Meanwhile, we had reached the little grotto. Surely, Capitor's dish could not be there, but we both felt the need to breathe clean air after all the dust with which we had filled our lungs.
In the purity of the breezes which my breast inhaled in the garden, I seemed to find the description of la Valliere: Louise the ingenue, the enthusiast; a timid zephyr soon swept aside.
"Was the King furious that his mistress had disobeyed him?" I asked as we left the grotto and continued along a little path.
"Apparently not; on the contrary, invited by the Queen to mount her carriage, he refused and went off to ride with Louise. And what was more, on the next day, going to mass, poor Maria Teresa found Louise entering her carriage, although everyone had to huddle together in order to make room for her, after which she had to put up with her presence at dinner that evening. On the next morrow, caring not a whit for his consort or for his mistress, he spent almost all day locked in his chamber. La Montespan did likewise. And it so happened that the two bedchambers were communicating."
The Queen did not yet know that, with the arrival of Athenai's, she would have to resign herself to the most painful proximity: journeys in a carriage with her consort's two favourites became the rule, and in all things an official cohabitation was imposed upon all three. The mistresses were no better off than the Queen. Louis, continued the Abbot, kept them strictly sequestered under lock and key, and even if the one enjoyed ascendancy over the other, he took good care to keep them in a permanent state of anxiety, with herds of nameless concubines coming and going through their apartments. Every day, the official favourites suffocated in uncertainty, and the wretched spectacle of spite and squabbling somewhat calmed Maria Teresa's jealousy.
The path had brought us to an amphitheatre, far smaller than that which had been prepared at that time at Villa Spada for the spectacles accompanying the wedding, but graceful and delightfully mysterious. It was surrounded by a little portico decorated with antique bas-reliefs and with many vases of flowers; in the middle there was a little fountain, so that the portico, between one arch and the next, echoed its gentle splashing and gurgling.
"Around his heart, the King had built a tower of ice," continued Atto, deeply absorbed in his narration and almost completely unmoved by so much beauty. "Only great suffering could shake him a little, as on the death of children, and many of them did die. Of the six legitimate children, only one, the Grand Dauphin, is still living. When, about thirty years ago, his youngest son, the little Due d'Anjou, died, I saw him utterly broken: I feared that this might be a sign of God's wrath, but it did not last long. Even when Louise de la Valliere decided to enter a convent, the King was incapable of reacting with any sentiment other than anger.
"A convent?" I asked, as I slaked my thirst, gulping down great mouthfuls of good fresh water from the fountain.
"Yes, poor woman, hers was a sincere heart, and she had really asked nothing more than to love the King and be loved by him in return. She was the only favourite who loved Louis for himself alone, which greatly flattered him, but no more than that. She, however, had taken that feeling very seriously indeed; when she decided to take the veil as a Carmelite, she publicly begged the Queen's pardon. "My sins were public and so must be my penitence." She knelt at Maria Teresa's feet; deeply moved, the Queen raised her and kissed her. A multitude of persons were present. It was a moment of intense emotion. Only the King was absent."We returned to the house, and in a very short time we completed our search of the ground floor. The Abbot looked disconsolately at our reflections in a great mirror. With our apparel whitened with dust and all the cobwebs in our hair, we looked like a pair of rag-and-bone men.
"What are we to do now, Signor Atto, shall we go up to the first floor?"
"Yes, and not only to look for the dish."
Once on the first floor, Atto guided me to the bath chamber near the little chapel.
"Hie corpus," exclaimed Atto, repeating the motto over the entrance, which we had already read three days earlier. "We shall take advantage of the wonders of hydraulics, if they still work."
So he opened the tap marked calida, hot water, but nothing came out. He tried the tap marked frigida and was more fortunate.
"Open up those chests: perhaps there are still some towels."
Atto had guessed correctly. Although old and dried up, the cloths had remained free of dust. I even found some hard lumps of soap. Thus we were able, first he and then I, to wash and cleanse ourselves to our heart's content.
Yet again, we set out in search of Capitor's treasures, but above all the dish.
On the first floor, composed of four little rooms and the great gallery which lines of mirrors seemed to prolong all the way to the Vatican palaces, there was indeed much to inspect. We opened the drawers of massive ebony chests inlaid with ivory and brass, or oak roots with inlays of briar, full of old porcelain cups; we turned back shutters painted in bright colours and with great difficulty shifted huge dark cupboards, carved with spirals and leaves, with stags' heads on either side, or columns carved in the form of satyrs; we moved grim chests and dusty crystal mirrors. We removed the imposing mirror above the mantelpiece, first taking from it a multitude of statuettes in the finest porcelain, such as a blonde and delicate shepherdess with a pannier on her shoulders and, among the more bizarre ones, a young chimney-sweep complete with beret and ladder, and even a Chinese mandarin with the index finger of his right hand (visibly broken and glued back on) raised in warning. In the chests beneath the windows, we rummaged among blackened silver teapots, cords and braiding for curtains, even a pack of playing cards from Paris. Abbot Melani even stuck his head into the stoves, emerging stained with soot.
Coughing at all the dust, we unrolled carpets and French drawings and lifted enormous tapestries with scenes mythological and pastoral, always hoping to discover some secret hiding place or a concealed entrance to some intimate little room (after all, it is not easy to hide a globe!), in our dogged search for Capitor's presents.
After Louise de la Valliere, continued Melani with his lips curled in a supercilious little smile, there began the reign of Madame de Montespan. Exceptionally beautiful, witty and always at the height of fashion, with a seething sensuality and a heart of ice, la Montespan meant to conquer the King at all costs, and this was quite obvious. He knew at once, but resisted her. He went further and teased her: "Madame de Montespan desires me to desire that which I do not."
Then, however, the King's senses, and his intellect, the orphans of his heart, gave in. The ascent of Madame de Montespan coincided with the death of every feeling or appearance of such a thing. Not only was Louis no longer capable of loving; from Madame de Montespan onwards, he was unloved.
"Only much later did the Most Christian King come to understand that no woman had really loved him," said Atto enigmatically.
With Athenai's there began the ten years of the apogee of Louis XIY the era of splendour and arrogance, which was to end with the Affair of the Poisons, when the King realised that he was the prey of his mistresses, not they his. Years in which he gave the worst of himself, bedding hosts of other damsels with high hopes, ever ready and ever different. Not all of them deserved censure; some acted under the illusion that they could save a young husband or fiance from being sent to the wars or in an attempt to recover for their father the family fortune unjustly confiscated by the treacherous Colbert. Louis never failed to take special pleasure in crushing the latter in his bare hands."My boy," the Abbot addressed me, perceiving the horror painted on my face, "the Most Christian King had suffered one day in a far distant past as he could never have imagined it possible to suffer; he who had already known the terror of the Fronde."