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  No sooner had I seen Atto and Buvat meet and talk to another pair of gentlemen than I decided. This was the opportune moment. If the French wolf had found his way into the sheepfold of the little Spanish lambkins, that gave me the chance now to spy out the wolf's lair.

  To tell the truth, I was rather ashamed of my idea. The Abbot had taken me into his service, paying me handsomely. I was therefore beset by some hesitation. Yet, said I to myself at length, I may perhaps be more useful if I know better the requirements of my temporary master: including those which, for whatever reason, he had not yet revealed to me.

  I therefore began to explore the apartment with some circumspection in search of the letters, or more probably one single letter which the Abbot had penned with such passion during our absence. I was certain that he had not yet had it sent; Buvat who, as the Abbot had already told me also copied his letters, had returned too late to produce a copy for Atto's archives, in accordance with the common practice among gentlemen. This was evident from the fact that I found no traces of sealing wax on the bureau, and the table candle (on which Atto would have had to heat the wax to seal his letter) was still uncut.

  I searched fruitlessly. In Atto's trunk and among the things in the two wardrobes with which his apartment was furnished there was, on the face of it, no trace of the missives. Next to a geographical map and the manuscript of a number of cantatas, I came upon a little folder of commentaries on items of news. It was a set of notices and flyers from gazettes, heavily marked and annotated by the Abbot. They dealt for the most part with matters pertaining to the Holy College of Cardinals, and a number of Atto's notes referred to events far back in time. It was, in substance, a collection of gossip on the relations between the various eminences, on their rivalries, the tricks played on each other during conclaves, and so on and so forth. I found no little amusement in perusing them, however rapidly.

  Spurred on by the scant time at my disposal, I soon took my search further. I opened a little medicine chest which, however, revealed only creams and ointments, a perfume for wigs and a bottle of the Queen of Hungary's Water; then, a second chest with a little mirror, a brooch, metal-tipped cords, a belt and two watch dials. I found nothing, nothing. My heart leapt suddenly when, lifting a woollen cloth, I discovered a pistol. Seventeen years earlier, he had got the better of our adversaries by disguising a pipe as a pistol, succeeding perfectly in deceiving the enemy. Now, however, he must truly fear for his own safety, said I to myself, if he has decided to travel armed.

  After looking through shoes and purses, I began unwillingly to rummage through clothing; as usual, the Abbot had brought with him enough to last ten years. I diligently perused the long series of greatcoats, collars, short coats, hussar-style cloaks and cloaks in the Brandenburg style, capes and capouches, sashes and jabots in pleated Venetian lace, breeches, cuffs, mantles of pleated silk and long stockings. My rough hands smoothed the precious silks, the shining satins, the twills, the chamois leathers, the suedes, the damasks, the silk taffeta, the grograms, the striped and flowered linens, the ermines, with silks patterned or damasked, or in the Florentine style, the ferrandine silk and wool blends, the doublets, the brocaded cloth of gold and silver, the satins, shiny or quilted, the Milanese salia and the Genoese sateen. My eyes scanned the most recherche hues, from mouse-grey, pearl, fire, musk rose, dried roses, to speckled colours, scarlets, black cherry, dove-grey, jujube-red, berrettino grey, nacre, tawny, milky white, moire and gris castor, and the silver and gold foil and thread of fringes and braiding.

  Among all that rich attire, the mauve-grey soutane in which Abbot Melani had appeared to me on that day, after so many years' silence, seemed distinctly out of place. With surprise, I saw that there were in fact no other outmoded items of apparel in that sumptuous wardrobe; on the contrary. I quickly realised that Atto had worn it deliberately for my sake, so that the sudden change in his manner of dress should not add to the gradual erosion which time effects upon faces and to ensure that his appearance today should correspond as far as possible to my memory. In other words, he knew how much I had missed him and wished to make a strong impression.

