"What a clever idea," commented Atto sarcastically, as he pulled the grimy cowl down more closely over his head, taking care to touch it only with his fingertips.
The half-naked cerretano drew a companion's attention to us. By pure luck, at that moment the movement of the crowd blocked their view. Were they approaching us?
Meanwhile, the Maggiorengo of the Mumpers waited for the applause to die down a little. Moved by an almost primordial instinct, I checked our distance from the entrance, which I supposed must also be the way out. It was still very near.
"And now, my goodly heels," said the orator, "whereas We, Sacred Majesty, great and glorious Emperor, have duly been elected Emperor, King, Chief, Condottiere, Prince, Rector and Guide of the Canters; and whereas such authority as We enjoy appertains not only to His Most Scoundrelly Majesty but to the least canter among our select assembly, We are impelled by our scoundrelly nature to expatiate in this our speech on the pre-eminence and most condign worthiness of the Way of the Canters and all those who follow it."
An ovation resounded through the amphitheatre.
At this point, Buvat was fortunately able to leave off consulting his glossary. The speech was continuing in ordinary language since no strangers could be present to follow it (we, of course, being secretly present): the introduction in the cant language had served mainly to warm up the spirits of those present.
Someone handed a bottle to the Maggiorengo-General, from which he drank voraciously, in great gulps, until he let it fall empty at his feet.
"For a start," he continued, "the society of the canters is more ancient than that of the Baronci, of which Boccaccio speaks, older than the Tower of Nembrotto, and indeed that of Babel. Being ancient, it is of necessity excellent and perfect, and consequently, every single canter is excellent and perfect, so that it follows that its Sovereign will be most excellent and most perfect and almost immortal!"
Waves of applause greeted the eulogy which the new Maggiorengo-General, laughing complacently, heaped upon himself and his subjects. Atto and I exchanged worried glances. We were in the midst of a host of madmen.
"And let us, then, begin from the beginning of this great horrible world," continued the Maggiorengo. "Let us speak of the Golden Age, when Master Saturn was the King of men. What a scoundrelly life was ours back then! All lived in peace, considering the Sovereign as a good father, and he treated them like good children. All lived in freedom and safety, 'midst all manner of contentments and pleasures, eating, drinking and dressing after the manner of good canters, knowing not wealth or possessions, so that this epoch was called by the authorities of the people of canters the Golden Age. Then there were only goodfellows, purloiners free from all malice. Everything was held in common, there was no division of lands, no carving up of things, no separation of houses, no fences around vineyards. No force had ever to be employed in dealings with anyone, there were no disputes, no one stole chickens, no one contended for harvests. Everyone could work the land he wanted to, planting whatever seed he would and training the vines as it pleased him. Every woman was everyman's wife and every male was every woman's husband and of every thing the valiant canters made one great bundle. What a wonderful stallion our good scoundrel Biello would have made in that Golden Age!"
The Maggiorengo-General spoke these last few words turning towards a cerretano seated near him on the podium and pointing him out to the multitude, who applauded him long and loud.
"But then came that beard-splitter Jove, who forgot that he too was a canter, seeing that he'd been raised like a beast and given suck by nanny goats. Greedy for power and no longer having the slightest respect for the people of canters, Jove drove his old father Saturn from the Golden Age. Thus, life and conditions changed for everyone, freedom was lost and enmity, wrath, disdain, fury, cruelty, arson and rapine arose among men. Then they began to divide all possessions and goods, to enclose vineyards, gardens and houses, to lock gates, doors and entrances, to be jealous of women, to question each other and to fight even to the death, and so many other evil things that one loses all count of them."
One cerretano not far from us let out a great noisy fart, making all his neighbours laugh.
"Ah, Jove did plenty of damage," Atto commented to himself in disgust.
