"How idiotic not to have thought of that earlier," he exclaimed, slapping his forehead in frustration. "Albicastro's voice, which we heard on that occasion, and which seemed like that of a phantom, came from this: the old tube used to pass orders to the servants on other floors and which I showed you on the ground floor. That mad Hollander must have been on one of the lower floors near to one of the mouths of the tube. When he realised that we might be in this wretched place full of distorting mirrors, he began chanting the verses of that damned Sebastian Brant and his Ship of Fools and froze the blood in our veins," Atto concluded, revealing how frightened he had been last time.
Atto's conclusions were incontrovertible. The "mirror of folly" cited by the bizarre Albicastro fitted in perfectly with the perverse game whereby the Tetrachion mentioned by the madwoman Capitor relived in the mirrors of the Vessel. What was more, did not the Dutchman's little song warn that what appears in a looking glass is not always worthy of our confidence? At that moment, Atto recited:
He's stirring at the dunces' stew;
He thinks he's wise and handsome too,
And with his mirror form so pleased
You'd think he had a mind diseased;
Indeed he cannot see the ass
That's grinning at him from the glass!
"Do you understand those verses now?" he asked. "Albicastro made idiots of us, and took great pleasure in so doing. I really want to look him in the face, that insolent Dutchman, and demand an apology," he added, with a warlike expression on his visage, as he motioned me to follow him downstairs.
Armed to the teeth, we had been defeated by a few mirrors and our imagination. Now Abbot Melani wanted to unload his anger and shame on the only other occupant of the Vessel. The only flesh and blood one, at any rate.
Of course, we could not find him. Albicastro belonged to that rare class of persons who appear by surprise ("to make a nuisance of themselves," Atto added) and never when one looks for them.
Atto insisted on searching bath chambers, store rooms and the like, but it very soon became quite clear that there was no trace of the Dutchman in the whole of the Vessel.
"We fear what we cannot understand," I recited, reminding the Abbot of his own philosophising two days previously when I had taken the little dog in Borromini's perspective gallery for a colossus.
"Shut up and let us return to Villa Spada," he muttered, his face dark with anger.
We made the brief journey without exchanging a word. I was thinking. Every single one of the mysteries which we had encountered, and which had caused Abbot Melani or myself (or both) to tremble, had become clear in the end: the Dutchman had been walking on a cornice hidden from our view; the flowers from the mythical gardens of Adonis had turned out to be common plants like garlic and castor bean; the gallery of the Vessel which seemed to extend as far as the Vatican Hill was just a clever trick with mirrors; the infernal tongues of flame and the faces of dead souls which we had seen in Ugonio's den at the Baths of Agrippina, and which had succeeded in convincing me that I myself was dead, were the mere product of camphor vapours; the roaring monster which I feared was about to devour me at Palazzo Spada was in reality nothing but a lapdog, whose dimensions had been made to appear gigantic by the false perspective of the Borromini gallery; and, last of all, we had taken our own reflections in distorting mirrors for the Tetrachion. For one thing only we had found no explanation: the apparitions of Maria, Louis and Fouquet in the gardens of the Vessel. The Abbot had invoked his theory of corpuscles and hypothetical hallucinogenic exhalations, but nothing more; unlike all the other mysteries, we had found no concrete solution to this one.
While these thoughts were turning around in my mind, Abbot Melani continued to hold his peace. Who knows, perhaps he too was asking himself the same questions, I thought, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.
Flere, my reflections were brought sharply to an end. I saw Abbot Melani grow pale, paler than the ceruse on his face. We had come by now to the gates of the Villa Spada and Atto was staring at something in the distance.
Amidst the perfume of the flower beds, there reigned a great confusion of valets, porters, secretaries, with trunks and travellers' baskets of provisions being hauled onto departing carriages, and a going and coming of eminences and gentlemen amiably taking their leave of the master of the house, making appointments to meet at a degree ceremony at the Sapienza University, at some consistory, or at a mass for the repose of somebody's soul.
I was just wondering what could have so altered the Abbot's humour, when I saw one of Sfasciamonti's catchpolls pointing out a stranger to us. The shock to my heart was tremendous. I could already see myself accused by the parish priest of Saint Peter's of breaking into the basilica, identified by the Bargello's men, tried and cast into a dungeon for twenty years. Terrified, I looked at Atto. I did not even attempt to flee. At Villa Spada, everyone knew where I lived. The stranger's face was tense, tired, quivering. Soon he confronted us.
"An urgent message for Abbot Melani."
"He stands here before you, speak up," said I, feeling greatly relieved, while the Abbot said nothing, his face drawn, staring fixedly before him, almost as though he already knew - and feared - the message which the man was about to deliver to him.
"Madama the Connestabilessa Colonna: her carriage is a short distance from here. She begs you not to leave; within an hour, you will meet."
Rooted by my own legs, I expected some reaction from Atto, some free expression from his soul, some genuine impulse from the heart.
