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  The Abbot closed his disquisition, sharply spitting out the plum stone almost as though it were a detractor's pen. I stood in admiration before his sagacity; from Atto Melani, thought I, one never ceased to learn.

  "I have never read your works, Signor Atto, but I am sure," I flattered him, "that the worst one could say of them would be that they are too learned."

  "Have no fear!" he replied easily, speaking with his mouth full. "That they are too learned, they will never admit; for that too is praise and such is the nature of these crows that they would not know how to give praise, even unintentionally. However, remember that most ancient oracle according to which the greatest misfortune that could befall a man is to be loved and praised by the wicked, and the greatest favour, that of being hated and blamed thereby. The truth is that the works of men are imperfect owing to the defects of our poor wits and they find detractors because of the infelicity of our times. So may it please the Lord our God to grant us the grace to acknowledge our faults, thus to emend them, and others, not to blame us for what was well meant; that the Divine Majesty be not offended either by our own errors or those of others. Do you understand?"

  I nodded in affirmation.

  Melani looked at me with an air of satisfaction and handed me a letter of exchange, payable by a moneylender in the ghetto. Slowly, I took it. It was done: I had sold myself to Atto for, so to say, a literary service, which nonetheless included in the price (as all too often happens when the pen is a means of gain) my placing myself completely at his disposal. Torn between love, disgust and interest, while the sweet and sour savour of the cherries lingered on in my mouth, I was already at his sendee.

  We had meanwhile turned back towards the great house, before which we found the massed carriages of the guests who had just arrived. In the end, what was most dreaded had happened: the guests from Rome had also arrived at the festivities two days early. Knowing that there would already be banqueting from that evening onwards, no one (Atto included) had had the patience and good taste to await the official opening of the celebrations.

  Atto seemed to be scrutinising attentively the coats of arms borne by the carriages, doubtless guessing at who might be sharing the magnificent hospitality of the Spada family with him throughout the week's revels.

  "I have overheard someone tell a servant of your master that Don Livio Odescalchi is about to arrive, accompanied by the Marchesa Serlupi. Wait…" said he, holding me back and looking towards the carriages, far enough removed to be able to see without himself being noticed. "That is a well-known face; it seems to me… Yes, indeed, it is Monsignor D'Aste," said Atto as in the distance we saw descending from his carriage a hoary and emaciated little old man who seemed almost lost in his cardinal's vestments. "He is so small, scraggy and ill-favoured that His Holiness calls him Monsignor Stracetto — little rag!" he tittered freely, showing off his familiarity with Roman gossip.

  "I see a great movement of lackeys over there," he continued. "One of the Barberini or the Colonnas will be arriving and wants to give himself airs; they always think themselves to be the centre of the world. The carriage behind seems to bear the arms of the Durazzo family, it must be Cardinal Marcello. Of course, to have come from Faenza, where he is Bishop, is quite a journey; he'll need to take a good rest if he wants to enjoy himself. Ah, here is Cardinal Bichi," he commented, peering more intently. "I did not expect him to be on such good terms with Cardinal Fabrizio."

  "Apropos, Signor Atto, I myself did not know you were acquainted with Cardinal Spada," said I, deliberately interrupting his show of recognising guests from a distance.

  "Oh, but he was for years Nuncio in France, did you not know? At one time we frequented one another quite assiduously in Paris. He is — how can I put it? — a most accommodating person. His first concern is not to make enemies. And he does well to act thus, for in Rome that is the best way to reach high office. I'll wager that he well remembers his time in Paris, since it was then that the cardinal's hat was conferred upon him; if I am not mistaken, 'twas in 1676. He had already been Nuncio in Savoy, so he had a certain amount of experience. He has taken part in three conclaves, that of Innocent XI in 1676, that of Alexander VIII in 1689 and that of the present Pope in 1691. The coming election will be his fourth: not bad for a cardinal who is but fifty-seven years of age, what?"

  The years had passed, but not Atto's habit of recording in the greatest possible detail the careers of dozens of popes and cardinals. His Most Christian Majesty could count upon an agent who was perhaps no longer athletic but certainly enjoyed a still excellent memory.