"Nevertheless, the tyrant Jove was not powerful enough to cancel out and extinguish the holy people of canters," continued the Maggiorengo-General, "who, being divine and immortal, even given this change and setback, gave that proud upstart clearly to understand that, king though he was, he could not do without us. For not only Jove, but all his relatives - and he had masses of them - lived in comfort and contentment only because they ate and drank what they extorted from the canters..."
"Si-e-na! Si-e-na!" bawled dozens of cerretani in a chorus of approval.
Atto motioned that I was to follow him: we moved to the left, doing our best to avoid the attentions of the half-naked cerretano. To no avail; when I turned around, he was still looking at us.
"... And everything in which the gods took pleasure, they did using Canters'manners and tricks: dissimulating who they were, fooling and cheating everyone. Starting with Jove himself who, when he wanted to lay Europa, the maiden who looked after King Agenor's cows, had to get help from the Canters to dress up as chief cowherd. He'd never have had Europa if he hadn't fooled her with that disguise! And when he wanted to make the beast with two backs with Leda, he dressed up as a poultryman, and that's why, when she became pregnant, she laid eggs, ha!"
The adepts responded to the Maggiorengo's joke with a chorus of laughter.
"To do his dirty little things with Antiope, Jove dressed up as a goatherd; and when he wanted to screw Alcmene, he got himself up like a boatman to look like her husband, who plied that nasty trade. When he coupled with Danae, he dressed as a stonemason and with that huge prick of his drilled a hole in her roof, and once he'd got into her house, he reverently fut- tered her. When he wanted to piss into Aegeria, he dressed as a chimney-sweep. And to debauch Calisto, he had to dress up as a washerwoman, which was easy enough for him because in those days he was still as imberb as any nancy-boy of an ephebe, or as my dear old rascal Biagio, who sits here before me."
Biagio was the nickname of a beardless fatty with a bald, shiny pate who responded to the Maggiorengo's call with hoarse and hearty laughter, echoed by the uncontrollable screeches of the cerretano multitude.
"Although Jove's relatives were privileged, being his cousins, nephews and nieces, to get up to their dirty tricks, they all ended up embracing the Canters' way. How? They were gods, you tell me? Yet everyone knows that Vulcan was the lousiest failed blacksmith of all time - worse even than Bratti Old-Iron!"
Bratti was a toothless old man standing a few yards away from us who had been nicknamed after the well-known Tuscan popular figure of fun. I saw him snigger proudly when he was pointed out as an example to the rest of the company.
The Maggiorengo-General's harangue was really most effective and perfectly suited to that kind of gathering. Citing all manner of examples of mythical iniquity, adapted to meet the needs of the cerretani, he galvanised his listeners incomparably. I looked once more: this time, I could not see the half-naked canter.
"I've lost sight of him," I told Atto.
"That's a bad sign. Let's hope he hasn't gone off to spy on us."
"And Apollo? He was an even lousier hunter after other people's business than our arch-canter Olgiato," said the orator, winking at another fellow lost in the crowd. "Mars, when he was young, was a great bandit and assassinated thousands. Mercury was a sturdy, baby-minding steward, courier and ambassador or squire or summoner; meaning that he was in the business of extortion. Pluto was a baker and his Proserpine looked after the ovens. Neptune was a fishmonger, Bacchus, a wine merchant, Cupid, a little pimp. As for their womenfolk, some looked after the hen run, like Juno, some were washerwomen, like Mistress Diana. Of Venus, everyone knows she was an even bigger whore than that Pullica from Florence, and sh
e'd let any man sow and plough her fields."
The vile mass of cerretani roared with boorish laughter, tickled by their new leader's obscenities.
