He had run off and instead of the promised dowry I was left with nothing. I myself felt like fleeing, leaving that place; indeed, leaving this cruel deceitful world. Had my duties as a husband and father not prevented me, I would have taken flight like some new Daedalus, or become like Icarus, but instead of falling to earth, I would fall into the sky, sucked forever into the azure abyss of the celestial spheres.
As I was cursing to myself, I ran into one last piece of trouble.
"Signor Master of the Fowls! Did you not see what a success our festivities were? And did you hear the enthusiastic comments of our master, Cardinal Spada?"
Don Paschatio had intercepted me at the gate. He wanted to talk about the success of the festivities. No doubt he would point out that if I had not been so frequently distracted by Abbot Melani, and had made myself more available, the triumph would have been even more complete.
This really was not the moment for such things. Anything, anything rather than suffer his logorrhoea.
"Signor Major-Domo," I replied bluntly, "since during the past few days I have absented myself on several occasions, I am sure that you will not be surprised if I interrupt this conversation and ask you to set me some useful task so that I can make up for my past failings and avoid time-wasting."
Don Paschatio faltered, stopped short by so brusque a response.
"Er, well. . ." he hesitated. "Yes, you could attend to the cleaning and provisioning of the aviary, as I was just about to instruct you to."
"Very well!" I concluded, turning sharply on my heels. "It will be done at once, Signor Major-Domo."
Don Paschatio stared at me, scratching his forehead in perplexity, while I marched nervously towards the kitchens to collect feed for the birds and the necessary to clean the aviary.
I could not know it, but I was never to accomplish that task. Hardly had I opened the big cage when an unusual noise, a sort of furtive fluttering, caught my attention. I looked up towards the cage of Caesar Augustus which had remained empty since the day of his escape, and suddenly, in a bewildering flash of intuition, the bizarre events which had involved the parrot during the past few days became quite clear to me.
As I have had occasion to mention, recently, in other words, just before disappearing with the note addressed to Cardinal Albani, the parrot's mood had been unusually unhappy and agitated. What was more, he would often return with a twig in his claws, for some unknown purpose, something he had never done previously. The bird's nervousness had come to a head with the theft of the note and his long absence. Later, during the course of the hunting party organised for the guests, a badly aimed crossbow shot had brought down from a nest on a pine tree an egg of unidentified provenance. With the oddity I now found staring me in the face, I recalled that another parrot of the same race as Caesar Augustus had recently arrived and came to a quite inconceivable (but correct) conclusion.
"Dismiss him! Dismisssss him!" screeched Caesar Augustus, mocking me from his comfortable perch in the middle of a fine nest of feathers and twigs.
"But you... you are. .. you have..." I stammered.
I could not even bring myself to say it. No one could easily have accepted, even if they had witnessed it with their own eyes, that Caesar Augustus was really a female parrot. . . with a nestful of eggs.
I was amazed, almost entranced, watching the new manifestation of that surprising being, by no means accidentally once the property of the mad Capitor: he - she? - had, as a calm spectator, traversed decades and decades of history; he had seen the decline of Mazarin, the advent of the Sun King, and then a succession of no fewer than five popes, and now, with his eternal, unbearable squawking, he was making a triumphal entry into the new century in the sacred guise of a mother.
I saw him rise briefly from the nest lovingly to arrange the surviving eggs with his beak. The hunters who had examined the egg that had fallen from that pine tree were all mistaken: it belonged neither to a riparian swallow nor to a pheasant, nor to a turtle dove or a partridge, but to a parrot.
"Doiiiiinnnnng," went Caesar Augustus, with a pair of accusing eyes, imitating the sound of a crossbow bolt embedding itself in a branch and making it vibrate: the same bolt which, shot by Marchese Lancellotti Ginetti during the hunting party, had caused Caesar Augustus's egg to fall from its nest and had obviously forced him to abandon the pine on the Barberini property for the relative safety of the familiar aviary of Villa Spada.
"I know, I know, for you it must have been quite terrible," I answered.
"One does not shoot at nests, it is both pointless and cruel," said he, repeating the words of the cavalier who, immediately after the incident, had derided Lancellotti Ginetti's bad shooting.
"Lancellotti did not mean to harm you," I tried to explain to him. "Of course, building a new nest and transporting your eggs must have been a terribly difficult job; but, after all, it was only an accident, and you shouldn't have imitated that arquebus shot that so terrified all..."
"Dismiss him!" he replied sharply, descending to cover with loving wings the little whitish spheres containing his brood.
Don Paschatio and the others at the Spada household would never have believed their eyes. I could already imagine the rush to find some other noble Latin name for the fowl: Livia or Lucretia, Poppea or Messalina? I had known that bird for so long that I had come to treat him almost as an equal, from one male to another. Instead, I had really been dealing with a scornful, rebellious, intractable lady clothed in feathers. I felt almost guilty for having developed these all but comradely feelings; the only extenuating factor was the fact that it is, as is well known, almost impossible to determine the sex of a parrot visually or by touch. To solve the mystery, the only possibility is to wait until, once the right company has been found, it lays eggs or becomes the vigorous defender of the nest.