  "Do you think that he could be elected pope this time?" I asked in the secret hope that I might one day be able to become part of a pontiff's army of servants.

  "Absolutely not. Too young. He might reign for twenty or thirty years; the other cardinals have but to think of such things to take to their beds with a fever," laughed Atto; "Now with me, he will be somewhat distant, for he will be afraid to be taken for a vassal of the King of France if he salutes Abbot Melani. Poor things, one feels for these cardinals!" he concluded, grinning scornfully.

  In the meanwhile, we continued to loiter by the gate until there appeared from the street that passed before the villa a man ancient and hunchbacked with a tremulous air and two hairs on his head, bearing on his hump a great basket full of papers. Humbly he stopped, hat in hand, to ask something of the lackeys, who responded rudely, trying to chase him away. Indeed, whoever he might have been, he ought to have presented himself at the tradesmen's entrance, where the lowly run no risk of provoking the disdain of the villa's noble guests by their mere presence.

  The Abbot drew near and gestured that 1 should follow him. The old man had rolled-up sleeves and his stomach was covered by a blackened apron; he was plainly an artisan, perhaps a typog rapher.

  "You are Haver, the bookbinder from the Via dei Coronari, is that not so?" Atto asked him, coming out from the gate and standing in the middle of the road. "It was I who called you. I have work for you," and he drew forth a little bundle of papers.

  "How do you want the cover?"

  "In parchment."

  "Any inscription or sign on the spine or the cover?"

  "Nothing."

  The two rapidly agreed on other matters and Atto placed a handful of coins in the old man's hands as an advance on pay ment.

  Suddenly we heard a piercing scream coming from the greenery by the roadside to our left.

  "After him, after him!" called a stentorian voice.

  Out darted a swift shadow and passed between us, colliding heavily with the bookbinder and Abbot Melani and causing the latter to tumble onto the gravel with a dull cry of rage and pain.

  All the papers which Atto was holding in his hand were scattered into the air in an unhappy and disorderly swirl, and the same fate befell the bookbinder's basketful of papers, while the shadow which had dashed against us rolled on the ground in a series of dramatic and indescribable somersaults.

  When at last it stopped rolling, I saw that it was a dirty and emaciated young man with a torn shirt, several days' growth of beard and a dazed and lunatic expression following the wretched accident. Around his neck he bore a poor pouch of cheap material from which various filthy objects had fallen: it seemed to me a leathern bag, a pair of old stockings and a few greasy papers, per haps the miserable fruit of a visit to some rubbish heap in search of something edible or useful for survival.

  1 did not, however, have time to observe any better or to offer assistance to Atto or the stranger, for the uproar which I had first heard was growing louder and more violent.

  "Catch him, catch him, by all the blunderbusses!" yelled the powerful voice which I had heard before.

  1 heard a clamour of cries and curses coming from the building housing the catchpolls guarding the villa. The young man rose to his feet and began to run again, disappearing once more into the bushes.

  Atto meanwhile was propping himself up and trying unsuccessfully to rise to his feet
. I was coming to assist him and the bookbinder was starting humbly to gather up the papers in his basket, when a pair of catchpolls from the villa rushed shouting out into our midst and joined the pursuer. The latter, alas, collided again with poor Atto, who collapsed on the ground. The pursuer rolled over in his turn, by some miracle avoiding the lackeys, two nuns whom I often saw bringing small hand-made objects to offer Cardinal Spada, and a pair of dogs. What with the cries of the nuns and the barking of the dogs, the road was in utter turmoil.

  I rushed to assist Abbot Melani, who lay groaning disconsolately.

  "Aahh, first one madman, then the other… My arm, damn it."

  The right sleeve of Atto's jacket, which seemed to be soaked with some blackish liquid, was badly lacerated by what looked like a slash from a knife. I freed him from the garment. An ugly wound, from which the blood gushed freely, disfigured the Abbot's flaccid and diaphanous arm.

  A pair of pious old maids, who dwelled in the great house, where they worked in the linen-room, had seen all that had happened and gave us some pieces of gauze with a little medicinal unguent which, they assured us, would soothe and bring sure healing to Atto's wound.

