"For as long as the Superintendent remained alive, although entombed at Pinerol, Colbert lived in a state of constant terror that the King might one day return him to his post. Even when Fouquet was no more, the memory of his all-too-brilliant, genial, cultivated, well-loved and admired predecessor remained etched into the Coluber's soul. Colbert had many sons who were healthy and robust, and he enriched them all; he had immense power, while his adversary's family was dispersed far from the capital and condemned perpetually to struggle against creditors. Yet the Coluber's thoughts could never be free of that one original defeat inflicted upon him by Mother Nature, who had so despised him as to refuse her own gifts and shower them prodigally upon his rival Fouquet."
"How did the building work go at Versailles?"
"The new wing collapsed, and all the court laughed. The King flew into a rage with Colbert who, overcome by humiliation, suffered a most violent attack of the colic. After days of screaming in pain, the sickness brought him to his death throes."
I was at a loss for words before the power of divine vengeance.
"You were truly a good friend of Superintendent Fouquet," was the only phrase I was able to utter.
"I would have wished to be a better friend."
We heard a door open and then close again on the first floor; then footfalls moved towards the stairs.
"Better leave the way open for science," said Atto, alluding to the approach of Cristofano. "But remember that we shall have work to do later."
And he ran to take shelter on the stairway leading to the cellars, while the doctor passed, after which he moved swiftly upstairs.
Cristofano had come to ask me to prepare dinner, because the other guests were complaining.
"I thought I heard footsteps when I was coming downstairs. Has someone perhaps been here?"
"Absolutely not, you will have heard me: I was just getting ready to prepare the stove," said I, pretending to busy myself with the pots and pans.
I would have liked to retain the doctor but he, reassured by my reply, returned directly to his apartment, begging me to serve dinner as soon as possible. Thank heavens, thought I, that he had decided to serve only two meals a day.
I set myself to preparing a soup of semolina with beans, garlic and cinnamon, with sugar on it, to which I added cheese, sweet-smelling herbs, a few little pancakes and half a pint of the watered-down wine.
While I was attending to my cooking, a thousand turbid thoughts rushed through my poor prentice's mind. In the first place came what Abbot Melani had just told me. I was shaken: here, I thought, are all the present and past troubles of the abbot: a man capable of deceit and dissimulation (and to some extent, who is not?) but not inclined to deny the past. His former familiarity with Superintendent Fouquet was the one mark that not even his juvenile flight to Rome and the humiliations that had followed could cancel out, and which even now made him uncertain of the King's favour. Yet he continued to defend his benefactor's memory. Perhaps he spoke so freely only with me, as I would certainly never be able to report his words to the French court.
I went over again in my memory what he had discovered among Colbert's papers. In all tranquillity, he had confided in me how he had purloined a number of confidential documents from the Coluber s study, forcing the devices which were designed to protect them. But this was no surprise, given the character of the man, as I had already learned both from others and from him in person. What had struck me was the mission which he had taken upon himself: to find in Rome his old friend and protector, Superintendent Fouquet. That could be no light matter for Abbot Melani, not only because the Superintendent had hitherto been believed dead, but also because it was precisely he who had, however involuntarily, involved Atto Melani in the scandal: and I seemed, according to the abbot, to be the one person privy to his secret mission, which only the sudden closure of the inn when we were placed in quarantine had, I thought, momentarily interrupted. Thus, when I had entered the gallery under the hostelry, I was in the company of a special agent of the King of France! I felt honoured that he should go to so much trouble to resolve the strange affairs which had taken place at the Donzello, including the theft of my little pearls. And indeed it was he who had insistently requested my help. By now, I would not have hesitated one moment to give the abbot copies of the keys to Dulcibeni and Devize's chambers, which only a day before I had refused. However, it was too late: because of Cristofano's instructions, the two would, like the other guests, remain closed in their apartments all the time, making any search of those apartments impossible. And the abbot had already explained how inopportune it would be to ask questions of them, which might raise their suspicions.
