They all, as I said, enjoyed themselves immensely, except for two persons."
"And who were they?"
Capitor, replied Atto, pampered unguardedly by the King and the Queen Mother, had without question behaved bizarrely during those days in Paris, but never insolently. Except once. Whenever Maria Mancini was in her presence, she would always speak of the same thing: the Spanish Infanta; in other words, the woman whose hand had been offered to Louis.
"She would repeat unceasingly how beautiful the Infanta was, what a great Queen she would be one day, how she was far more beautiful than any other woman, and so on," trilled Atto.
No one knew why the madwoman provoked Mazarin's niece, whose life at court was already difficult enough, with such irritating persistence. Some held that she had been inspired to do so by the Spaniards, who feared that the influence of the young Italian woman might prevent the marriage with the Infanta. Others thought, more simply, that Maria was not borne well by her rival, with whom she shared an instinctive, sanguine nature which, as is well known, gives rise to much discord where temperaments are equal and adverse.
Maria refused to play that game. She already had quarrels enough to pick with the court and lacked the sangfroid to put up with these provocations. She would react angrily, calling Capitor a cretin, insulting and scorning her. The madwoman responded by mocking Maria in turn with humorous, coarse verses and puns bordering on the obscene.
"And who was the other person that was not content with Capitor's presence in Paris?"
"To answer you, I must now recount for you a curious fact, which is precisely what I was intending to tell you, and which obliged me to provide this lengthy preamble."
This took place on an afternoon when it was raining heavily, during one of those sudden, violent storms which can for a few hours prevent any business from being carried on and which remind human beings of the superiority of the forces of nature.
While the driving rain was making puddles boil and flowing in muddy rivulets through the streets of Paris, a strange gathering was taking place in a room at the Louvre.
The Bastard had at last deigned to reciprocate the myriad attentions with which he had been honoured in Paris and offered the royal family a little entertainment. Capitor was to hand over a number of gifts to Cardinal Mazarin, after which the reigning family was to be entertained with a little song recital.
"And who was to sing?" I asked, growing curious, aware as I was of Atto's musical past.
"You have been well aware since the first night we met, seventeen years ago, that in my greener years I enjoyed no little public appreciation for my musical virtues, and that sovereigns and Princes of the Blood deigned to be my audience; and that, among the latter, Queen Anne enjoyed my singing more than ordinarily," said Abbot Melani, reminding me somewhat summarily of the fact that he had, when young, been one of the most acclaimed castrati in the theatres and courts of all Europe.
"Yes, I remember very well, Signor Atto," I replied briefly, mindful of the fact that Abbot Melani did not care to bring out too much from his past that seemed out of place in his current career as political counsellor to the King and secret diplomatic courier.
"Well, it fell to me to sing. And that was no easy matter. It was indeed one of the most singular performances of my entire life."
Everyone was looking forward to attending one of the madwoman's shows, explained Atto: two or three laughs and it would all be over. The company was most select: Queen Anne, Mazarin, the young King, Monsieur, his brother and, lastly, Maria whom, fearing some insolence on the part of Capitor at her expense, Louis had wanted at all costs to seat on a stool by his side. In a deep armchair near the group, but a little apart, sat Don John, accompanied by a retainer.
Upon a signal from the Bastard, three Spanish pages were ushered into the room bearing as many voluminous objects, each of them covered with a blood-red velvet cloth; whereupon I made my entry with the Capitor surrounded by her usual court of birds. The madwoman was all smiles, delighted to be the provider of the royal entertainment.
The presents, thus veiled, were placed on as many tables, arranged in a semicircle, in the middle of which the madwoman took up position, embracing a guitar.
"Courage, Capitor, show the Cardinal our gratitude," the Bastard amiably exhorted her. Capitor, after bowing submissively, turned to the Cardinal: "These presents are for His Eminence,' said she graciously, 'that he may extract the occult and presumed meaning therefrom, but also the clear and resplendent sense which instils knowledge in the soul."
She unveiled the first gift. It was a great wooden globe, containing a representation of all the known earth, the lands and the rivers that furrow them, and the seas that surround them, mounted on a monumental and imposing pedestal of solid gold. The Bastard, full of pride, explained at that juncture that the terrestrial globe was the counterpart to a celestial one; he had had the pair made in Antwerp and had kept for himself the one which represented the regions of the sky, while this one he was offering to Mazarin.
Capitor turned the globe and, caressing it with her pointing finger as she looked straight into the Cardinal's eyes, she then recited a sonnet.
Friend, look well upon this figure,
Et in arcano mentis reponatur,
Ut magnus inde fructus extrahatur,
Inquiring well into its nature.
Friend, of venture here's the wheel,
Quae in eodem statu non firmatur,
Sed in casibus diversis variatur,
And some it casteth down; to others, worldly weal.
Behold, one to the heights hath risen
Et alter est expositus ruinae;
The third is stripp 'd of all, deep down, to waste is driven.
Quartus ascendet iam, nec quisquam sine
By labouring he gained his benison,
Secundum legis ordinem divinae.
"For heaven's sake, how did you manage to remember that sonnet? This all took place forty years ago!"
"What of it? You should know, my boy, that I still retain the whole of Luigi Rossi's Orfeo, which I had the honour to sing before the King in Paris when he was barely nine years old, in 1647; in other words, half a century ago. Be that as it may, Capitor distributed a copy of that sonnet, no doubt to be sure that the message would not be lost. If you had read it and reread it, as we all did in the days that followed, you too would still remember it today without the slightest difficulty. .."
"The interpretation does not seem that difficult to me: 'vent
ure's wheel' obviously refers to the turning globe."
"You will understand that the Cardinal hesitated when faced with that rhyming dedication which was both unexpected and somewhat insolent."
"Why insolent?"
"If you listened carefully, you will have noticed that the sonnet is rather curious."
"In the first place, it contains verses in Latin."
"Not only that."
"Well, it says something like the proverb that the world's a ladder: some go down and some, up; one day, you're in luck, the next, the wind may change."
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