"Plato, the granddad of all scribblers, lived and died a canter. Aristotle was born the son of a common-or-garden physician and never strayed from the Way of the Canters. Pythagoras came from the codpiece of a bankrupt merchant; that oid tramp Diogenes slept in a barrel without any straw. But let's move on now from the Greek and barbarian kingdoms and talk of the Latins. Was not Romulus, the glorious founder of Rome, the wretched son of a common soldier who extorted his pay from the rich? His mother, as is public knowledge, was a nun who'd been thrown out of her order, and he himself was nothing but a lousy bricklayer who did a job or two on the walls of Rome. As long as he lived by the Canters' code, he was a great man and highly esteemed; when he betrayed it, as we all know, he ended up badly. A long, long time after Romulus, the Roman people became the masters of the world. But what does 'people' mean? The people are the Canters, the plebs and the ne'er-do-wells! And who were the captains of the Roman armies?"
"The canters!" the assembly thundered.
"And so, who fought, who smashed and subjugated the world?"
"The Canters!"
A burst of acclamations and applause followed the last exclamation. Calm returned only a while later. The Maggiorengo skilfully chose exactly the right moment to resume his harangue.
"Virgil, the imitator of Homer, was born in a shack near Mantua from the finest canters who ever lived in Piedmont; when he came to Rome, his only desire was to stay a Canter till he died, so he worked in the imperial stables, until the Emperor Augustus took him from there. And that was because the Emperor loved him, precisely for his virtues as a great rogue. Cicero was a canter; he always loved the canters and hated all forms of gentility and all things high class. Mucius Scevola was a baker and he never put his hand heroically into the fire to save Rome, as they tell you now. He was branded on the palm of the hand by the judges because, during the siege of the city, he mixed bean flour in with wheat flour to make his loaves weigh more. Marcus Marcellus was a lousy butcher, and Scipio, the one who killed him and took over from him, was a poultry farmer."
"What an erudite speech," commented Atto sarcastically. "Worthy of a real ruined gentleman. 'Tis no surprise he's a Mumper."
The words of the new Maggiorengo-General did indeed suggest that he had known better times. Meanwhile, he continued:
"And what of the great families? The Fabi sold beans, the Len- tuli sold lentils, the Pisoni, peas; and the Papinii take their name from the candlewicks they sell on the market. Even Caesar, for as long as he stayed a canter like his peers, was feared and revered. But when he abandoned that way of life to become a tyrant and command all the others, they killed him like a dog. Augustus, born to a baker from Velletri, as the prophet Virgil was to tell him, followed the holy Way of the Canters, and the humbler he was and the better a companion, the higher he rose. His stepson was Tiberius, and as long as he followed in his stepfather's footsteps, all went well for him, because he who holds to the Way will be successful in all he undertakes and cannot possibly end up badly. However, he who despises and departs from it will become a vicious ingrate, bizarre and odious in everyone's eyes, and after his death he will fall into the greater hell!"
New rounds of applause arose, whistles, some raspberries and a belch. I saw Atto stand on tiptoe to scan the hellish horde of cerretani.
"It is time," said he to Buvat as the turmoil of acclamations continued to rage. "Take care not to be seen, or we're done for."
The secretary moved off towards the middle of the amphitheatre which, as I had seen, was full of old firewood and other rubbish and happened at that moment to be almost deserted, since almost all those present at the meeting had gradually gathered around the dais where the new Maggiorengo-General sat. It seemed to me that there was a kind of bulge under Buvat's cassock and I remembered that I had noticed something of the sort under his usual tail coat when we sat in the carriage.
"Caligula was more of a scoundrel than a canter," the Mag- giorengo continued undaunted, "and that was his ruination. Nero was the great canter whose renown we all know, but as he was above all a glutton, he's not of much interest to us. Needless to say, all those other great emperors, the Tituses, the Vespasians, the Ottos, the Trajans, right down to our own day, were born and lived as canters. And the better they were at canting, the more dignified and valiant they were as emperors. He who is not, has not been and will not be a canter will never enjoy power, wealth or dignity. One cannot be virtuous nor can one excel in any science unless one follow the Way of the Canters. It is holy, because in it there is faith, love and charity; it is divine because it renders men immortal; it is blessed because it makes men rich and powerful. From the Way, all pleasures derive, all consolations and all amusements, right down to games like tarot and piastrelle. Remember! The real canter is loved, revered, courted, and desired by all, even if they don't all want to show it. Let everyone therefore embrace the Way of the Canters, place their trust in it and make it their capital. Let everyone exercise and refine how he does his canting, as does the rascal Lucazzo who's sprawling here just next to me, who cheats, steals and begs with the same art as the Cavalier Bernini designed his statues. Through the Way of the Canter, each of us can become a poet, an orator, a philosopher and, in principle, a gentleman, even a king or an emperor. Long live the canters! And you will see that destiny will soon send us a sign of its favours!"