  Still uncertain whether I should be grateful to him or resentful (it depended from which viewpoint one chose to consider the matter), I examined the soutane, which, I confess, was for me not without precious and distant memories of my youth. On its breast I felt something which I took initially for a jewel of some sort, but it turned out to be sewn onto the inside. Examining the lining of the soutane, I discovered not without extreme surprise a small scapular of the Madonna of the Carmel, the miraculous little scapular which the Most Holy Virgin had promised would, if worn on one's person, free the wearer from the torments of purgatory on the first Saturday after their death. What had, however, captured my attention were three little protuberances: in a tiny bag sewn onto the scapular, exactly at the level of the heart, were three little pearls.

  I recognised them at once: they were the three margaritae, the Venetian pearls which had played so important a part in the last stormy discussion between Atto and myself seventeen years earlier at the Inn of the Donzello, before we lost sight of one another. Only now did I learn that Atto had lovingly gathered them up from the floor where I had thrown them down in a rage, and kept them; and, for all these years, he had worn them close to his heart, perhaps in a mute prayer to the Holy Virgin…

  The thought crossed my mind that Atto must not have worn the scapular with my little pearls every single day, since he had now left them hanging inside the soutane in the wardrobe. It was, however, also true that he had found me again, so perhaps he now considered his vow to have come to an end. Ah, rascal of an abbot, I protested inwardly, while yielding to emotion at discovering myself to be so dear to him; for all my old bitterness, I too still loved him from the depths of my soul, there was no use in denying that now. And if my feelings — with which I had lived uneasily for almost two decades — had not been extinguished by his most recent misdeeds, very well, I must then perhaps resign myself to that love.

  I reproved myself severely for having wanted to spy on him, yet, when I was on the point of leaving shamefully, I stopped on the threshold, hesitating; I was no longer a child, the movements of my heart no longer obscured the light of the intellect. And the intellect was now whispering in my ear that, in any case, one could place but little trust in Atto.

  It was thus that my state of mind altered yet again. Were it only for myself, I began to reason, never would I have dared violate the Abbot's privacy. Yet Atto's deep affection for me, as mine for him, must not make me forget the task I had assumed, namely to keep a diary of his words and deeds during those days, which might in all probability (of this I was certain) involve all manner of risks and pitfalls. What if someone were to accuse him of being in Rome in order to spy and to disrupt the proceedings of the forthcoming conclave? Such a danger was not that remote, given that he himself had made no mystery of his desire to protect the interests of the Most Christian King of France at the election of the next pontiff. This might also affect Cardinal Spada, my master and his unsuspecting host. It was therefore not only my right, I concluded, but my bounden duty, also toward my beloved family, to know both the nature and extent of the risks to which I was likely to be exposed.

  With my scruples thus silenced, I therefore resumed my search. One last inspection under and behind the bed, on top of the wardrobes, under the cushions of the armchairs and the little brocatelle sofa ornamented with golden plumes proved fruitless. Behind the pictures, nothing; nor was there any sign of anyone having opened them to conceal anything between the canvas and the frame. Further investigations into the remaining anfractuosities of the apartment likewise yielded nothing. Buvat's few personal effects in the modest adjoining chamber concealed even less.

  Yet I knew for a fact that Atto travelled, as I well recalled from our first encounter, with a fair quantity of paper. The times had changed, and I with them. Atto, however, had not; at least, not in the habits arisin
g from his natural bent for intrigue and adventure. In order to act, he must know. In order to know, he must remember, and for that purpose he needed the letters, memoirs and notes which he carried with him, the living archive of a lifetime of spying.

  It was then that, breaking off the pointless exercise of eyes and muscles, intent upon the search for the hidden papers, I had a flash of inspiration: specifically, a reminiscence from seventeen years before, a distant yet still vivid memory of how Atto and I had, by night, retraced the key to the mystery which had wound us in its coils. This had consisted of papers, and these we had found in a place to which instinct and logic (as well as good taste) had hitherto failed to lead us: within a pair of soiled drawers.