But the old Abbot did not open his mouth. He did not even quicken his footsteps; on the contrary, he seemed slower and more uncertain.
We reached his apartments without a word. Here, he took off his wig, slowly stroked his forehead and sat down, suddenly very tired, before the dressing table.
He began to whistle an unknown tune. His whistling was short of breath and uncertain, often breaking off in his throat as he looked sadly at his own naked, hoary and almost bald head reflected in the looking glass.
"This is a tune from the Ballet des Plaisirs of Maestro Lully," said he, continuing to explore his face; then he stood up and donned his dressing gown.
I stood open-mouthed. That messenger had just announced the imminent arrival of the Connestabilessa, and Atto was not getting ready?
Did Melani no longer believe in her coming? He was not entirely to be blamed; too many times already, he had awaited her in vain. This time, however, there seemed to be no doubt about it: Maria was already almost at the gates of the Villa Spada, there were no more impediments. Of course, what she was coming for now that the festivities were over may have been somewhat less than clear. Perhaps she was coming to offer her tardy tribute, and her apologies, to Cardinal Spada.
"Everyone at court was astonished when, a few months ago, they suddenly heard His Majesty sing this same music from memory. An air which he and Maria had sung together for a whole season during their amorous promenades forty years ago. Everyone was surprised, except me."
I understood. In fact, I knew perfectly well for what purpose Maria Mancini was coming: she was obeying the wish of the Most Christian King, as she herself had written to Atto; and she was prepared to listen to Atto's entreaties on the King's behalf and his offer that she should return to France. To assure himself of her attention, to move her, and lastly, to persuade, Atto must therefore call upon memory. He must be able to recall and report to the Connestabilessa, looks, moments, words pronounced by the King, of which she could not know but which the Abbot must at all costs be able to give life to in her eyes and in her heart.
"Since the time of the Affair of the Poisons, when he thought that the world was collapsing on his head, His Majesty has increasingly asked his ministers to request my services," Melani explained, "and ever more frequently in the missives which I received Madama the Connestabilessa Colonna was mentioned: How was she? What was she doing? And so on."
Maria, he continued in a bitter tone of v
oice, had for some time taken refuge in Spain, persecuted by her husband, the Constable Colonna, whom she had abandoned when she fled Rome. The poor woman spent her time in and out of convents and prisons.
"During all those years, I did not fail in truth to bring her news to the attention of the Most Christian King."
I held my breath. Melani was at last beginning to confess to being the King's go-between with the Connestabilessa. Perhaps he would soon tell me the whole truth, which secretly I already knew.
"Until one day," Atto continued, "when the King, after being compelled to suppress the Affair of the Poisons, began to show more vividly on his face that old secret trembling whenever he heard the name Colonna."
Colonna: that name, the Abbot revealed, bore more of a sting for Louis XIV than the familiar "Maria". "Colonna" carved into his regal flesh, always as though for the first time, the knowledge that their separation was forever: she belonged to another; and then there were the three sons by that prince, the Grand Constable Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, whom Maria had conceived and given birth to.
"And above all, the cruellest torment was to know that she had never forgotten him, so much so that she fled from the yoke imposed upon her by that husband, despite the strong passion of the senses which, as I had not failed to inform the King, he aroused in her." Thus Atto concluded, his mouth watering as one compelled ever to live such passions vicariously, with his nose glued to the monastic grate which separates his unfortunate kind from ordinary men and women.
"Signor Atto, you've told me nothing about Prince Colonna, Maria's only husband."
"There is not much to be said," said the Abbot, cutting me short, thoroughly irritated.
Atto, too, I thought with a snigger, hated to speak of the man who had fathered Maria's children and had made her flesh thrill, if not her heart. Nevertheless, I had already heard a great deal about the stormy ten-year long marriage between Constable Colonna and his indomitable consort.
"Did you not fear the King's ire, passing him news that might injure his feelings?"
"I have already told you, word by word and blow by blow, how Louis lived in the twenty years that followed his marriage with Maria Teresa: his heart was sunken into a deep, disturbed sleep. I did no more than to throw pebbles of light, sharp crystal splinters which, cutting through that torpor with the stiletto of jealousy, for a brief instant struck the King's heart and veins with the blinding lightning of Maria's memory, more brilliant than all the brocades and jewels with which he covered his mistresses, all that astounding machinery with which his pageantry and fetes, his plays and ballets were filled and all those deafening orchestras with which he surrounded himself. Dreams, moments, soon upset by the magnificent hubbub of the court, too brief for him to become fully aware; and yet there they lay, lurking in a corner of his soul, whispering to him, perhaps on nights when he lay between waking and sleep, that she existed."
I was moved by the fidelity with which Abbot Melani had humbly sacrificed his impossible love for Maria Mancini. For twenty years, alone and in secret, he had maintained the silver thread which still joined those two unfortunate hearts, without them so much as realising it.
Perhaps the Abbot would now reveal to me his current task as go-between; but he remained silent, overcome by his memories.