After a few more moments of stunned surprise, I recovered my aplomb.
"If I know you, I'm prepared to bet that, in addition to the eggs, you transported something else. Do you not have a certain something to return to me, now that you have calmed down?"
He continued to turn his back on me, pretending not to hear.
"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about," I insisted.
The bird acted swiftly and apparently with utter unconcern, almost scornfully. With one foot, it scratched inside the nest, extracted it and let it fall. My request had been granted.
Like any other dead leaf, Cardinal Albani's message fluttered crazily down, making a few graceful pirouettes until my hands grasped it.
It was dirty, torn and stank of birds' droppings. How could it have been otherwise, seeing that the parrot, after sating itself chewing the corner dipped in chocolate, had used it for its nest? And, stubborn as he was, after building a nest inside the aviary, he had not failed to bring it with him.
With eager fingers, I opened the scrap of yellow paper. There were just three lines, but they rent my already lacerated soul even more:
Opinion ready.
Wednesday 14th at the Villa T, time to be confirmed.
Arrangements already made for scribe and courier.
My arms grew heavy and fell by my sides. What for anyone else would have been mysterious was for me as clear as daylight and as painful as a fiery arrow.
The Villa T. was obviously the Villa del Torre, where in fact on Wednesday 14th Atto and I had, from the terrace on top of the Vessel, seen the three cardinals. The ready opinion was clearly the document to be copied by the scribe and sent by courier to the King of Spain, whereby the Pope was indicating an heir to the throne.
As I already knew from what I had overheard just before the play at Villa Spada, on Monday 12th the Spanish Ambassador Uzeda and the three cardinals (those four "sly foxes", as they had called them) had convinced the Pope to set up a special congregation to be entrusted to the same Albani, Spada and Spinola. The Pontiff had formally created it two days later, on the 14th July. However, they had already made their decision even on the day when the m
essage was stolen by the parrot, namely Saturday 10th!
It had all been a great sham. If the King of Spain was a dead man walking, the Pope too no longer counted for anything. Albani, Spada and Spinola had dictated the destiny of the world from the Villa Spada, between a cup of chocolate and a hunting party, without anyone knowing anything of it. Atto, the vigilant eye of the King of France, had kept an eye on them from a distance; and I, without knowing it, had seconded him.
Instilling in me a desperate feeling of impotence, Albicastro's words came back to mind: "The world is one enormous banquet, my boy, and the law of banquets is: 'Drink or begone!'"
Would I then never have any other choice? Did the authority invested by God no longer count for anything?
Autumn 1700
About a month had passed since Atto Melani and his secretary had abandoned me. Day after day of hatred, fury and powerlessness had followed. Every night, every single breath had been marked out in seconds by the remorseless clock of humiliation, injured honour and frustration. Perhaps it was no accident that I was tormented by that nasty tertian fever from which I had not suffered for years. It had consoled me little that, about a month before, a notary had come to Villa Spada in search of Atto: he said that the Abbot had instructed him to draw up an act of endowment but had failed to turn up to the appointment at which he was to sign it. Now I had the confirmation: Melani had not premeditated breaking his promise; simply, the instinct to flee had in extremis got the better of him.
Cloridia was sorry for me; despite her anger and humiliation as a mother at being denied her daughters' dowry, she was soon able even to make light of it all. She said that Melani had just been doing his job as a spy and a traitor.
Obviously, I had never set my hand to the memoir for which the Abbot had paid me. He was not really interested in it. I had thought thus to keep the money as partial compensation for the dowry he had failed to make over to my little ones. On 27th September, however, I did take up my pen, impelled by an event the gravity of which put my selfish suffering in the shade. I began to keep a little diary, which I am setting out below.
21th September 1100
The sad day is upon us: Innocent XII has passed away.
On the last day of August he had suffered an alarming relapse, so much so that the Consistory planned for the next day had to be postponed. On 4th September (as I had gradually come to learn from the broadsheets which the Major-Domo read out to the servants) his health had improved, and, with that, hopes had revived for his recovery. Three days later, however, his state again worsened, this time seriously. Yet his constitution was so strong that the illness lasted even longer. On the night of the 23rd and the 24th he was administered the Eucharist. On the 28th, he ordered that he was to be brought to the room where Pope Innocent XI, whom he had so revered, had breathed his last.
The physician Luca Corsi, no whit less capable than his illustrious predecessor Malpighi, had done all in his power. Human assistance was, however, no longer of any avail. Spiritual support was provided by a Capuchin friar to whom the Pope made his general confession.
"Ingredimur via universae carnis", "we are taking the way of all flesh," said he, moving to tears those who accompanied him in his extreme travail.
Yesterday night, his sufferings were aggravated by sharp pains in one side; however, it proved possible to restore him with a few sips of broth. But at four in the morning, he gave up the ghost.
The body will be brought from the Quirinale to Saint Peter's in a plain wooden coffin chosen by the Pope in person. He leaves behind him an exemplary reputation as father of the poor, a disinterested administrator of the Church's estates and a pious and just priest.