  "You have underestimated me, Abbot Melani," I murmured to myself as, for the second time, I opened the basket of dirty clothes and groped, no longer among but inside them. "How very imprudent of you, Signor Atto, said I with a self-satisfied grin when, feeling inside a pair of Holland drawers, I felt crumpling beneath my fingers a bundle of papers. I grasped the drawers; the lining was not sewn but attached to the main body of the item of apparel by a series of minuscule hooklets. Once I had unfastened the latter, I could reach into the space between the two layers of stuff. This I did, and found my fingertips touching a wide, flat object. I extracted it. It was a parchment envelope, tied with a ribbon. It was well designed, in such a way as to contain a number of papers, and only those; in other words, it was as flat as a pancake. In silent triumph, I turned it over in my hands.

  Not much time remained to me. Atto was certainly keen to explore the villa and to meet the other guests who, like him, had arrived early for the wedding. It would, however, take only some necessity on his part to return to his apartment for the Abbot to surprise me. I was spying upon a spy: I must move swiftly.

  I undid the bow. Before opening it I noted on the cover, written near the bottom in a minuscule hand, an inscription so tiny that it seemed destined only to be to be found by an eye already aware of its existence:

  Spanish succession — Maria

  I opened the envelope. A set of letters, all addressed to Melani, but all unsigned. The agitated, irregular calligraphy which appeared before my eyes seemed incapable of repressing any emotion. The lines were not, so to speak, confined by the margins of the page; the additions which the writer's hand had inserted into a number of sentences curled their way into the following lines. Moreover, this writing belonged without any possible doubt to a feminine hand. It seemed clearly to be that of the mysterious Maria: the name which I had overheard Atto sighing.

  What the Spanish succession might be, I was soon to learn in great detail from those letters. The first letter, which seemed to be deliberately imprecise, so as to betray neither the identity of the writer nor morsels of news that might be too pleasing to unfriendly eyes, began, as I recall, as follows:

  My dearest Friend,

  Here I am, already in the environs of Rome. Things are moving fast. I learned during a halt something of which you will already be apprised: a few days ago the Spanish Ambassador, the Duke of Uzeda, obtained a double audience with the Pope. On the day after he had attended the Holy Father in order to thank him for conferring a Cardinal's hat on his compatriot Monsignor Borgia, Uzeda received by special courier an urgent dispatch from Madrid, which induced the Duke to request yet another audience with His Holiness. He delivered a letterfrom the King of Spain, containing an entreaty: El Rey requests a mediation by Innocent XII on the question of the Succession!

  On the same day, our mutual friend the Secretary of State Cardinal Fabrizio Spada was seen to visit the Duke of Uzeda at the Spanish Embassy in Piazza di Spagna. The affair must have reached a turning point.

  Since I was not in the habit of reading gazettes, the question of the Spanish succession was not at all familiar to me. The mysterious correspondent, however, seemed very well informed.

  I imagine that all Rome must be chattering about it. Our young Catholic King of Spain, Carlos II, is dying without heirs. El Rey is departing, my friend, ever more evanescent are the traces of his brief and dolorous sojourn on this earth; but no one knows to whom his immense kingdom will pass.

  I remembered that Spain included Castile, Aragon, the overseas possessions and colonies, as well as Naples and Sicily: a multitude of territories.

  Shall we, ev 'ry one of us, be equal to the onerous task that awaits us? O, Silvio, Silvio! who in thine early years hast found the fates propitious, I tell thee, too early wit has ignorance for fruit.

  I was utterly astonished. Why in the letter was Atto called by the name of Silvio? And whatever could those expressions signify which seemed to accuse Abbot Melani of ignorance and immaturity of mind?

  The letter then came to an end on a no less cryptic note:

  Tell Lidio that with respect to that whereon he questions me, I have no answer to give. He knows why.

  I continued reading. Attached to the letter was a precise summary in the form of an appendix:

  A Conspectus Of The Present State Of Affairs

  It contained a mixture of information and, in sum, detailed the troubled progress of the Spanish succession in recent times.

