"There they are," we heard clearly pronounced in the dark. I knew at once: the second guard we had met had not trusted us. Someone had been sent to intercept us.
I could distinguish a small group of persons, at least two and not more than four advancing from the end of the terrace giving onto the square, where the statue of Our Lord turns his holy face towards the multitudes of the faithful.
"What shall we do?" I asked Buvat.
"I could try to persuade them by throwing them a coin," said Sfasciamonti, "even if I don't really think that…"
But I already lacked the ears to hear and the patience to wait. I had made my own calculations. If I was quick enough, I had a good chance of making it.
"Eh, boy, look here…" I heard Sfasciamonti say as I ran like mad and took a stairway with two separate flights which climbed up the outside of the drum of the cupola and led to an entrance.
Then there were no more words: to my rapid footfalls responded those of Buvat and Sfasciamonti and those of the surprised and angry people on our heels.
"Dear Cloridia," I murmured with my voice broken by breathlessness, "when I tell you of this, I hope you'll forgive me."
The disadvantage was our scant, indeed non-existent knowledge of the place. The advantage was surprise, and the head start that had given me. My small stature seemed, on the face of it, to be a drawback, but I was later to find that, all in all, this was not the case.
I was running at breakneck speed, but with the secret (unreasonable) hope that I was not taking excessive risks: the worst thing that could happen to me would be to end up being caught by the guards of Saint Peter's, but I could always attribute the whole thing to audacity. I was stealing nothing, I was damaging nothing. To avoid trouble with the law, Sfasciamonti would make use of his many acquaintances, and Buvat would be able to get help from Atto who could get me out of trouble through his wide network of influential connections: all silly ideas mechanically repeated, only to urge me on.
Once I had entered the drum, another spiral staircase took me even higher. 1 could hear Sfasciamonti's wild footsteps closer and closer behind me, and behind him, those of Buvat and the guards. No one spoke: our lungs were for running, the guards' for pursuit.
At the top of the spiral staircase, I found myself at a junction; I chose at random and went to the left. I crossed a threshold with no door and suddenly found myself suspended above infinity.
I was inside the cupola, facing a chasm of incalculable immensity. A corridor ringing the vast drum stretched to the right and to the left: at my feet, a fathomless vision of the inside of the basilica. There lay the colossal central nave of Saint Peter's, precisely at the point where it intersects with the transept. Just there, but many, many yards below, I knew there stood the Cavaliere Bernini's grandiose baldaquin, the glory of the basilica and of all Christendom. Above me, the immeasurable vault of the cupola, an abyss standing over an abyss, made me feel like an atom of dust lost in interstellar space.
At my height, on the walls of the great tambour supporting the cupola, were colossal mosaics with tender little cherubs the size of five men seated on cornucopias as big as two carriages.
All that, I could, however, see only with the eyes of the imagination: the interior of the church was dimly lit by a handful of torches; a boundless dark cavern echoing only to the desperate rhythm of my feet.
The threshold whence I had emerged into that vertiginous observatory was one of the four entrances to the annular corridor, which were placed diametrically opposite one another at the cardinal points.
Right or left? Left again. This time, the threshold contained a door. I pushed: it was open. Left again: I banged my nose against the handle of a door, which was closed. Now there was no light at all, only moonless night. Left again, then.
A stairway. Stairs going straight up, then winding, but the broadest of steps. From the wall on the left, a glimmer of light, almost none. There was a large window giving onto the outside. Through it one could descry the roofs of the basilica, tranquil and indifferent to my desperate agitation. The spiral staircase kept climbing, then became rectilinear. Once again I collided with an obstacle: before me was a tight, airless little spiral staircase climbing vertically. I took it. The others, too, must have been in some difficulties; 1 heard a cry. I appeared to be going fast. The noise from them seemed a little further away. But, where was I? I prayed that my calculations would not run up against hard facts. Escape was even more important than attaining my goal. Negotiating the labyrinth of the cupola was like dismantling a delicate piece of clockwork, but Atto had shown me all the details. Fortunately, in the library of Villa Spada we had found all we needed and we had made use of the night hours before my departure to refine our tools. The tome we studied was The Vatican Temple and its Origin by the learned Carlo Fontana, rich in tables and illustrations and published in Rome six years earlier, in 1694. It contained plans, sections and prospects of the basilica and, of particular interest to me, the cupola. In a couple of hours' close study, I had memorised the arrangement of corridors and stairways in the upper part of the basilica. Although approximate, my memory had guided me well.
The stairs again began to wind. Strangely, both walls, the outer and the inner, leaned frighteningly to one side, leaving hardly any room to advance. I wondered how Sfasciamonti would manage to get through those absurd bowels: the air was dense, heavy, almost unbreathable. Every now and then a window provided a little relief and less torrid air, but there was no time in which to stop for breath.
Only then did I understand: I was in the cavity between the two layers of the cupola. The spiral stairs were installed between the outer surface and the inner one, which was only visible from within the basilica. But almost at once the vertiginous sensation of walking inside a body suspended over the void came to an end. The spiral no longer led upward, there was a brief level passage. From below, more cries.
"Sfasciamonti, Buvat, where are you?" I called.
In response, only voices and vague noises. My legs trembled a little, not only from fatigue. I tried to go faster, but slipped and fell heavily. I tumbled down several steps, hurting my thighs and knees severely. I stood up, still in one piece. I returned to the horizontal corridor, dragging myself forward who knows how far. No stairs, no way out, nothing.
Then I sensed it: something was missing, two or three paces in front of me: the floor. I tried to stop, lost my balance, held on with my right arm to the inner wall. And I felt it.
It was a stone step, an absolutely enormous one, almost up to my neck. I stretched out my arms and touched it. Yes, there was another step above it, and one above that, too. It was more or less as I had imagined it, and I felt confident: from that point on one climbed further. It was one of four stairways with huge steps, one at each cardinal point leading to the summit of the cupola within its cavity wall. The stairs began again. At last I realised with joy that being small meant one weighed little, and those who are light can move fast.
Initially, the huge steps were higher than they were wide; then, gradually, as one approached the very top of the cupola, the proportions were inverted. In the end there were only three more steps, then two, then one. Exhausted, but again on my feet, I pulled myself onto a horizontal platform, while from above a weak gleam of light came down to me — or perhaps one might better describe it as darkness less total. I fumbled to the right, to the left, in all directions, finding, first, a wall, then an opening. I stumbled, perhaps on a step, and my right hand found a banister. I no longer knew where I was going but I followed through without hesitation and at last I felt fresh air on my skin, found the outside world, the sky: I had emerged into the open.