  "My poor arm, it seems to be my destiny," complained Atto as they bandaged his wound with gauze. "Eleven years ago I fell into a ditch and injured my arm and shoulder badly; indeed, I came close to dying. Among other things, that accident prevented me from coming to Rome for the conclave after the death of Innocent XI."

  "One might almost say that conclaves are bad for your health," I commented spontaneously, earning an ugly look from the Ab bot.

  Meanwhile, a little crowd of curious onlookers, children and peasants from the neighbourhood, had gathered around us.

  "Good heavens — those two!" muttered Melani. "The first was too fast, the second, too heavy!"

  "Zounds!" exclaimed the stentorian voice. "How say you, heavy? I had almost caught him, the cerretano."

  The circle of people opened up suddenly, growing fearful upon hearing those rough and grave words.

  The speaker was a colossus, three times my height, twice my girth and weighing perhaps four times more than I. I turned and stared at him fixedly. Fair he was, and of virile appearance, but an old wound, which had split one of his eyebrows, conferred upon him a melancholy expression, with which his rough and youthful manners contrasted sharply.

  "In any case, and that I swear upon the points of all the halberds in Silesia, I had no intention of causing you any offence." Thus spake the uncouth giant, stepping forward.

  Without so much as a by-your-leave, he lifted Atto from the ground and effortlessly set him on his feet, as though he were a mere pine-needle. The huddle of bystanders pressed around us, greedy to know more, but was at once dispersed by the lackeys and valets from the villa, who had meanwhile arrived in large numbers. The bookbinder was busy carefully recovering all of Atto's papers, scattered here and there on either side of the gateway.

  "You are a sergeant," observed Atto, tidying himself and dust ing down his jacket, "but whom were you following?"

  "A cerretano, as I said: a canter, a ragamuffin, a slubberdeguilion, a money-sucking mountebank or whatever the deuce you want to call such rogues. Dammit, Sirrah, perhaps he meant to rob you."

  "Ah, a beggar," said I, translating.

  "What is your name?" asked Atto.

  "Sfasciamonti."

  Despite his pain, Atto looked him up and down from head to toe.

  "One who smashes mountains… Why, that's a fine name, and eminently well suited to you. Where do you work?" he inquired, not having seen whence Sfasciamonti came.

  "Usually, near the Via del Panico, but since yesterday, here," said he, indicating the Villa Spada.

  He then explained that he was one of the sergeants paid by Cardinal Spada to ensure that the festivities should take place undisturbed. The bookbinder drew near, as one with pressing tidings.

  "Excellency, I have found the arm which injured you," said he, handing Atto a sort of shiny dagger with a squared-off handle.

  Sfasciamonti, however, promptly seized the blade and pock eted it.

  "One moment, Sir," protested Atto. "That is the knife that struck me."

  "Precisely. It is therefore corpus delicti and to be placed at the disposal of the Governor and the Bargello. I am here to supervise the security of the villa and I am only doing my duty."

  "Master Catchpoll, have you seen what happened to me? Thank heavens that wretch's dagger caressed my arm and not my back. If your colleagues catch him, I want him to pay for this too."

  "That I do promise and swear unto you, by Wallenstein's power derflask!" roared Sfasciamonti, raising a timorous murmur among the bystanders.

  The wound was no light one, and the bleeding still by no means staunched. Two maidservants rushed up with more gauze and bandaged the arm so as to stop the flow. I had occasion to admire how stoically Abbot Melani bore pain: a quality of which I was as yet unaware. He even stayed behind in order to settle arrangements with the bookbinder, who had in the meantime gathered up all Atto's papers, upon which he was to confer the form and dignity of a volume. They rapidly agreed on the price and set an appointment for the morrow.

  We moved towards the great house, where Atto intended to summon a physician or chirurgeon to examine the ugly wound.

  "For the time being, it is not too painful; let us hope that it will not get worse. Heaven help me and my idea of giving an appointment to that bookbinder, but I cared too much about my little book."

  "Apropos, what was it that you had bound?"

