Secretum
Page 58
"Boy, are you coming or not? Our work is only beginning!" Atto's voice called me back sharply to the present; the volume of Herodotus jumped in my hand.
I had read enough, I thought. Now I was beginning to understand.
If my reasoning was correct, the name Lidio must conceal no less than the Sun King in person, just as he was hidden behind the metaphor of Croesus in Albicastro's speech. Besides, had not Atto mentioned to me that Herodotus was among Louis and Maria's favourite authors?
Here was the secret I had sought in vain: the Connestabilessa and the King wrote to one another secretly, and Atto was their go-between!
Of course, they were no longer Maria and Louis, the ivory- skinned maiden and the timid youth of the apparitions at the Vessel; their writings were no longer murmurings of love. Nevertheless, the King of France still held the counsel of Maria Mancini in high esteem, so much so that he was prepared to run the risk of a clandestine correspondence in order to enjoy the benefit of her wit.I well remembered that in a post scriptum Atto had written to her:
You know what value he sets upon your judgement and your satisfaction.
Atto had in truth written in the same letter that he had something to deliver to the Connestabilessa: something which, he asserted, might cause her to change her opinion of Lidio. Whatever could that have been?
After the first moments of enthusiasm, however, doubts surfaced: the reference to Herodotus was obvious, but it was less evident that Lidio was the pseudonym for the Most Christian King. Of course, it was not perhaps an accident that Louis should have loved to read Herodotus together with his beloved. Besides, Albicastro had made an all-too-facile comparison between Croesus and the King of France. All in all, one could not completely rule out the possibility that, in Atto and Maria's correspondence, someone quite different might be hidden behind the disguise of the King of Lydia. What was more, I knew too little about Maria Mancini's life since her departure from Paris to be able to find out who this mysterious personage might be.
In other words, I still needed to confirm the identity of one of the personages. I already knew which one: Silvio.
Maria Mancini had written to Atto, sometimes calling him Silvio, and in those passages in her letters she sent him warnings, recommendations and even reproofs, the meaning of which remained thoroughly obscure to me.
And what, I asked myself, if these too were literary quotations, just like the Lidio referred to in Herodotus? I began to imagine that Silvio too might also be a character from some book, perhaps a messenger of love, even one drawn from mythology.
There, I said to myself, if only I could discover where that name, Silvio, came from, perhaps I might obtain a few more clues as to who Lidio might be or even, I hoped, definitive proof that the King and the Connestabilessa were still engaged in amorous conversations.
I soon grew discouraged; I had only one name: Silvio. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Where was I to begin my search?A hand fell heavily on my shoulder, dragging me from my reflections.
"Will you stop meditating with that book in your hand like Saint Ignatius? Come and help me."
The Abbot, covered in dust and perspiration, had come to get me back to work.
"So far, I have found nothing. I mean to continue searching the first floor. Come and help me."
"I am coming, Signor Atto, I am coming," said I, climbing onto the chair and replacing the little volume of Herodotus.
My meditations would have to wait until later.
So we descended to the first floor, with its gallery of mirrors and its distorted perspective and, on either side, the little chapel, the bath chamber and the two little chambers dedicated, the one to the papacy and the other to France.
Suddenly, I found myself facing the delightful image, woven into a tapestry, of a lovely nymph dressed in a wolf's skin, who had been wounded in her flank by the arrow of a young hunter. The nymph's gentle appearance, from her ivory complexion to her soft ebony curls, were in sharp contrast to the blood that gushed from her side and the desperation written on the young man's face. The floral frame punctuated with scrolls and medallions in relief completed the tapestry with exquisite elegance.
Then I recognised it. This was one of the two Flemish tapestries before which Abbot Melani had stood, lost in ecstatic admiration, on our previous visit to the Vessel. Atto had explained to me that it was he himself who had persuaded Elpidio Benedetti to purchase it when the latter was visiting France some thirty years previously.What else had the Abbot said to me? This I pondered, while my thoughts began dancing in my head like Bacchantes moving in procession towards some exciting, yet unknown goal. Originally, there had been four tapestries - that, Melani had told me - but two of them he had made Benedetti present to Maria Mancini, because the scenes depicted in them were drawn from an amorous drama, The Faithful Shepherd, much appreciated by her and the young King (but this detail I had almost had to drag from him, so reticent had Atto become at that juncture). A drama of love. ..
Turning to Abbot Melani with an ingenuous smile, while I struggled to feign a bad bout of coughing, brought on by all that dust, I begged his leave to absent myself awhile from our search. Then, without even awaiting his permission, like some new Mercury flying on winged heels, I dashed up the stairs to the second floor and in a matter of seconds I was again visiting the four libraries, in one of which I had left the Histories of Herodotus.
