"In other word, the Queen has been… abolished," I exclaimed, depositing on the tray the well-picked skeleton of the francolin and helping myself to another one.
"Only the old man who stands before you knows the origin of these excesses, in those remote, bitter days long, long ago. They go back to that dawn at the fortress of Brouage when the supreme pain of the separation from Maria suddenly engendered the need for hardness of heart: a mask which the King donned then and has never since removed. Only in these last few years, with advancing age, His Majesty has no longer been able completely to conceal that ancient, unassuaged suffering. Madame de Maintenon's confessor, to whom she complains every morning, knows all about this."
"And what do you know of it?"
"The confessor complains to me," laughed the Abbot. "What everyone can see is that the King goes to see Madame de Maintenon three times a day: before mass, after lunch and in the evening on his return from the hunt. What very few, however, know of is the mysterious bouts of weeping that regularly seize him at the end of the day, when he goes to bid his wife goodnight: he becomes sad, then his temper flares up, and ends up weeping uncontrollably. Sometimes, he even faints; and all this, without the couple exchanging so much as one word."
"Surely Madame de Maintenon must nevertheless have guessed what it is that so worries him?"
"On the contrary, that is precisely the source of her own worries: 'I am quite unable to get him to talk,' she is wont to repeat when she feels worn out by the struggle to communicate. For Madame de Maintenon, the King is a sphinx."
That is why, Abbot Melani continued, the King's enigmatic goodnight to his wife has become for her a cause of anger, even disgust. The King likes to conclude his sentimental and lachrymose outpourings with brief outbursts of quite another, far more vulgar nature which she, given her age, finds repugnant. "These are painful moments," she confides to her confessor. Only after obtaining physical satisfaction does the King go on his way, with his cheeks still lined by tears and without uttering a syllable.
"On the next day, however, he is the same tyrant as ever. Indeed, with age his tyranny has become ever harsher; so that, by now, life at Versailles, especially for the women of his family, has become a torment. Whenever His Majesty undertakes the smallest journey, even only to go to Fontainebleau, he insists on taking daughters and nephews with him in the same carriage, just as he was once wont to drag a party of mistresses in his wake. He treats them all with the same hardness of heart, deaf to their lamentations, blind to their fatigue; he makes them eat, converse and be gay on command. Pregnancies do not exempt women from having to travel in the King's retinue, and so much the worse if there is a miscarriage. None dares keep count of the pregnancies which never reached term because of those unreasonable journeys by carriage."
I was horrified.
"And what is one to say," the Abbot continued with a smile, "of the torments to which he subjects Madame de Maintenon? He has made her travel under conditions which one would not impose on a servant. I well recall one such journey to Fontainebleau when we feared she might die on the road. Supposing that Madame de Maintenon has a fever or a headache, what does he do? He invites her to the draughty theatre where the icy blasts and the glare from a thousand candles reduce her to a wreck. Or she's lying sick in bed, all muffled up against her proverbial draughts. He visits her and throws all the windows wide open, even when it is freezing outside."
"One would not think that for the past forty years he has been the greatest king in the world," I commented in some perplexity after a few moments of silence.
"The Most Christian King is still struggling against the old defeat inflicted upon him by his mother, Queen Anne; while torturing all the women of his family, it is on her that he would really like to turn the tables. But the King's is a lost battle. The dead, my boy, are quite invincible in that one can't answer them back."
Atto's long narration, which had seemed like a river in full spate, came now to a halt. He had meant to tell of the love which Louis XIV still bore Maria, and in speaking of her, to relive it. Instead, he had ended up expatiating upon the old King's misdeeds. Yet the essence of the tale remained unchanged: the wives, mistresses, rancours and revenges of the Most Christian King all tended towards her: Maria. That name encapsulated forty years of European history. For that woman, invoked so belatedly and so vainly, le plus grand Roi du monde had put Europe to fire and the sword. A heart torn to shreds had fed on the hearts of entire peoples, even the King's own kith and kin. And now she, the innocent cause of it all, would soon be among us.
Someone knocked at the door. It was Buvat. The Connestabilessa had arrived.
"She is walking in the garden," said the secretary with ill-concealed embarrassment.
"Very well," replied Atto, dismissing his secretary without asking him for further details, as though he were reporting the arrival of just any visitor.
But it was hard for him to pretend. He had the slightly stifled voice of one unwilling to admit an upheaval of the soul, and striving at all costs to show equanimity.
"How stuffy it is today," he commented, as soon as the door had closed. "Rome is always too hot in summer. And it is so humid. I remember that in the first years when I came here I suffered tremendously from that. Do you not feel hot too?"
"Yes… I do feel hot," I answered mechanically.
He went over to the window, looking into the distance, as if pausing for thought.
I was astounded. Maria was there outside; he could join her at any moment. It was unquestionably up to Atto to go and look for his friend. Yet he was doing nothing. After all the tales I had heard, after he had told me of all the stages in the love between Maria and the Most Christian King and indeed of his own castrato's crippled love for the selfsame woman, after waiting for her for days on end, after all those letters overflowing with passion, after thirty years' separation… After all this, Atto was not moving an inch. He was looking out of the window, still in his dressing gown, speaking not a word. I looked at his plate: he had left the delicious meat of the francolins untouched, eating only some greens. His stomach must be beset by very different ferments.
I stood up and went to his side. It was as I thought. There was no risk of mistaken identity, for all the guests from the week's celebrations had left. Accompanied by a lackey and a maid of honour, she moved gracefully through the garden, admiring Tranquillo Romauli's flower beds with bemused wonderment, from time to time caressing some plant, observing with pleasure the luxuriant and refined ambience of Villa Spada, even now that the festivities were over and there was much disorder all around. She seemed untroubled by the goings and comings of servants and porters, dismantling platforms or carrying sacks of rubbish. She must be rather weary after her journey but this did not show.
"Even if we're to judge only by the number of people working there now, these celebrations must have cost your Cardinal a fortune," said Atto with a hint of irony.
"Perhaps we should… I mean, perhaps you should…" I stammered.
But Abbot Melani ignored the suggestion. He wandered wearily over to the wardrobe, opened it and began carelessly to review all the rich apparel within. Then he opened a little medicine chest and looked, with a sceptical expression that I had never before seen in him, at the whole collection of balms, ceruses and little boxes of beauty spots. Turning again to the wardrobe, from the darkness of the interior he brought forth a few pairs of shoes into the light of day. Rather scornfully he turned them over with his foot, rolling these beribboned creations onto the floor in disorder. Atto examined them impotently, as though he knew they could do nothing to satisfy his desires. He then began unwillingly to pull out suits of clothes.