  "Oh, nothing of importance," he replied, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips.

  We had returned to the house without exchanging another word. The affected carelessness with which Abbot Melani had replied (or rather, failed to reply) to my question, had left me in some perplexity. Those one thousand two hundred scudi compelled me to share the fate of the Abbot for a period of several days, in order to keep a record of his sojourn at the Villa Spada. Yet it still was not given to me to know what precisely awaited me.

  I requested the Abbot's permission to take my leave, on the pretext of a number of most urgent duties which had accumulated since his arrival. In actual fact, I did not have much to do on that day. I was not a regular servant of the household and, moreover, preparations for the festivities were almost complete. I did, however, desire a little solitude in which to reflect upon the latest occurrences. Instead, the Abbot begged me to attend him until the arrival of the chirurgeon.

  "Please tighten the bandages on my arm even more: those women's dressings are causing me to lose blood," he requested with a hint of impatience.

  So I waited on him and added yet more bandages which the valet de chambre had taken care to provide.

  "A French book, Signor Atto?" I resolved at length to ask him, referring to his previous allusion.

  "Yes and no," he replied laconically.

  "Ah, perhaps it circulates in France but was printed in Amsterdam, as often happens…" I hazarded, in the hope of extracting something more from him.

  "No, no," he cut me short with a sigh of fatigue, "really, it is not even a book."

  "An anonymous text, then…" I butted in yet again, scarcely dissimulating my growing curiosity.

  I was interrupted by the arrival of the chirurgeon. While the latter was feeling around Atto's arm, giving orders to the valet de chambre, I had a moment in which to reflect.

  It was plainly no accident that Atto Melani should have reappeared after seventeen years, asking me, as though it were a mere bagatelle, to be his chronicler; and even less surprising that he should have been among the guests at the nuptials of Cardinal Fabrizio Spada's nephew. The Cardinal was Secretary of State to Pope Innocent XII, who hailed from the Kingdom of Naples, and was consequently of the Spanish party. Pope Innocent was about to die and for months all Rome had been preparing for the conclave. Melani was a French agent: in other words, a wolf in the sheepfold.

  I knew the Abbot we
ll and by now I needed few clues to make my mind up about him. One had but to follow one single elementary rule: to think the worst. It always worked. Having learned from my memoir that I worked for the Cardinal Secretary of State, Atto must deliberately have arranged to have himself invited to the Spada celebrations, perhaps taking advantage of his old acquaintance with the Cardinal, to which he had alluded. And now he intended to make use of me, well pleased with the fortuitous circumstance which had placed me where I could serve him. Perhaps he wanted something of me other than a mere chronicle of his feats and deeds with a view to the forthcoming conclave. But whatever could he have in mind this time? That was less easy for me to guess at. One thing was quite clear in my mind: never would I, insofar as my limited means permitted, allow Abbot Melani's plotting in any way to harm my master, Cardinal Spada. In this respect, at least, it was a good thing that Atto had assigned me that task: it enabled me to keep watch over him.

  The chirurgeon had meanwhile completed his work, not without extracting from Atto a few hoarse protests at the pain and a fine heap of coin which had to be paid by the wounded man in the temporary absence of the Major-Domo.

  "What kind of hospitality is that?" Atto commented acidly "They stab the guests and then leave them to pay for their cure."

  The Secretary for Protocol of the Villa Spada then arrived at Abbot Melani's bedside, in the absence of Don Paschatio, the Major-Domo, and ordered that he should at once be served luncheon, that two valets should stay to assist him with his meal, so as to give respite to the injured arm, and that his every desire should be satisfied forthwith; he apologised profusely, cursing in the most urbane language the delinquency and mendacity which with every Jubilee invariably reduced the Holy City to little better than a lazaret and assured him that he would be reimbursed immediately, with the necessary interest, and would indeed most certainly be liberally compensated for the grave affront which he had suffered, and said it was as well that they had hired a sergeant to watch over security at the villa during the festivities, but now the Major-Domo would call the catchpoll to account. He continued in this vein for a good quarter of an hour, without realising that Atto was falling asleep. I took advantage of this to leave.