"Why? I have already told you what Cristofano explained to me: those pearls have to do with poison and with seeming death. And perhaps Brenozzi knows something."
"For the time being, at least, let us drop the matter, my boy," said he, laughing. "Not that your little pearls are worthless, on the contrary; nor that they lack the powers which our physician ascribes to them.
But I opine that the thief had something else to do in that closet. It is halfway between the second and the third floor; and ever since Master Pellegrino's inert body was found, there has been so much coming and going in that vicinity, that he has been unable to operate at ease."
"So?"
"So, I think that the thief will have more to do in that cupboard, and that he will act under cover of night. No one yet knows that you have discovered the theft of the keys. If you do not warn the lodgers, the thief will think that he can operate in peace."
"Very well," said I, acquiescing at last, albeit diffidently. "I shall let the night pass before I put them on their guard. Pray heaven that no ill befalls them."
I looked obliquely at the abbot and decided to put to him the question which I had been holding in reserve for some time: "Do you think that the thief killed Signor di Mourai and perhaps tried to do the same to my master?"
"Everything is possible," replied Melani, inflating his cheeks curiously and pursing his lips. "Cardinal Mazarin was wont to say to me: thinking bad thoughts, one commits a sin; but one always guesses rightly."
The source of my diffidence about him must have been clear to the abbot, yet he asked no questions and continued imperturbably: "As regards Mourai, this morning I was about to propose to you that we undertake a little exploration, but then your master fell ill."
"What do you mean?"
"I think the time has come to search the rooms of the poor old man's two travelling companions. And you have copies of all the keys."
"You intend to enter Dulcibeni's and Devize's apartments by stealth? And you want me to help you?" I asked in consternation.
"Come, do not look at me like that. Think about it: if anyone is to be suspected of having something to do with the death of the old Frenchman, it must indeed be Dulcibeni and Devize. They arrived at the Donzello together with Mourai, coming from Naples, and have stayed here for over a month. Devize, with his tale of the Cocomero, has shown that he probably has something to hide. Pompeo Dulcibeni even shared his chamber with the dead man. They may well be innocent, but they surely know more than anyone else about the dead man."
"And what do you hope to find in their apartments?"
"I shall not know until I have entered," he replied coldly.
Once again my ears resounded with the horrible things which Devize had uttered about Melani.
"I cannot give you a copy of their keys," said I, upon reflection.
Melani understood that it would be useless to insist and remained silent.
"For the rest, however, I am at your service," I added in a gentler tone, thinking of my lost pearls. "I could, for instance, put some questions to Devize and Dulcibeni, and try to make them talk..."
"Please, please... You would obtain nothing from them and you would put them on their guard. Let us move step by step: let us first endeavour to understand who it was that stole the keys and your pearls."
Atto then explained his idea to me: after dinner, we would watch over the stairs from our respective chambers, I on the third floor and he on the second. We would pass a string between my window and his (our chambers being one exactly above the other) and both would tie one end to a foot. When one of us noticed something, he would pull hard, several times, to make the other run and thus to prevent the thief's escape.
While he spoke, I weighed up the facts. The knowledge that Brenozzi's pearls might be worth a fortune had in the end disheartened me: no one had ever given me anything so precious. Perhaps I should bear with Abbot Melani a little. I ought, of course, to keep my eyes open: I must not forget the dire judgements which I had heard concerning him.
I assured him that I would follow his instructions, as moreover—I recalled in order to reassure him—I had already promised last night during our singular and lengthy colloquy. I mentioned vaguely that I had overheard three guests at the inn discussing Superintendent Fouquet, whose name the abbot had mentioned to me the evening before.
"And what did they say?"
"Nothing that I can recall with any precision, as I was busy tidying up the kitchen. They simply caused me to remember your promise to tell me something about him."
A gleam appeared in Abbot Melani's penetrating pupils: he had at last found the source of my sudden diffidence towards him.
"You are right," he said, "I am indebted to you."
His regard suddenly grew distant, lost in past memories. He sang sotto voce, in melancholy tones:
Ai sospiri, al dolore,
Ai tormenti, alpenare,
Torna o mio cuore...'*
"There," he added, seeing my questioning expression, "thus would my master, Seigneur Luigi Rossi, have spoken to you of Fouquet. But since it is now my turn to do the telling, and we must wait until dinner time, make yourself at ease. You ask me who Nicolas Fouquet was. I tell you, he was before all else a man vanquished."
He fell silent, as though at a loss for words, while the dimple on his chin trembled.
"A man defeated by envy, by raison d'etat, by politics, but above all one vanquished by history. Because, bear this well in mind, history is always made by the victors, be they good or bad. And Fouquet lost. And so, now and forever, in France and in the world, you may ask anyone who Nicolas Fouquet was, and they will reply that he was the most thieving, corrupt, factious, frivolous and prodigal minister of our times."
"And you, besides being a man vanquished, who do you say he was?"