Then he drew forth from his pocket a richly wrought little box shaped like a golden seashell. He opened it and took out a few citron pastilles which he threw into the carafe of water in order to make a refreshing beverage. As soon as the pastilles had dissolved, Atto drank deeply.
"Ah, this citron-juice is truly delicious," he commented with a sigh, wiping his lips. "Marchese Salviati sends me these regularly. And don't you find my little seashell lovely, eh?" said he, alluding to the box which I was in fact admiring. "It comes from the Indies and it is as fine and pleasing as can be, do you not think so? Maria sent it to me as a present a few years ago."
The Abbot's voice was tinged with emotion.
There was a knock at the door: a valet asked if the Abbot required anything.
"Yes, please," Atto answered, clearing his throat. "Bring me something to eat. And what about you, my boy?"
I accepted willingly, seeing that hunger was causing my stomach to complain, as no little time had elapsed since lunch.
"Just think how different France and all Europe might have been," Atto resumed, "if Maria Mancini had reigned happily at Louis's side. The invasions of Flanders and the German principalities, the brutal destruction of the Palatinate, hunger and poverty within France's borders to finance all those wars, and who knows what else might have been spared us."
"Well," I could not help provoking him, "you regret so much what happened, yet were matters not as they now stand, France would have no claim to the the Spanish throne."
The Abbot was cut to the quick.
"There is no contradiction whatever," said he, rising to his full height. "The past is the past and can be altered only in our imagination, as happened at the Vessel. We can only so arrange matters that past events should not have been in vain."
"What do you mean?"
"If His Majesty's separation from Maria Mancini were now to bring Bourbon blood to the throne of Spain," Atto declaimed pompously, waving his index finger as he spoke, "their suffering, from the blind and pointless torment of forty years ago, would be sublimated into a supreme sacrifice for the good of the royal household of France and, plainly, to the greater glory of God from whom the monarch's power emanates."
At first, I found it difficult to grasp what he was getting at in that obscure oratorical display. One thing, however, was perfectly clear to me: for the first time since his arrival at Villa Spada, Atto was talking with me of the succession to the Spanish throne.
"Only thus will they not have been separated in vain," he added.
The war in Flanders, for example, Melani continued, could only have been undertaken by the Most Christian King in his capacity as consort of Maria Teresa, seeing that the purpose of that conflict was to claim his wife's dowry from the Spaniards.
"In other words, then as now, the Most Christian King has been determined to extort, if needs be by violence, all that he could lay his hands on which might serve to avenge him of the violence which he himself once suffered. The violence of which I spoke to you: once suffered, then inflicted upon others, do you remember?" the Abbot reminded me.
"Yes, from what you've told me, I know that his favourite ways of getting his own back have been through women and wars."
"Queens and raison d'Etat. the very things which once separated him from Maria Mancini forever."
That was why, Atto continued in a hoarse voice, Louis XIV never held back whenever there was any opportunity to make women suffer; even better if he could mix the matter up with politics, as in the case of the Princess Palatine and the Grande Dauphine.
"These were two women whom the King admired greatly. They were not fragile and forever sighing like Louise de la Val- liere or social climbers like Athenai's de Montespan. Worse, they were independent spirits, fighting for their ideals with all their strength, just as he himself had once tried to do against his mother and his godfather."
Louis identified no little with those two rather masculine and idealistic young women. But he, in his own time, had lost his battle; and now he could not allow them to win theirs. The King was unhappy: at court, none could allow themselves the luxury of being happy, or even serene. The King was small of stature: none dared wear heels or more imposing periwigs that would make them taller than he.
"The King is small? But you told me that he was tall and good looking, and. .."
"What does that matter? I told you what they all say and always will say and what will always be depicted in court portraits. Besides, with those red heels and those towering wigs, I challenge you to find a single monarch in Europe taller than he. The Most Christian King, my boy - and this is really in confidence between the two of us - when he takes off his shoes and that false hair, is not very
much taller than you."
They brought us a dish with two pairs of roast francolins accompanied by green beans, artichokes and sour fruit, with wine and little flat breads with sesame. Atto started with the greens, while I immediately got my teeth into the francolins' breasts.
So, heaven help anyone whom the King found to be at peace for too long, even if this were out of resignation. And such was the character of the Princess Palatine (so called, because she came from the Palatinate): young, ugly and perfectly aware of the fact, the King's German sister-in-law was the second wife of Monsieur, in other words, his younger brother Philippe, and, unlike his first wife, the restless and unlucky Henrietta of England, she had been able to find a peaceful modus vivendi with that strange husband of hers. He did not like women, but she was sufficiently masculine not to disgust him. And, with the miraculous help of some holy image in the right place at the right time, he had even managed to make her pregnant and thus to provide the male heir his luckless late wife had been unable to conceive. Thereafter, the couple separated their beds by common accord and to their mutual satisfaction, united only by their love for their children. Madame Palatine's serene resignation was, however, to be shortlived.
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