The figure and the work of Innocent XI were thus unjustly celebrated and elevated, using false, devious and partial arguments. Evidence was concealed: the inventory of the will of Carlo Odescalchi, the letters and commercial receipts of the Odescalchi archives from 1650 until 1680, the correspondence of Secretary of State Casoni, the contracts concerning the redemption of slaves cited by Bertolotti, together with other papers of which I shall have to report the, at best, inexplicable disappearance in my final documents.
Thus the lie triumphed in the end. The financier of heretics was pronounced the Saviour of Christendom. The greedy merchant became a wise administrator; the stubborn politician, a capable statesman. Revenge was dressed up as pride, the miser was called frugal, the ignorant man became simple and plain-living, evil stole the clothing of goodness; and goodness, abandoned by all, became earth, dust, smoke, shadow, nothing.
Now, perhaps, I understand the dedication chosen by my two friends: 'To the defeated'. Fouquet was defeated: to Colbert, glory; to him, ignominy. Defeated, too, was Pompeo Dulcibeni, who could not obtain justice: his leeches failed. Defeated, likewise, was Atto Melani: he was constrained by the Sun King to kill his friend Fouquet. And, despite a thousand vicissitudes, he failed to extract from Dulcibeni his closely guarded secret. Defeated was the apprentice-boy who, faced with the vision of evil, lost his faith and his innocence: from aspirant gazetteer, he descended to taking refuge in the hard and simple life of a son of the soil. Defeated, too, was his very memory which, although composed with so much care and labour, lay forgotten for centuries.
All the agitation of these personages was in vain. Against the malign forces of injustice which dominate the history of the world, they were powerless. Their strivings were, perhaps, useful only to themselves, to discover and to understand what-for a long, long time- none would be privileged to know. Those strivings served perhaps above all to augment their sufferings.
If this should be a novel, it is the novel of labour lost.
I hope that you will, dear Alessio, pardon me for the outburst to which I abandoned myself in these last lines. For my part, I have done what I could. It will be for historians one day to complete the labour of selection from the archives, the scrupulous verification of sources, of circumstances, of details.
First, however, it will be for His Holiness, and for Him alone, to judge whether the opus of my two friends should be published or kept secret. The implications of its dissemination would be manifold, nor would they concern only the Church of Rome. How, indeed, will the British Orangemen be able stubbornly and arrogantly to parade through the streets of Derry and Belfast when, on the 12 th of July each year they celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, the victory in which William of Orange finally crushed the Catholic forces? What meaning will be left to their celebration of Protestant extremism when they know that they owe that victory to a pope?
The ancient vaticinations do not lie; the Holy Father will now take the right, the inspired, decision. According to the prophecy of Saint Malachy, as evoked by Padre Robleda, our well-beloved (and rather long-lived) Pontiff will be the last, and the holiest Pope: De Gloria Olivae, as he is called in the prophecy.
I am aware that the list of popes attributed to Malachy has long been recognised as a forgery dating from the sixteenth century, and not the Middle Ages. Yet no scholar has succeeded in explaining how it correctly foresaw the names of modern popes right down to the present day.
That list tells us that time has now run out: Fides intrepida (Pius XI), Pastor angelicus (Pius XII), Pastor et nauta (John XXIII), Flos florum (Paul VI), De Medietate Lunae (John Paul I), De labore Solis (John Paul II) and last of all De Gloria Olivae: all the 111 Pontiffs. The Holy Father is, then, perhaps he who will prepare the return of Peter to this earth, when each shall be judged and every wrong set right.
Cloridia told the apprentice that she had come to Rome following the way of numbers and the oracle of the Tarot: the Arcana of Judgement called for 'the reparation of past wrongs' and the 'equitable judgement of posterity'. If the prophecy of Malachy is true, then, that time has come.
All too often, history has been insulted, betrayed, distorted. If, now, we do not intervene, if we do not proclaim the truth out loud, if the writings of my two friends are not published, it is possible that evidence will continue to disappear: that the letters of Monsieur de Beaucastel and Monsignor Cenci will be lost, placed by mistake in the wrong folder, or that the ledgers of Carlo Odescalchi will vanish inexplicably, as have so many documents.
I know, dear Alessio, that you are concerned to respect the schedules which your office lays down. For that very reason, I trust that you will transmit these papers to His Holiness with all diligence, so that he may weigh up whether to order a late, yet still timely, imprimatur.
