I learned that evening that Don Livio had also owned a box at the Tor di Nona theatre, which he would no longer be able to enjoy, since the present Pope had had the theatre demolished. This explained why Monsignor Aldovrandi had insisted on that topic.
"By the smithy of Hephaestus, boy, you are roasting my neck. Would you kindly move that way?"
Atto had yet again turned around rudely to upbraid me, almost shoving me to a new post, further away from him. By means of these two moves he had shifted me almost five yards from my original position, almost to the far end of that branch of the table.
Dinner was proceeding with singular freedom of manners and speech, a point which even I who was utterly unfamiliar with that most elevated milieu remarked at once. Only from time to time, irrepressibly, did the quarrelsome haughtiness of the great families and the subtle but venomous pride of those at the summit of the ecclesiastical hierarchy show its face. Yet the rigid protocol which those eminences and princes would have had to observe when meeting one another individually had been magically dissolved, perhaps by the amenity and delightful qualities of the place chosen for banqueting.
"Pray, pardon me, all of you, a moment's silence! I should like to raise my glass to the health of Cardinal Spada, who is, as Your Excellencies well know, absent on account of pressing affairs of state," said Monsignor Pallavicini, Governor of Rome, at a certain point. "He has recommended me to be, if not a father, at least an uncle to his guests tonight."
A gentle ripple of approving laughter ran through the assembly.
"As soon as I see him," continued Monsignor Pallavicini, "I shall express to him my gratitude for his political gifts, and in particular for not providing us with a table laid in the Spanish or in the French style, but surrounded instead by Ottomans."
Another amused murmur arose.
"And this last reminds us of our shared destiny as Christians," added Pallavicini amiably, while throwing a swift glance at Cardinal d'Estrees, Ambassador Extraordinary a latere of the Most Christian King, always too much in cahoots with the Ottoman Sublime Porte.
"And as the enemies of heresy," came the prompt reply of d'Estrees, whose call to order alluded to the fact that, although a Catholic, the Austrian Emperor was allied with Dutch and English heretics.
"Let us not speak too much to him of the Sublime Porte or D'Estrees will take umbrage and be off," I heard someone whisper rather too loudly.
"Gently, gently with all this talk," quoth Cardinal Durazzo, who had missed nothing. "First a janissary would not deign to serve me figs and now that he hears all this murmuring about heretics, he'll get it into his head to set his torch to me and burn me."
The company burst once more into hearty roars of laughter as soon as they caught the allusion to my initial misadventure with Cardinal Durazzo, while I must needs stay sadly impassive and keep holding my torch quite straight.
It was precisely in view of such political skirmishing that Cardinal Spada, that most prudent of men, had, as I had learned from Don Paschatio, taken a series of counter-measures. So as to avoid, for example, the possibility that someone might peel fruit after the French fashion or, on the contrary, according to that of Spain, fruit was served already peeled.
Of course, for some years now there had no longer been any risk of seeing some gentlemen apparelled in the Spanish fashion and others, a la francaise, for thanks to the splendours ofVersailles, it was now the great mode for all to dress after the manner of the Most Christian King. Yet, for that very reason, it was all the rage to show to which party one belonged by means of a whole series of little details: from the handkerchief in one's cloak (those of the Spanish party wearing it on the right, while the Francophiles wore it on the left), or the stockings (white for the French party, red for the Hispanophiles), so that it was no accident if Abbot Melani had that evening chosen to wear white in the place of his usual red Abbot's hose.
Nor could the ladies be prevented from getting themselves up with a bunch of flowers on their right bosom if they were Guelphs (that is, of the Hispanic persuasion) or on the left if they were Ghibellines (on the French side). However, in order to avoid the table at which all were to eat being set too much in accordance with the traditions of the one side or the other, in particular as to the placing of the crockery which is, as is well known, the decisive factor for determining the political affiliation of the guests, it had been decided to abandon established etiquette and to do something new: knives, forks and spoons had been placed vertically in the glasses, which had caused no little astonishment among the guests, while avoiding pointless polemics.
"But with hounds, it is quite a different matter," insisted another cardinal, who was wearing a striking French wig.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I am only saying that once Prince Perretti had sixty hounds. When the season was over, he'd send them elsewhere for the summer, as hounds suffer from the heat, and thus he economised too."
It was Cardinal Santa Croce who, overshadowed by his own bulky periwig, sang the praises of hunting to hounds.
"There was no need to remind everyone that he has money problems," I heard a young canon, not far from me, whisper to his neighbour, taking advantage of the fact that the conversation had broken up in disorder into many little groups.
"Ah, Santa Croce is all at cross purposes with himself," the other responded with a snigger. "He's so hungry that his tongue hangs out and the very words that he ought to keep in his mouth come tumbling down onto the floor."
The speaker was another cardinal, whose name I did not yet know; I noticed that he seemed unwell, and yet he ate and drank enthusiastically, as though his humour were sanguine.
Fate (or rather, another factor, of which I shall speak later) came to my rescue, for at that moment, a servant approached this cardinal with a note.
"Eminence, I have a note for His Eminence Cardinal Spinola
"For Spinola di Santa Cecilia or for my nephew Spinola di San Cesareo, who is sitting on the other side of the table? Or for Spinola, the Chairman of Ripetta? This evening, all three of us are here."
The servant was speechless for a moment.
"The Major-Domo told me only that it was for His Excellency Cardinal Spinola," he ventured timidly, his voice almost inaudible amidst the gay clamour of the banquet.
"Then it could be me. Hand it over."
He opened the note and closed it at once.
"Go and give it at once to Cardinal Spinola di San Cesareo who is seated on the far side. Do you see him? Right over there."
His neighbour at table had, meanwhile, tactfully turned his attention to his plate and begun again to eat. Spinola di Santa Cecilia (for now it was clear that it was he) turned back to him at once.
"Now, can you believe it? That fool of a Major-Domo made me receive a note from Spada for my nephew, Spinola di San Cesareo."
"Ah yes?" replied the other, his physiognomy lit up by lively curiosity.
"It said: All three on board tomorrow at dawn. I shall tell A.'"
"A? And who would that be?"
"How would I know? Seeing that he wants to go out in a boat, let us only hope that he doesn't drown," concluded Spinola with a snigger.
The guests took their leave at a rather late hour. I was exhausted. The flame of the torch which I had held aloft for hours had roasted half my face and bathed my whole body in perspiration.