"The Sun," he replied with a smile. "Thus was Fouquet called, when Le Brun painted him in that guise in the Apotheosis of Hercules, on the walls of the Chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte. And truly, no heavenly body was better suited to describe a man of such magnificence and generosity."
"And so the Sun King took that name because he wished to copy Fouquet?"
Melani looked at me pensively. He resumed, explaining to me that the arts, like the delicate inflorescence of roses, need someone who will arrange them in the right vase, or who will till and enrich the soil and, day after day, lovingly sprinkle the water with which to quench their thirst; as to the gardener, added Abbot Melani, he must possess the best of implements with which to care for his charges; a gentle touch, lest he offend their tender leaves, an expert eye to recognise their infirmities and, lastly, knowledge of how to transmit his art.
*To sighs, to suffering, / to torments, to chagrin, / return o my heart...
"Nicolas Fouquet had all that was needful to that end," sighed Abbot Melani. "He was the most splendid patron of the arts, the most grandiose, the most tolerant and the most generous, the most gifted in the art of living and making politics. But he was ensnared in the web of avid, jealous, proud, intriguing and dissimulating enemies."
Fouquet came of a wealthy family from Nantes, which had already a century before made a well-merited fortune trading with the Antilles. He was entrusted to the Jesuit Fathers, who found in him a superior intelligence and exceptional charisma: the followers of the great Ignatius made of him a nobly political spirit, able to weigh up every opportunity, to turn all situations to his advantage and to persuade his every interlocutor. At the age of sixteen, he was already a counsellor at the Parlement of Metz, and at twenty, he became a member of the prestigious corps of the maitres des requetes, the public servants who administer justice, finance and the military.
In the meanwhile, Cardinal Richelieu had died and Cardinal Mazarin had ascended: Fouquet, being a protege of the former, passed without difficulty into the service of the latter. This was also because when the Fronde, the famous revolt of the nobility against the Crown, had broken out, Fouquet had defended the y
oung King Louis well and had organised his return to Paris, after the troubles had compelled the Sovereign and his family to leave the city. He had shown himself to be an excellent servant of His Eminence the Cardinal, most faithful to the King and a man of daring. Once the tumult was over, at the age of thirty-five, he purchased the charge of Procurator- General of the Parlement of Paris, and in 1653 he was finally appointed Superintendent of Finances.
"But these facts," ventured Abbot Melani, "are merely the gilded frame of all his noble, just and eternal deeds."
His house was open to men of letters and artists and to business men; both in Paris and in the country, all awaited the precious moments which he stole from the duties of state to gratify those who had talent in poetry, in music and in the other arts.
It was no accident that Fouquet was the first to have understood and loved the great La Fontaine. The poet's scintillating talent was more than worthy of the rich pension which the Superintendent bestowed on him from the very dawning of their acquaintance. And to ensure that his friend's delicate soul should suffer no oppression, he asked him to repay his debt by periodic instalments, but in verse. Moliere himself was indebted to the Superintendent, but never would this be held against him, because the greater debt was moral. Even the good Corneille, now aged and no longer kissed by glory's ardent and capricious lips, was, at this the most difficult moment of his life, gratified materially, and thus saved from the coils of melancholy.
But the noble nuptials of the Superintendent with letters and with poesy were not exhausted in a mere sequence of presents and patronage, however long the catalogue of his munificence. The Superintendent did not stop short at material assistance. He read works still in gestation, he proffered advice and encouragement, he corrected, admonished, criticised where necessary, and praised where praise was opportune. And he gave inspiration: not only in words but through his noble presence. The good heart which shone forth from the Superintendent's countenance instilled courage, comfort and confidence: those great childlike cerulean eyes, the long nose, retrousse at the tip, the wide fleshy mouth and the dimples which creased his cheeks when he smiled his open smile.
Early in life, architecture, painting and sculpture had knocked at the door of Nicolas Fouquet's soul. Here, however, warned the abbot, a sorrowful chapter opens.
In the country, near Melun, there stands a chateau, a jewel of architecture, marvel among marvels, which Fouquet had built with incomparable taste and executed by artists whom he himself had discovered: the architect Le Vau, the gardener Le Notre, the painter Le Brun, recalled from Rome, the sculptor Puget, and so many others whom the King was soon to take into his own service, making them the foremost names in French art.
"Vaux, the castle of illusions," moaned Atto, "an immense affront in stone: the decor of a glory that lasted a single summer's night, that of the 17th of August, 1661. At six of the clock in the afternoon, Fouquet was the real King of France, at two the next morning, he was nothing."