I was proud to share so many secrets, but all that was as nothing when compared with the tangle of sentiments provoked by my colloquy with Cloridia.
After bringing dinner to every guest in their chambers, I went first to see Bedfordi, then Pellegrino, where both Cristofano and I took care of feeding the patients. The Englishman was jabbering incomprehensible things. The doctor seemed worried. So much so that he went to Devize's chamber next door, explaining Bedfordi's condition to him and begging him to lay aside his guitar at least for the time being: the musician was, in fact, practising sonorously, rehearsing on his instrument a fine chaconne which was among his favourite pieces.
"I shall do better," replied Devize laconically.
And, instead of leaving off from playing, he launched into the notes of his rondeau. Cristofano was about to protest, but the mysterious enchantment of that music enveloped him, lighting up his face, and, nodding benevolently, the physician went out of the door without making a sound.
A little later, whilst I was descending from Pellegrino's chamber, up under the eaves, I was called in a stage whisper from the second floor. It was Padre Robleda, whose room was near the stairs. Leaning out from his door, he asked me for news of the two patients.
"And the Englishman is no better?"
"I would say not," I replied.
"And has the doctor nothing new to tell us?"
"Not really."
Meanwhile, the last echo of Devize's rondeau reached us. Robleda, hearing those notes, permitted himself a languid sigh.
"Music is the voice of God," said he, explaining himself.
Seeing that I was carrying the unguents with me, I took the opportunity to ask him whether he had a little time for the administration of the remedies against the infection.
With a gesture, he invited me to enter his little chamber.
I was about to put my things down on a chair which was situated just past the door.
"No, no, no, wait, I need this!"
He hurriedly laid on the seat a little glass box with a black pear- wood frame, with inside it a Christ child and fruit and flowers, standing on little feet shaped like onions.
"I bought it here in Rome. It is precious, and it will be safer on the chair."
Robleda's weak excuse was a sign that his desire for conversation, after long hours passed in solitude, was now equal to his fear of contact with someone who must, he knew, touch Bedfordi every day. I then reminded him that I was to apply the remedy with my own hands, but that there was no cause for mistrust, as Cristofano himself had reassured everyone of my resistance to the infection.
"Of course, of course," was all he answered, marking his cautious confidence.
I asked him to uncover his chest, since I would have to anoint him and to place a poultice in the region of his heart and especially around the left pap.
"And why is that?" asked the Jesuit, perturbed.
I explained that this was what Cristofano had recommended, as his anxious character might risk weakening his heart.
He became calmer and, while I was opening the bag and looking for the right jars, lay supine on the bed. Above this there hung a portrait of Our Lord Innocent XI.
Robleda began almost at once to complain of Cristofano's indecision, and the fact that he had not
yet found a clear explanation for the death of Mourai or for the distemper which had laid Pellegrino low; indeed, there were even uncertainties concerning the plague to which Bedfordi had fallen victim, and all this was sufficient to affirm without the shadow of a doubt that the Tuscan physician was not up to the task. He then went on to complain about the other guests and about Signor Pellegrino, whom he blamed for the present situation. He began with my master, who was, according to him, insufficiently vigilant about the cleanliness of the hostelry. He came next to Brenozzi and Bedfordi, who, after their long voyage, could certainly have brought some obscure infection to the inn. For the same reason, he suspected Stilone Priaso (who came from Naples, a city where the air was notoriously unhealthy) and Devize (who had also journeyed from Naples), Atto Melani (whose presence at the inn and whose dreadful reputation surely called for recourse to prayer), the woman in the little tower (of whose habitual presence at the inn he swore that he had never heard, otherwise he would never have set foot at the Donzello); and lastly he inveighed against Dulcibeni, whose mean Jansenist expression, said Robleda, had never pleased him.
"Jansenist?" I asked, curious about that word which I was hearing for the first time.