Now the betting is truly open for the election of the next Pope. Prognostications for this or that cardinal can be voiced aloud without any fear of offending the honour of the Holy Father and his poor sick body.
This should have been Abbot Melani's finest hour: at long last exploiting his network of acquaintances, making friends among those attending the conclave, getting wind of indiscretions, proposing strategies, propagating false rumours to demoralise the other side. . .
None of that is to be. No clever interpreter of political manoeuvring, no magus of Vatican alchemy will be by my side. I shall observe the conclave from the outside, wide-eyed and with my soul in a state of suspense, like all the other members of the public.
8th October
Tomorrow, the cardinals go into conclave. The factions are on a war footing, all Rome is holding its breath. The city is full of gazettes and broadsheets setting out the composition of the parties that will be entering the lists. Satires, dramas and sonnets flourish, lampoons abound.
Plays are circulated quite without shame or fear of God, lambasting the whole Sacred College, while according special attention to Cardinal Ottoboni and his particular tendencies: in La Babilonia, he is given the role of the chambermaid Nina; in L'Osteria, he becomes Petrina; in Babilonia Crescente, Madam Fulvia, in Babilonia trasformata, a certain Venetian Angeletta. Everyone kills themselves laughing.
The other day, I came upon a sonnet in which poor Pope Innocent the Twelfth ("Duodecimo") becomes Innocent Duodenum. Out of modesty, I shall not reproduce it here.
Besides all the jokes, serious information also circulates. The imperial and Spanish cardinals number eleven, at least on paper. The French are in equal numbers.The party of the Cardinal Zealots is the most numerous, numbering nineteen. Some of these (Moriggia, Carlo Barberini, Colloredo) I have seen at Villa Spada. The group of the Virile are ten, and include the Chamberlain Spinola di San Cesareo; likewise the Drifters. The Ottoboniani and Altieristi (called after the family names of the popes who raised them to the purple) are twelve. These include my master, Cardinal Spada, together with Albani, Mariscotti and, obviously, Ottoboni. Then come the other popes' appointments, the Odescalchini, the Pignatellisti and the Barberini. . .
According to the gazettes, the divisions cut across all party lines, and so are infinite. Some see rivalries and alliances according to age groups, gifts, aspirations, caprices, even tastes: there are the bitter cardinals, in other words, those known for their ill humour (Panciatici, Buonvisi, Acciaioli, Marescotti), the good-natured and easy going (Moriggia, Radolovich, Barberini, Spinola di Santa Cecilia), the middling ones (Carpegna, Noris, Durazzo, Dal Verme) and lastly, the unripe ones, who are less than seventy years of age and therefore too young to be elected (Spada, Albani, Orsini, Spinola di San Cesareo, Mellini and Rubini).
Negroni is seventy-one years old but has made it clear that he is not willing to be elected; he will vote for whoever merits the appointment, so he swore, and against the undeserving. The latter, of this everyone is convinced, are the overwhelming majority.
Even upright souls will, however, find the way difficult. No favours will be granted, even to those who have all their affairs in good order. Carlo Barberini, for instance, is about the right age, but has to contend with the hatred of the Romans for his relatives (which has lasted for the best part of eighty years), as well as the hostility of Spinola di San Cesareo and, above all, his own stupidity. Accaioli is opposed by Tuscany and France. Abroad, Marescotti is hated only by France, but in Rome also by Bichi (the feeling being entirely mutual). Durazzo is envied for the fact that he is related to the Queen of Spain. Moriggia is too close to Tuscany, Radolovich to Spain. Carpegna is not in good odour with any of the crowned heads of Europe, Colloredo is detested by the French and despised by Ottoboni. Costaguti is notoriously incompetent. Noris suits no one because he is a friar. For whatever reason, Panciatici is favoured by no one.
Many foreigners will not come, being taken up with urgent business of their own (these are said to include the Austrian Kollonitz, the Frenchmen Sousa and Bonsi and the Spaniard Portocarrero). But the struggle will be very hard indeed, so much so that the eminences may wish to opt for a more rapid solution in order to avoid bloodshed. Some say that white smoke may emerge within a fortnight or so, perhaps even less.
Nothing of the kind. A month and a half has passed since the beginning of the conclave, yet there's not so much as the shadow of a new Pontiff. The Sacred College of Cardinals seems in fact quite indifferent to the election of the new Pope. We have in fact seen nothing but fruitless manoeuvres whereby candidates have been ruined and burnt out. Everything is blocked by France, Spain and the Empire, in a crossfire of vetoes which implacably bars the way to candidates who do not meet with their approval. The independence and prestige of the Church are obviously in pieces, but the cardinals care nothing for that.
Throughout October, things have gone on like this, with a superabundance of verbiage, while first this candidate, then that, is cast into the fray, like so many manikins cast in the fire: Noris, Moriggia, Spinola di Santa Cecilia, Barbarigo, Durazzo, Medici. All proposed, some even joining the fray on their own initiative, all rejected.
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