There, I said to myself, if only I could discover where that name, Silvio, came from, perhaps I might obtain a few more clues as to who Lidio might be or even, I hoped, definitive proof that the King and the Connestabilessa were still engaged in amorous conversations.
I soon grew discouraged; I had only one name: Silvio. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Where was I to begin my search? A hand fell heavily on my shoulder, dragging me from my reflections.
"Will you stop meditating with that book in your hand like Saint Ignatius? Come and help me."
The Abbot, covered in dust and perspiration, had come to get me back to work.
"So far, I have found nothing. I mean to continue searching the first floor. Come and help me."
"I am coming, Signor Atto, I am coming," said I, climbing onto the chair and replacing the little volume of Herodotus.
My meditations would have to wait until later.
So we descended to the first floor, with its gallery of mirrors and its distorted perspective and, on either side, the little chapel, the bath chamber and the two little chambers dedicated, the one to the papacy and the other to France.
Suddenly, I found myself facing the delightful image, woven into a tapestry, of a lovely nymph dressed in a wolf's skin, who had been wounded in her flank by the arrow of a young hunter. The nymph's gentle appearance, from her ivory complexion to her soft ebony curls, were in sharp contrast to the blood that gushed from her side and the desperation written on the young man's face. The floral frame punctuated with scrolls and medallions in relief completed the tapestry with exquisite elegance.
Then I recognised it. This was one of the two Flemish tapestries before which Abbot Melani had stood, lost in ecstatic admiration, on our previous visit to the Vessel. Atto had explained to me that it was he himself who had persuaded Elpidio Benedetti to purchase it when the latter was visiting France some thirty years previously. What else had the Abbot said to me? This I pondered, while my thoughts began dancing in my head like Bacchantes moving in procession towards some exciting, yet unknown goal. Originally, there had been four tapestries — that, Melani had told me — but two of them he had made Benedetti present to Maria Mancini, because the scenes depicted in them were drawn from an amorous drama, The Faithful Shepherd, much appreciated by her and the young King (but this detail I had almost had to drag from him, so reticent had Atto become at that juncture). A drama of love…
Turning to Abbot Melani with an ingenuous smile, while I struggled to feign a bad bout of coughing, brought on by all that dust, I begged his leave to absent myself awhile from our search. Then, without even awaiting his permission, like some new Mercury flying on winged heels, I dashed up the stairs to the second floor and in a matter of seconds I was again visiting the four libraries, in one of which I had left the Histories of Herodotus.
Perched on a chair, my fingers almost scratching at the spines of the volumes, I scanned their titles, as though my eyes needed help from the sense of touch to confirm what they were reading.
At last I found it: tiny, no more than a booklet, some six inches high and less than half an inch thick. It was bound in black leather patterned with golden squares, its spine decorated with Florentine lilies. I
opened it: PASTOR FIDO,
I then placed my trust in the book-mark, of fine maroon satin, by now faded; opening at the place where it had lain since time immemorial, I read at random:
Happy Dorinda! Heav 'n has sent to thee That bliss you went in search to find.
I exulted. Dorinda: that was the name of the wounded nymph whom I had just seen in the tapestry. Abbot Melani had told me when we saw it for the first time. And Dorinda was also the name which the Connestabilessa had given herself in her last letter, in which she addressed Atto as Silvio.
1 had found what I was looking for. Now it only remained for me to seek the name Silvio. If, as I thought, he was one of the characters from The Faithful Shepherd, I had succeeded. So, with my breast trembling with emotion, I began to leaf through the pages of the little book, in search of a Silvio who might perhaps be a messenger of love between Dorinda and her beloved, just as Melani was perhaps the go-between linking the Connestabilessa and the Most Christian King.
Very soon, I found it:
Know you not Silvio, son to famed Montano?
That lovely boy! He's the delightful swain.
O prosp'rous youth…
This Silvio was, then, no go-between, as I had hoped, but a wealthy and beauteous youth. Apart from his wealth, he seemed hardly a portrait of Abbot Melani…
What I then read surpassed all my imagining:
O Silvio, Silvio! Why did nature give
Such flower of beauty, delicate and sweet,
In this thy Spring of life, to be so slighted?
It was a dialogue between Silvio and his old servant Linco, who reproves the youth for his hard-heartedness. I turned more pages:
O foolish boy, who fly to distant hills
For dang'rous game, when here at home you may
Pursue what's near, domestic and secure?
SILVIO:
Pray, in what forest ranges this wild creature?
LINCO:
The forest is yourself, and the wild creature Which dwells therein is your fierce disposition
Shall I not say thou hast a lion's heart
And that thy hardened breast is cased with steel?
No, it could not be Atto who hid behind the nickname Silvio. Rather, someone else came all too readily to mind when I read of that scornful, rich young shepherd:
Now, Silvio, look around, and take a view Of all this world; cdl that is fair and good Is the great work of love. The heav'ns, the earth, The sea are lovers too.
In short, all nature is in love but you. And shall you, Silvio, be the one exception, The only soul in heav 'n and earth and sea, A proof against this mighty force of nature?
I thought once more of all that Abbot Melani had told me: was not that series of reproofs perfectly suited to His Majesty the Most Christian King of France? Had not the Sovereign's heart turned to ice after his separation from Maria Mancini?
Thou art, my Silvio, rigidly severe To one who loves thee ev'n to adoration. What soul could think, beneath so sweet a face A heart so hard and cruel was concealed?
And, yet again:
O cruel Silvio! O most ruthful swain!
I turned to the frontispiece. I wanted before all else to read the foreword and the initial argumentum or resume of the drama, so as to discover what part was played in it by the nymph Dorinda who provided the Connestabilessa with her nom de plume. Thus I learned that Silvio was betrothed to Amaryllis, but did not love her. He loved no one. He wanted only to go hunting in the forest. Then, however, he accidentally wounded in the side a nymph who was in love with him — Dorinda, to be precise — having mistaken her for a wild beast because she wore a wolf's skin. At that point, Silvio fell in love with her, broke his bow and arrows, cured the wound and the couple married.
Was the tale not perhaps very like that of the young King of France, betrothed to the Spanish Infanta but in love with Maria Mancini? Only the denouement of their love story, as well I knew from Atto, was very different from that of The Faithful Shepherd, for which they themselves so yearned.
Time was growing short. Atto would soon be coming up to look for me. I entered the spiral staircase. There, I heard a strange buzzing. Cautiously descending a few steps, I peeped out to glance at Abbot Melani. Tired, Atto had slumped into an armchair to await my return, and had gone to sleep.
I sat down on a step and drew my conclusions: not only the name of Lidio but also that of Silvio were screens concealing the Most Christian King. Thus, the Connestabilessa was not only what Solon had been for Croesus; she still remained Dorinda, Silvio's lover…