"You have really been splendid."
"Thank you, Signor Atto. A pity that all that 'splendour' — to use your words — has got us nowhere."
"What do you mean?"
"We have nothing but the remains of a microscope. No telescope, no relic, no papers."
"Nothing, you say? Now we know about the German."
"Well, about him we really do not know a thing, not even whether he really exists," I objected.
"Oh, you have not laboured in vain. I agree with Sfasciamonti that we are following up an important clue. There is someone here in Rome, this German, who collects optical instruments and relics. Not only that: this character has links with the cerretani. Now we know who to look for. As for the question of the secret language of the cerretani, that really does not trouble me at all. If we cannot manage to decipher it, we shall find ways of making them speak our language! Heh!"
It was unusual to see Atto so blindly trusting. I had the suspicion that all that optimism served mainly to appease me and not to lose my services.
"Sfasciamonti says that no one knows where he is to be found," I objected.
"These persons of the criminal underworld can always be traced. Perhaps one need only know the right name. The German, however, is but a nickname," he replied.
That observation brought to mind the strange name which Gloridia had mentioned to me and which, she thought, might also be useful to Atto.
"Signor Atto, have you ever heard tell of the Tetrachion?"
At that moment, there came a knock on the door. It was Sfasciamonti who entered quickly and without even waiting for an answer. His face too bore the marks of that horrible sleepless and over-eventful night.
"I have news. I have been to the Governor's palace," he began. "No one knows anything about the telescope. I do, however, have news about the mackeroskopp."
Sfasciamonti had shown the remains of the optical instrument to a number of colleagues who had quickly retraced it to a burglary committed a few days previously. The apparatus belonged to a learned Dutchman who had been robbed of all the effects he had left in his chamber at an inn near the Piazza di Spagna.
"There too, they opened the door with a key. No breaking and entering. No idea as to who did it."
"Interesting," observed Atto. "This is our thief's favourite method."
"Today there's the wedding," the catchpoll continued, "so I shall not be able to get away. We must wait until evening. I'd like to put some questions to a couple of wretches. Let us then meet tonight after the nuptial banquet. You, my boy, will come with me."
I looked at Atto, hesitating.
"No," he said, guessing that I had some hesitation about running yet more risks, "the matter concerns me personally… therefore I too shall come."
I had been caught out: in point of fact, Cloridia would have wished me to stop going out at night on behalf of Melani. Atto had offered to come, but in my company! And if an old man like him took this upon himself, I bethought myself with some embarrassment, why could not I do likewise?
The catchpoll explained the objective to us.
"Interesting… Most interesting," commented Atto at the end.
"Who told you? Speak! From whom did you learn this?"
The attack came the moment we were alone. He grabbed me by the collar and hurled me against the wall. His was the modest strength of an old man, yet surprise, the respect which I nevertheless felt for him, and which caused me to hesitate, as well as fatigue from the night before, all prevented me from facing up to him as I ought.
"Tell me!" he screamed in my face one last time.
Then he looked behind him out of the corner of his eyes, towards the door of the chamber, fearing that he might have been overheard. He relaxed his grip, while I myself, whose sole reaction had been to grasp those almost skeletal wrists to prevent him from strangling me, broke free.
"But what has got into you?" I protested.
"You must tell me who spoke to you of the Tetrachion," said he in a firm, icy voice, as though he were reclaiming possession of something that belonged to him.
I therefore told him that a chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy had made some obscure connection between the incident which had befallen Atto and the death of the bookbinder and the coming of the Tetrachion, who was said to be no less than the legitimate heir to the Spanish throne. When I referred to the illness of the Catholic King, and to the fact that he was on the point of dying childless, I had to make a considerable effort to avoid betraying the fact that I had learned all this from Maria's letters.
"Well, well, I see that you know the main things about the Spanish succession. Obviously, you have taken up reading gazettes once more," he commented.
"Er, yes, Signor Atto. My wife does, however, hope to have further details in the next few days," I concluded, hoping that he had calmed down.
"Of that, I have no doubt. Don't imagine that you are going to get away with this so lightly," he said acidly.
I was incredulous. After all the services which I had rendered him, Atto was treating me like the most sordid of traitors.
"Anyway," I burst out at last, "who or what the deuce is this Tetrachion?"
"That is not the problem."
"Then, what is?"
"The problem is: where is he?"
He opened the door and went out, beckoning me to follow him.
"Things could not go on like that forever," he began.
We were approaching the gate of the Villa Spada, in the midst of a chaotic and excited multitude of workmen, seamstresses, porters and lackeys.
He had decided to respond to my questions with facts, and was heading for an unknown destination; but with words too, taking up again the thread of the narration which he had interrupted the day before.
Gradually, as the King reached manhood, Atto narrated, Mazarin's position was becoming more delicate with every passing day. He knew that he would not be able to keep his sovereign forever in a state of blissful, nebulous ignorance of matters of state and the facts of life. After being the absolute master, what place would the Cardinal occupy under a young, vigorous monarch in full possession of his powers? Mazarin thought anxiously of this again and again during long journeys by carriage, while distractedly receiving postulants, in every single free moment that work left him and last of all, in bed, as he awaited sleep and his most pressing thoughts performed their last furious dance. Meanwhile, despite the Queen Mother's complaints about Maria, he raised not a finger to separate the young King from his niece…
"The King saw this and took it in, interpreting this silence as consent. And of one thing you may be certain: the Cardinal absolutely did not want to see his niece in the humiliating role of royal mistress when Louis took himself a wife!"
"In other words, Louis had the illusion that the Cardinal would let him marry her," I conjectured.
"'Twas more than an illusion. Once the King even went so far as to call Maria 'my Queen' in the presence of others. The whole court, led by the Queen Mother, cried scandal. Louis's sole response, however, was to acquire from the Queen of England a splendid necklace of huge pearls which was, moreover, one of the English crown jewels: it was to be his betrothal gift to Maria. Was it not, moreover, true that, a year previously, the hand of Maria's younger sister Ortensia had been requested by the English King Charles II? The negotiations failed later, but only because the British sovereign wanted, in addition to a dowry in money, the fief of Dunkirk, which Mazarin did not feel able to yield. So Louis's hopes were not by any means groundless."
At court, meanwhile, the couple's every sigh was spied upon and reported to Anne of Austria. A mordant comment by Maria, a word out of turn or her all-too-spontaneous laughter, all were at once transformed by courtiers' gossip into a caprice or insolence inviting loud censure. A passing glance by the young King at some damsel was enough to make the courtiers exult against Maria Mancini.