Perched on a chair, my fingers almost scratching at the spines of the volumes, I scanned their titles, as though my eyes needed help from the sense of touch to confirm what they were reading.
At last I found it: tiny, no more than a booklet, some six inches high and less than half an inch thick. It was bound in black leather patterned with golden squares, its spine decorated with Florentine lilies. I opened it:
PASTOR FIDO,
I then placed my trust in the book-mark, of fine maroon satin, by now faded; opening at the place where it had lain since time immemorial, I read at random:
Happy Dorinda! Heav 'n has sent to thee That bliss you went in search to find.
I exulted. Dorinda: that was the name of the wounded nymph whom I had just seen in the tapestry. Abbot Melani had told me when we saw it for the first time. And Dorinda was also the name which the Connestabilessa had given herself in her last letter, in which she addressed Atto as Silvio.
1 had found what I was looking for. Now it only remained for me to seek the name Silvio. If, as I thought, he was one of the characters from The Faithful Shepherd, I had succeeded. So, with my breast trembling with emotion, I began to leaf through the pages of the little book, in search of a Silvio who might perhaps be a messenger of love between Dorinda and her beloved, just as Melani was perhaps the go-between linking the Connestabilessa and the Most Christian King.
Very soon, I found it:
Know you not Silvio, son to famed Montano?
That lovely boy! He's the delightful swain.
O prosp'rous youth...
This Silvio was, then, no go-between, as I had hoped, but a wealthy and beauteous youth. Apart from his wealth, he seemed hardly a portrait of Abbot Melani.. .
What I then read surpassed all my imagining:
O Silvio, Silvio! Why did nature give
Such flower of beauty, delicate and sweet,
In this thy Spring of life, to be so slighted?
It was a dialogue between Silvio and his old servant Linco, who reproves the youth for his hard-heartedness. I turned more pages:
O foolish boy, who fly to distant hills
For dang'rous game, when here at home you may
Pursue what's near, domestic and secure?
SILVIO:
Pray, in what forest ranges this wild creature?
LINCO:
The forest is yourself, and the wild creature Which dwells therein is your fierce disposition
Shall I not say thou hast a lion's heart
And that thy hardened breast is cased with steel?
No, it
could not be Atto who hid behind the nickname Silvio. Rather, someone else came all too readily to mind when I read of that scornful, rich young shepherd:
Now, Silvio, look around, and take a view Of all this world; cdl that is fair and good Is the great work of love. The heav'ns, the earth, The sea are lovers too.
In short, all nature is in love but you. And shall you, Silvio, be the one exception, The only soul in heav 'n and earth and sea, A proof against this mighty force of nature?
I thought once more of all that Abbot Melani had told me: was not that series of reproofs perfectly suited to His Majesty the Most Christian King of France? Had not the Sovereign's heart turned to ice after his separation from Maria Mancini?
Thou art, my Silvio, rigidly severe To one who loves thee ev'n to adoration. What soul could think, beneath so sweet a face A heart so hard and cruel was concealed?
And, yet again:
O cruel Silvio! O most ruthful swain!
I turned to the frontispiece. I wanted before all else to read the foreword and the initial argumentum or resume of the drama, so as to discover what part was played in it by the nymph Dorinda who provided the Connestabilessa with her nom de plume. Thus I learned that Silvio was betrothed to Amaryllis, but did not love her. He loved no one. He wanted only to go hunting in the forest.Then, however, he accidentally wounded in the side a nymph who was in love with him - Dorinda, to be precise - having mistaken her for a wild beast because she wore a wolf's skin. At that point, Silvio fell in love with her, broke his bow and arrows, cured the wound and the couple married.
Was the tale not perhaps very like that of the young King of France, betrothed to the Spanish Infanta but in love with Maria Mancini? Only the denouement of their love story, as well I knew from Atto, was very different from that of The Faithful Shepherd, for which they themselves so yearned.
Time was growing short. Atto would soon be coming up to look for me. I entered the spiral staircase. There, I heard a strange buzzing. Cautiously descending a few steps, I peeped out to glance at Abbot Melani. Tired, Atto had slumped into an armchair to await my return, and had gone to sleep.
I sat down on a step and drew my conclusions: not only the name of Lidio but also that of Silvio were screens concealing the Most Christian King. Thus, the Connestabilessa was not only what Solon had been for Croesus; she still remained Dorinda, Silvio's lover.. .
Many things in Atto's and Maria's letters had at last become clear to me. What lay hidden in those letters was not state espionage, not obscure political manoeuvring, not the turbid depths of international diplomacy, as I had suspected all that time when I so ignobly spied on Atto and Maria. No, those letters concealed an even greater secret, an unimaginable, yet purer one: Louis and Maria were still writing to one another forty years after their last farewell.