I then learned in brief from Robleda that the Jansenists were a most dangerous and pernicious sect. They took their name from Jansenius, the founder of this doctrine (if indeed it could be called one), and among his followers there was a madman called Pasqual or Pascale, who wore stockings soaked with cognac to keep his feet warm and who had written certain letters containing matter gravely offensive to the Church, to our Lord Jesus Christ and to all honest persons of good sense with faith in God.
But here the Jesuit broke off to blow his nose: "What an immodest stink there is in this oil of yours. Are you sure it is not poisonous?"
I reassured him as to the authority of this remedy, prepared by Antonio Fiorentino to protect people from the pestilence at the time of the republic of Florence. The ingredients, as Cristofano had taught me, were none other than theriac of the Levant boiled with the juice of lemons, carline thistle, imperatoria, gentian, saffron, Dictamnus albus and sandarac. Gently accompanied by the massage I had begun to give his chest, Robleda seemed to be lulled by the sound of the names of these ingredients, almost as though that cancelled out their disagreeable odour. As I had already observed with Cloridia, the pungent vapours and the various techniques of touch with which I applied Cristofano's remedia pacified the guests to the depths of their souls and loosened their tongues.
"When all is said and done, are they not almost heretics, those Jansenists?" I resumed.
"More than almost," replied Robleda with satisfaction.
Indeed, Jansenius had written a book the propositions of which had been harshly condemned many years ago by Pope Innocent X. "But why are you of the opinion that Signor Dulcibeni belongs to the sect of the Jansenists?"
Robleda explained to me that on the afternoon before the quarantine, he had seen Dulcibeni return to the Donzello with a number of books under his arm which he had probably acquired from some bookshop, perhaps in the nearby Piazza Navona where many books are sold. Among these texts, Robleda had noticed the title of a forbidden book which precisely inclined towards that heretical doctrine. And that, in the Jesuit's opinion, was an unequivocal sign that Dulcibeni belonged to the Jansenist sect.
"Is it not strange, however, that such a book may be purchased here in Rome," I objected, "seeing that Pope Innocent XI will doubtless have condemned the Jansenists in his turn."
Padre Robleda's expression changed. He insisted that, contrary to what I might think, many acts of gracious attention towards the Jansenists had come from Pope Odescalchi, so much so that in France, where the Jansenists were held in the greatest suspicion by the Most Christian King, the Pope had for some time been accused of harbouring culpable sympathies for the followers of that doctrine.
"But how could Our Lord Pope Innocent XI possibly harbour sympathies for heretics?" I asked in astonishment.
Padre Robleda, stretched out with his arm under his head, looked obliquely at me, his little eyes twinkling.
"You may perhaps be aware that between Louis XIV and Our Lord Pope Innocent XI there has for some time been great discord."
"Do you mean to say that the Pontiff is supporting the Jansenists solely in order to damage the King of France?"
"Do not forget," he replied slyly, "that a pontiff is also a prince with temporal estates, which it is his duty to defend and promote by all available means."
"But everybody speaks so well of Pope Odescalchi," I protested. "He has abolished nepotism, cleaned up the accounts of the Apostolic Chamber and done all that can be done to help the war against the Turks..."
"All that you say is not false. Indeed, he did avoid the granting of any offices to his nephew, Livio Odescalchi, and did not even have him made a cardinal. All those offices he in fact kept for himself."
This seemed to me a malicious answer, even though it was so phrased as not to deny my assertions.
"Like all persons familiar with trade, he knows well the value of money. It is indeed acknowledged that he managed very well the enterprise which he inherited from his uncle in Genoa. Worth about five hundred thousand scudi, it is said. Without counting the residue of various other inheritances which he took care to dispute with his relatives," said he hurriedly, lowering his voice.
And before I could get over my surprise and ask him if the Pontiff had really inherited such a monstrous sum of money, Robleda continued.
"He is no lion-heart, our good Pontiff. It is said, but take care," he lowered his voice, "this is but gossip, that as a young man he left Como out of cowardice, in order to avoid arbitrating in a quarrel between friends."
