"Has no pontiff ever issued an ecclesiastical ban against these sects?" interrupted Atto.
"If a sect — or a group of criminals — is to be prohibited, it must be clearly known," replied Sfasciamonti. "Specific actions must be attributed to it and its members must have names and identities. How can one ban a vague grouping consisting of wretched homeless and nameless vagabonds?"
Atto nodded in silence, thoughtfully scratching the dimple on his chin.
When we returned to the calash, dawn was about to break. Sfasciamonti took leave of us.
"I shall be coming later to the Villa Spada. First I must go home. My mother is expecting me. It is today that I must deliver her provisions, and if I do not come on time, she worries."
"Together?" I exclaimed in astonishment, as I and Buvat looked at one another in unison.
We had barely taken our leave of Sfasciamonti. Abbot Melani had already taken his place in the calash to return to the Villa Spada when, instead of making room for us, he closed the door behind him.
"You, stay here for the time being," said he laconically.
He then held out a letter to me, already closed and sealed. I recognised it at once: it was that letter, the reply to his mysterious Maria.
"But Signor Atto," came Buvat's and my own weak protests, for in truth we both longed for a little rest before facing the new working day.
"Later. Now, be on your way. Buvat will deliver the message. Alone, however, for you," and here, he turned to me, "are not appropriately dressed. I shall have to make you a present of a new suit sooner or later. I shall explain to you where you must go: with Buvat, I'd be wasting my breath."
"Permit me to insist," I retorted.
I quickly read the addressee's name:
Madama la Connestabilessa Colonna
My thoughts criss-crossed in my head and I knew not to which I should give precedence. I could not wait to return home and rest (also, to meditate upon the latest disquieting occurrences), but at the same time, I found myself suddenly faced with the revelation of the identity of the mysterious Maria who corresponded with Atto in secret and whose arrival was awaited at the Villa Spada.
The Connestabilessa Colonna: I knew that name. Indeed, who in Rome had not heard of the Grand Constable and Roman Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, scion of one of the most ancient and noble families in Europe? He had died some ten years previously and she must be the widow…
"Come, then, let us hear," Atto burst in, interrupting the flow of my thoughts. "What do you want?"
At that instant, I saw the Abbot's face shift from an attitude of impatience to an expression of stupefaction, as though he had been struck by a lightning-like idea or a sudden memory.
"How silly of me! Come, sit down with me, my boy," he exclaimed, opening the door for me and offering me a seat. "Of course, we must talk. Come now, tell me all. I suppose that during the night you have had the good taste to set aside a few moments from your well-deserved rest in which to compile for me a detailed account of all that you overheard," said he with the most natural air in the world, without so much as sparing a thought for the fact that we had just spent the night gallivanting across Rome.
"Heard? Where?"
"But is it not obvious? At last night's dinner, when I used the pretext of the torch to make you dance that minuet all around the table just in order to place you behind Cardinal Spinola. Come, tell me, what did they say?"
I was dumbfounded. Atto was admitting to having pretended to mistreat me when he ordered me to draw close to him because, so he said, there was not enough light; and then he had sent me brusquely to the other end of the table on the pretext that the torch was burning his neck. Not only that; the Abbot had arranged the whole thing in order to induce me to listen to the diners' conversations!
"Really, Signor Atto, I cannot see how any of those conversations could be of interest to anyone. I mean, they spoke of frivolous and unimportant matters…"
"Unimportant? In every utterance of a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, there is not a single syllable, my boy, that is not imbued with some significance. You may even say that they are all old goats, and I in my turn might even decline to contradict you, but whatever issues from their mouths is always interesting."
"It may well be as you say, but I… Well, there was just one thing that seemed somewhat curious to me."
I told him of the misunderstanding that had taken place between the two Cardinals Spinola and how Cardinal Spada's mes sage addressed to the one had been delivered to the other, as well as its content.
"It said: 'All three on board tomorrow at dawn. I shall tell A.'"
Atto remained silent and pensive. Then he declared: "That would be interesting; truly interesting, if…" said he to himself, staring meditatively at Buvat sitting hunched up by the side of the road.
"What do you mean?"
He stayed silent a moment longer, looking me straight in the eyes, but in reality mentally following the rushing chariot of future events.
"What a genius I am!" he exclaimed at length, giving me a great slap on the shoulder. "That Abbot Melani is really a genius to have sent you off on the pretext of that torch to stand close to those persons who laugh out of turn and talk too freely."
I looked at him in astonishment. He had collated past deeds unknown to me and future events which he already saw vividly unfolding before him, while for me they were all thick fog.
"Well, soon we too shall have to go on board," said he, rubbing and massaging his hands, almost as though to prepare them for the decisive moment.
"Aboard a boat?" I asked.
"Meanwhile, go and deliver the letter," Melani commanded impatiently, again opening the carriage door and making me descend with scant ceremony. "All in good time."
Day the Second
8th July, 1700
A few minutes later, Buvat and I were in the street while Atto's calash disappeared into the byways. Thoughts were racing through my head. Was Maria, the Connestabilessa Colonna (for that must indeed be the identity of the mysterious noblewoman with whom Atto had for some time been in secret contact), already in Rome? The Abbot had told me to deliver the letter to the monastery of Santa Maria in Campo Marzio. And yet, had not this same Maria written in her last missive that she had stopped near Rome and would not be arriving until the next day?
The sky was implacably clear. Soon, however, all gave way to the overpowering midsummer heat. Walking was, however, made more difficult not by the closeness but by Buvat's uncertain, absent-minded gait. He advanced with his nose in the air; from time to time he would stop, observing with delight a cupola, a campanile, a plain brick wall.
In the end I decided to break the silence.
"Do you know into whose hands we are to deliver this letter?"
"Oh, not of course those of the Princess. We must pass it to a little nun who is very devoted to her. You know, the Princess herself spent some time here when she was young, for the abbess was her aunt."
"Certainly, the Princess will know Abbot Melani."
"Know him?" said Buvat, laughing, as though the question were one that invited irony.
I kept quiet for a few moments.
"You mean that he knows her well," said I.
"Do you know who the Princess Colonna is?"
"Well, if I remember… if I am not mistaken, she was the wife of the Connestabile Colonna, who died some ten years ago."
"The Princess Colonna," Buvat corrected me, "was, in the first place, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, that great statesman and most refined of politicians, glory of France and of Italy."
"Yes, indeed," I mumbled, embarrassed at my inability to recall to memory what, years before, I had known perfectly well. "And now," I added, trying to extract myself from this discomfiting situation, "on behalf of Abbot Melani, we are about to deliver this letter in all confidence."