At last I understood why Atto spoke to me with such confidence of the French Sovereign's sentiments for the Connestabilessa and how his suffering at the loss of his beloved had hardened his heart. I understood, too, why he told of these things as though they were alive and kicking today; he was constantly dealing with the most confidential first-hand details of the undying love between the couple!That was why Atto had come to Rome: to meet Maria Mancini, after an absence of thirty years, and to bring who knows what embassy of love on behalf of the Most Christian King. I would have given anything to know at that moment what the King was sending through Abbot Melani. Whatever could necessitate a meeting en tete a tete. A signed letter from the King? A pledge of love?
I could also understand why Abbot Melani had hesitated so much when answering my questions the first time we had seen those tapestries at the Vessel. The Faithful Shepherd had not only been the favourite reading of the two old lovers: it still was. It was their secret code. And Atto acted as their go-between, now as then.
Yet, what kind of love can there be between two old persons who have not seen one another for forty years? The answer was to be found in a letter from Atto to Maria, which I recalled at that moment:
Silvio was proud, 'tis true, but he venerates the gods, and was one day
vanquished by your Cupid. Since then he has ever bowed down before
you, calling you his.
Altho' his you were not.
A love made up of memories and lost opportunities, such was the King's for Maria Mancini.
And I who had believed that Atto was referring there to his wretched castrato's estate! No, Atto was referring to the unbroken chastity of that love, and to how present it still was in the old Sovereign's soul.
I then thought of all the passages in Maria's letters in which she wrote addressing Silvio, and I understood at last the meaning of the warnings and reproaches which she borrowed from The Faithful Shepherd.
O, Silvio, Silvio! who in thine early years hast found the fates propitious, I tell thee, too early wit has ignorance for fruit.
These words, which were impenetrable when I believed them to be addressed to Abbot Melani, now calmly revealed their meaning to me. The Most Christian King had indeed ascended to the throne very young; thus, his destiny had matured "when still unripe". But he who comes to power too early must, "on attaining maturity, surely reap the fruit of ignorance", in other words remain arrogant throughout his whole life. And now that the burning question was that of the Spanish succession, Maria was warning Louis XIV to act wisely.
In the same way, was Maria Mancini not perhaps accusing the Sovereign of being somehow himself responsible, through his own arrogant conduct of both life and government, for the series of disasters which had befallen France's friends in Spain?
Vain boy, if you imagine this mishap
By chance befell, you widely are deceived.
These accidents so monstrous and so strange
Befall us mortals by divine permission.
Don't you reflect the Gods by you were slighted,
By this your haughty pride and high disdain
Of love and ev 'rything the world deems human.
They cannot abhor, although it be in virtue.
Now are you mute, who were but now so haughty!
Very soon, the game had become perfectly clear to me. The Connestabilessa, writing with consummate skill, spoke to Atto of Lidio in the third person, sending messages and replies through the Abbot; and then addressed Atto, calling him Silvio, the message really being for the King's eyes. Two identities, to confound unwelcome readers and thus to protect the writers from any spies. With me, the trick had worked perfectly. Never could I have discovered the truth, had it not been, first, for Albicastro, then, the Vessel, both of which had showed me the way that led to Lidio. The Flying Dutchman and his Phantom Vessel, as Melani called them. . .Yes, indeed, 1 observed, turning The Faithful Shepherd over and over in my hands. All these illuminations had come to me through the Vessel. First, there was the phrase of Albicastro, the eccentric occupant of the villa, which with singular clairvoyance compared Croesus to the King of France. That explained why Atto had given such a start and turned rapidly on his heels without replying to the Dutch musician; he himself had been perturbed by that arcane oracle. Then came the book of Herodotus, followed by that of the Gavaliere Guarini, thanks to which my ideas were made completely clear. Benedetti's mysterious villa had once again proved its fathomless faculties.
Suddenly, I smiled to myself: it was, when one came to think of it, most probable that the villa's one-time owner, Abbot Elpidio Benedetti, in his capacity as an agent of Cardinal Mazarin in Rome, had collected in his villa books, pictures, works of art and everything that a fashionable Francophile could not fail to have or know.
One thing was by now certain: neither the conclave nor the Spanish succession was the matter or purpose of the meeting planned between Atto and Maria, but love. Political manoeuvres were the basis, not the heart of their epistolary conversations. They were just a cover, and might arouse the interest of those keen on intrigue, but no more.
That was why Atto became so heated when, in our incursions to the
Vessel, he told me the old story of that broken royal romance. For him it was something still alive, and one might even posit that the apparitions and phantasms of the past which we had witnessed at the Vessel were none other than the spiritual emanations of that long-distant (yet still potent) passion between the Connestabilessa and the aging Sovereign.