He fell briefly silent, and then returned to the attack: "But he has the holy gift of constancy, and of perseverance! He writes daily to his brother and to his other relatives to have news of the family estates. It seems that he cannot remain two days in succession without controlling, advising, recommending... Moreover the assets of the family are considerable. They increased suddenly after the pestilence of 1630, so much so that in their part of the world, in Como, it was said that the Odescalchi had profited from the deaths, and that they had used suborned notaries to obtain the inheritances of those who had died without heirs. But those are all calumnies, by our Lord's charity," said Robleda, crossing himself and rounding off his speech: "Nevertheless, their wealth is such that in my opinion they have lost count of it: lands, premises leased to religious orders, venal offices, franchises for the collection of the salt taxes. And then, so many letters of credit, I would say, almost all in loans, to many persons, even to some cardinals," said the Jesuit nonchalantly, as though showing interest in a crack in the ceiling.
"The Pontiff's family gains riches from credit?" I exclaimed, surprised. "But did not Pope Innocent forbid the Jews to act as moneylenders?"
"Exactly," replied the Jesuit enigmatically.
Then he dismissed me suddenly, on the pretext that it was time for his evening orations. He made as if to rise from his bed.
"But I have not yet finished: I must apply a poultice now," I objected.
He lay down again without a protest. He seemed to be lost in contemplation.
Following Cristofano's notes, I took a piece of crystalline arsenic and wrapped it in a piece of sendal. I approached the Jesuit and placed the poultice above his breast. I had to wait for it to dry, after which I twice again wet it with vinegar.
"Please do not, however, listen to all the malevolent gossip which has been spread about Pope Innocent, ever since the time of the Lady Olimpia," he continued, while I attended to the operation.
"What gossip?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing: it is all just poison. And more powerful than that which killed our poor Mourai."
He fell silent then, with a mysterious and, to me, suspect air.
I became alarmed. Why had the Jesuit remembered the poison whic
h had perhaps killed the old Frenchman? Was it only a casual comparison, as it seemed? Or did the mysterious allusion conceal something else, or had it, perhaps, to do with the Donzello's no less mysterious underground passages? I said to myself that I was being silly, yet that word—poison—kept turning around in my head.
"Pardon me, Padre, what did you mean?"
"It would be better for you to remain in your ignorance," said he, cutting me short distractedly.
"Who is Lady Olimpia?" I insisted.
"Do not tell me that you have never heard speak of the Papess," he murmured, turning to look at me in astonishment.
"The Papess?"
It was thus that Robleda, lying on his side supported by an elbow and with an air of granting me an immense favour, began to recount to me in an almost inaudible voice that Pope Innocent XI had been made a cardinal by Pope Innocent X Pamphili, almost forty years earlier. The latter had reigned with great pomp and magnificence, thus consigning to oblivion a number of disagreeable deeds which had taken place under the previous pontificate, that of Urban VIII Barberini. Someone, however—and here the Jesuit's tone descended by another octave—someone had observed that Pope Innocent X, of the Pamphili family, and his brother's wife, Olimpia Maidalchini were linked by bonds of mutual sympathy. It was murmured (all calumnies, of course) that the closeness between the two was excessive and suspect, even between two close relatives for whom affection and warmth and so many other things (quoth he, looking into my eyes for the space of a lightning flash) would be completely natural. The intimacy which Pope Pamphili granted to his sister-in-law was, however, such that she frequented his chambers at all hours of the day and night, put her nose into his affairs and interfered even in matters of state: she arranged audiences, granted privileges, assumed responsibility for taking decisions in the Pope's name. It was surely not beauty that gave Donna Olimpia her dominance. Her appearance was, indeed, particularly repugnant, although combined with the incredible force of an almost virile temperament. The ambassadors of foreign powers were continually sending her presents, aware of the power which she exercised in the Holy See. The Pontiff himself was, however, weak, submissive, of melancholy humour. Gossip in Rome ran rife, and some made a joke of the Pope, sending him anonymously a medal with his sister-in-law dressed as Pope, tiara and all; and, on the other side, Innocent X in women's clothing, with a needle and thread in his hand.
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