On that 17th of August, the Superintendent, who had recently inaugurated his chateau, organised a day of festivities in honour of the King. He wished to please and delight him. He did this with his usual gaiety and munificence, but alas for him, without having understood the Sovereign's warped character. He had delivered to Vaux, for the still incomplete salons, day-beds decked in brocade with gold braided trimmings, tapestries, rare furniture, silverware, crystal chandeliers. Through the streets of Melun came a procession of treasures from a hundred museums and a thousand antiquaries: carpets from Persia and from Turkey, Cordovan leather wall coverings, porcelains sent from Japan by the Jesuits, lacquers imported from China via Holland, thanks to the privileged route which the Superintendent had created for the importation of rare merchandise from the Orient; and then, the paintings which Poussin had discovered in Rome and sent to him through his brother, the Abbe Fouquet. All the artists and poets who were his friends were recruited, including Moliere and La Fontaine.
"In every salon, from that of Madame de Sevigne to that of Madame de la Fayette, the Chateau of Vaux was the one subject of conversation," continued Melani, lost now in memories of those days. "The entrance to the chateau welcomed the visitor with the austere tracery of its wrought-iron grille and the eight busts of deities who seemed to hover on either side. Then came the immense outer courtyard, the cour d'honneur, linked to the dependencies by a series of bronze pilasters. And, in the three round arches of the imposing entrance portal, the climbing squirrel, Fouquet's emblem."
"A squirrel?"
"In Breton, the Superintendent's native dialect, the word fouquet means a squirrel. And my friend Nicolas resembled the little creature in complexion and temperament: industrious, moving suddenly and rapidly, nervous in body, with a playful, attractive gaze. Under his coat of arms, the motto: 'Quo non ascendant?'—or 'How high shall I not climb?'—which referred to the squirrel's passion for reaching ever-greater heights. By this, I mean of course, heights of generosity: Fouquet loved power as a little boy might. His was the simplicity of one who never takes himself too seriously."
Around the chateau, continued the abbot, spread the splendid gardens of Le Notre: "Velvet lawns and flowers from Genoa, where the begonia borders had the regularity of hexameters. Yews so clipped as to form cones, box bushes fashioned to resemble braziers, and then the great cascade and the lake of Neptune, leading to the grottoes; and, behind these, the park, with those celebrated fountains which so astonished Mazarin. All was ready to receive the young Louis XIV"
The King and the Queen Mother had left the Palace of Fontainebleau in the afternoon. At six, they arrived at Vaux with their retinue. Only Queen Maria Teresa, who was carrying the first fruit of her husband's love, was not among the guests. Manifesting indifference, the royal party passed between the ranks of guards and musketeers with their swelling chests and then through the busy swarms of pages and valets bearing gold chargers overburdened with the most ornate victuals, adjusting triumphs of exotic flowers, dragging cases of wine, arranging chairs around enormous damasked tables on which the candlesticks, the services and the cutlery were of gold and silver, the cornucopias full of fruit and vegetables, and the drinking glasses of the finest crystal, also ornamented in gold: all these things combined to make a splendid, stupefying, inimitable, irritating display.
"It was then that the pendulum of fate began to swing back," commented Abbot Melani, "and the reversal was as sudden as it was violent."
The young King Louis disliked the almost insolent ostentation of the fete. The heat and the flies, which were as anxious as the guests to take part in the celebrations, enervated both the Sovereign and his retinue, who were constrained by the conventions to make a punishing tour of the gardens of Vaux. Roasted by the sun, throats hemmed in by tight lace collars and lawn cravats pulled through the sixth buttonhole of their justaucorps, they were dying to be rid of their breeches and periwigs. It was with infinite relief that they saluted the cool of evening and at last sat down to dine.
"And how was the dinner?" I asked, my appetite whetted, imagining that the cuisine must have been on the same level as the house and the ceremony.
"The King did not like it," said the abbot gloomily.
Above all, the young King did not like the array of thirty-six dozen solid gold dishes and the five hundred dozen silver ones on the tables. He did not like the fact that so very many guests had been invited, hundreds and hundreds of them, or that the file of carriages and pages and little coaches waiting outside the chateau should be so long and so gay, almost a second fete. He did not like the whispered comment of a courtier, uttered as though it were some gossip which he was entitled to share, to the effect that the festivities had cost more than twenty thousand livres.
The King did not like the music which accompanied the banquet— cymbals and trumpets with the entrees, followed by violins—nor did he like the enormous sugar basin which was placed in front of him, and which hampered his movements.
After the miseries of the meal, Louis must needs endure those of the open-air spectacle which followed. While the banquet dragged on, Moliere in his turn, pacing nervously back and forth in the shelter of the great tents, cursed the Superintendent: Les Facheux, the comedy which he had prepared for the occasion, should have begun two hours earlier. Now the daylight was fading. In the end it was under the dark blue and green shield of the setting sun's last rays that he came on stage, while in the east the first stars dotted the heavens. There now followed yet another marvel: on the proscenium, there appeared a great clam, whose valves opened; whence a dancer, the sweetest of naiads, arose; and it was then as though all Nature spoke, and the surrounding trees and statues, moved by the subtlest of divine forces, gathered around the nymph to intone with her the sweetest of hymns: the eulogy of the King with which the comedy opened:
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