"Don't worry, I'll send you that now," said Atto, as a deafening burst of cries, clapping and whistles greeted the conclusion of the speech.
"What's Buvat gone off to do?" I asked in a whisper.
"Telemachus."
Too late I understood what was about to happen; and that was just as well. The suspense of waiting might have been too much for me.
It all happened in a matter of moments. First came a terrifying explosion, almost like the rumble of an earthquake. I glanced at Ugonio, who was still perched on the platform, and our gazes met somewhere above the multitude of the cerretani, all excited by the speech which had just ended, then suddenly paralysed. Then came another, even more tremendous deflagration.
The noisome greyish mass of the cerretani spilled out in all possible directions, some jumping in the air for shock, some throwing themselves to the ground, the others scattering to the four winds.
Came the third explosion, which prevented the sordid mob from recovering their senses. This time, however, as well as the thunderous bang, there opened above our heads a marvellous purple flower, illuminating the cerretano horde, quite unworthy of such dazzling beauty, with great flashes of carmine and vermilion. The reddish globes which had multiplied in flight above the amphitheatre opened up into as many luminous corollas which descended gently to the ground, at last forlornly dying.
The name of the first two infernal machines said it all: Earthquake.
Before leaving, Atto had sent Buvat to Don Paschatio to ask whether any fireworks remained from the evening before. He had been far-sighted. Buvat had got the Major-Domo to explain to him in detail how to light the fireworks (fortunately, there was no lack of fire at the meeting of the cerretani) and how to handle them before use: no dampness, no excessive movement, and keep them upright at all times (as I had heard Don Paschatio say when we were on the point of leaving). Usually, the Earthquake is used to bring the pyrotechnical display to a triumphant close, by which time the ears are accustomed to the thundering noise of explosions. Buvat, however, had shattered the eardrums of the gathering, taking them by complete surprise, and the shock was redoubled by the funnel shape of the amphitheatre. After the two Earthquakes, Buvat had set off a real multicoloured firework.
Abbot Melani's technique, as he himself had just announced to me, had been that of Telemachus, the son of Ulysses who - according to what Albicastro had reminded us of the day before - had feigned madness before the assembly of his mother's suitors and thus had deliver
ed them helpless and unprepared into his father's vengeful hand.
Atto's calculations had proved completely accurate. The cerretani were behaving just like the suitors of Homeric lore: despite the confusion, no one had come down from the dais, neither the Maggiorengo-General, nor his two colleagues, nor Drehmannius, the Dutch bookbinder. Faced with the fireworks, they were plainly unsure whether this was a joke, a pleasant surprise spectacle or a threat. Ugonio obviously was by their side and he was as rapid as he was precise. When the red rocket rose in the sky, followed by all the noses in the amphitheatre, the corpisantaro's clawed hands were already deep in the bookbinder's bag, removing his book and replacing it with the one which Melani had handed him in the carriage. The two small volumes were identical: it can not have been difficult for Atto and Buvat to find another book of similar dimensions with an unmarked vellum cover, just like the one which the Abbot had commissioned poor Haver to make for his treatise.
"Use one Dutchman to hunt the other," Abbot Melani had said enigmatically not long before. Now I understood: thanks to the words of Albicastro, we had taken the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave from Dremannius's bag.
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