  Spain is in decline and no one thinks of the Catholic King with the same just terror as when the mind turns to the Most Christian King of France, Louis the Fourteenth, First-born Son of the Church. Yet the Sovereign of Spain by the Grace of God is King of Castile, of Aragon, of Toledo, Galicia, Seville, Granada, Cordoba, Nursia, Jaen, of the Algharbs of Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Isles, the Indies, and of the Islands and Terra Firma of the Mare Oceanum, of the North, of the South, of the Philippines and of whatsoever other islands or Lands have been or may yet be discovered. And, through the Crown of Aragon, the Heir will succeed to the Throne of Valencia, Catalonia, Naples, Sicily, Majorca, Minorca and Sardinia; without counting the State of Milan, the Duchies of Brabant, of Limburg, Luxembourg, Guilderland, Flanders and all the other Territories which in the Nether Lands belong or may belong to El Rey. He who sits on the Throne of Spain will truly be the Master of the World.

  The King of Spain, or El Rey, as he was called by the mysterious epistler, was dying without direct heirs and this was what rendered so difficult the problem of determining who was to inherit all those enormous possessions scattered across the whole world, which made of the Spanish crown the globe's greatest kingdom. Until not long ago, as I learned from the remainder of the letter, there had in fact been an heir designated for the succession to the Spanish throne: this was the young Prince Elector of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, who was in terms of blood relationships without a doubt best entitled to succeed to the throne of Spain. Yet, little over a year before, Joseph Ferdinand had suddenly died: a death so unexpected and so weighed down with consequences that a suspicion of poisoning at once spread through the courts of Europe.

  There now remained two possibilities: the dying Sovereign of Spain, Charles II, could name as his heir a nephew of the French Sovereign, Louis XIV or a subject of the Emperor of Austria, Leopold I. Both solutions, however, were beset with risks and uncertainties. In the first case, France, which was the most feared military power in Europe, would also become the greatest monarchy in Europe and in the world, uniting de facto with its own overseas possessions those of the crown of Spain. In the second case, if Charles were to nominate a subject of Vienna, this would signify the rebirth of that empire which only the glorious Charles V had been able to unite under his sway: from Vienna to Madrid, from Milan to Sicily, from Naples to the distant Americas.

  This second hypothesis was the more probable of the two, for Charles II was a Habsburg like Leopold of Austria.

  Hitherto, the letter went on to explain, France had succeeded in maintaining equilibrium with its enemies (meaning, all the other states of Europe). The peace with Spain was indeed long-standing; and with England and Holland a pact had been agreed for the future partition of the enormous Spanish possessions, seeing that it had long been realised that Charles II was in n
o condition to have children. When, however, the partition pact had been made public, about a month previously, the Spaniards became furious: the King of Spain could not accept that the other states should be preparing to divide his kingdom among themselves as the centurions divided the raiment of Our Lord on the cross.

  The report therefore concluded:

  If El Rey dies now, there is a risk that the situation may become explosive. The pact of partition has become too difficult to implement. On the other hand, France cannot accept encirclement by the Empire. Nor can the others, from the Emperor Leopold I to the King of England and the Dutch heretic William of Orange, allow her to swallow Spain in a mouthful.

  The next letter was written in another hand; it was Atto's reply, for which I had searched so hard. As I expected, it was not yet sealed, pending Buvat's preparation of a copy for the Abbot's archives:

  Most Clement Madame,

  As you well know, in these months, the Ambassadors of all the Powers and their Sovereign Lords are losing their heads utterly because of the Spanish Succession. All ears and all eyes are constantly on the lookout, hungry for news and for secrets to seize from the other Powers. All gravitates around the Ambassadors of Spain, France and the Empire; or Penelope and her two Suitors. All three Kingdoms await the opinion of the Pope concerning the Succession: France or the Empire? What will be the advice of His Holiness to the Catholic King? Will he choose the Duke of Anjou or the Archduke Charles?

  All was now clear to me: in Rome would be decided the fate of the Spanish Empire. Evidently, all three powers were prepared to accept the judgement of the Holy Father. The noblewoman's letter had, in fact, spoken of mediation by the Pontiff, not of an opinion.