festivities, as you may well imagine. But I shall not leave Rome until the conclave! Now, come with me, and enough of questions,' said he, springing to his feet as though he were some bold young spark and taking me joyfully by the arm.
What manner of devil is this Melani, thought I, at once troubled and amused; one moment he seemed to have grown dull and aged, and now here he was slipping away like an eel. With him one could never know where the truth lay.
'Signor Atto,' I resumed, raising my voice. 'Never would I dare to be lacking in respect for you; but yesterday I suffered one of the worst affronts of my whole life, and so…'
'Oh, how very disagreeable for you. And what of it?' quoth he, once again sniffing at the flower while with his other hand he drummed lightly on the pommel of his cane.
'I suffered a theft. Do you understand? I was robbed,' I proclaimed emphatically, inflamed by the repressed anger which was once again rising within me.
'Ah, well, you may console yourself,' said he complacently. 'That has happened to me too. I well remember how at the con vent of the Capuchins at Monte Cavallo, it must have been thirty years ago, they robbed me of three gold rings, set with gems, a heart-shaped diamond, a book of lapis lazuli bound in gold and studded with rubies and turquoises, a coat of French camlet, gloves, fans, pastilles and Spanish wax…'
It was then that I exploded.
'Enough, Signor Atto. Stop feigning innocence: you took my memoir, the account of what took place seventeen years ago, when we first met! Only to you have I confided this, only you knew of its existence, and what was your sole response? To have it stolen off me!'
Atto did not lose his composure. With ostentatious delicacy, he laid the wisteria flower down on a hedge and continued drumming on the silver pommel of his cane, letting me continue with my outburst.
'Not for one minute did you spare a thought for me! I who wept warm tears for you, who wrote to you continually, forever imploring a reply! And your sole concern was that someone might read that memoir and discover that you are an intriguer, that you steal good people's secrets, that you betray your own friends, that you are capable of all manner of infamy and… well… that you are utterly shameless.'
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the palm of my hand, panting with emotion. Atto extended his little lace handkerchief to me, holding it between the tips of two fingers, and in the end I accepted it. I felt empty.
'Have you finished?' he asked at length, distantly.
'I… I am incensed by what you have done. I want my memoir back,' I stammered, cursing myself for my inability to convey anything better than the same boyish petulance as had been mine seventeen years before, and this at a time when my age is by no means so green.
'Ah, that is out of the question. Your writings are now in a safe place. I have hidden them carefully in Paris, before anyone could give them their imprimatur'
'Then you admit it: you are a thief.'
'Thief, thief…' he chanted. 'You really do have too much of a taste for strong words. With the pen, on the other hand, you have some ability. I took much pleasure in reading your little tale, even if you did at times raise the tone too much and even if you wrote things which could give offence to me. And then, you have been very naive indeed. Really… to have written such things about Abbot Melani, and then to have informed him of it…'
'True, I realise that too,' I admitted.
'As I told you, I did not mind reading your efforts. At times, on the contrary, I found your writing most effective. Yours is a good pen, sometimes a trifle artless, but never tedious. Who knows whether it may not prove useful to you? 'Tis a pity that you failed to mention that you had become a father, I would have been glad to know that… But I can understand why: the radiant dawning of the new day, which little ones are for every genitor, surely had no place in that sombre old tale.'
I maintained a hostile silence, the better to make him understand that I had no intention of speaking with him of my little ones.
'I imagine that during all these years, you will have read books, gazettes, a few rhymes…' said he, changing the subject, as though to move me to speak.
'In truth, Signor Atto,' I confirmed, 'I am much given to buying books that treat of history, politics, theology and the lives of the saints. Among poets, I enjoy Chiabrera, Achillini and Filicaia. Gazettes… No, those I do not read.'
'Perfect. It is you that I need.'
'And what for, pray?'
'Showed you this memoir to any persons?'
'No.'
'There exist no other copies of it?'
'No, I never had the time to transcribe it. Why do you ask?'
'Will a thousand suffice?' he retorted dryly.
'I do not follow your meaning,' said I, beginning, however, to understand.
'Very well, then. One thousand two hundred scudi in Roman coin. But not one more. And the memoirs are to become two.'
It was thus that Abbot Melani purchased the lengthy memoir in which I had described our first encounter and all the adventures which had arisen thereafter. In the second place, he was, for that sum, advancing payment for another memoir, or rather, a journal: a description of his sojourn at the Villa Spada.
'At the Villa Spada?' I exclaimed incredulously, as we resumed our stroll.
'Precisely. Your master, the Secretary of State, is present and the conclave is imminent; do you imagine that the flower of the Roman nobility and of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, not to mention the ambassadors, would assemble here merely for the pleasure of the occasion? The chess game of the conclave has already begun, my boy; and at the Villa Spada, many important pawns will be moved, of that you may be sure.'
'And you, I suppose, would not wish to miss a single move.'
'The conclave is my trade,' he replied, without so much as a hint of modesty. 'Do not forget that the illustrious Rospigliosi of Pistoia, whose guest I am honoured to be, owe me the distinction of numbering a pope among their family.'
I had already heard tell, seventeen years previously, of how Atto went around boasting of having favoured the election of Clement IX, of the Rospigliosi family.
'So, my son,' concluded Melani, 'you will pen for me a chronicle in which you will give a judicious account of all that you see and hear during the coming few days, and you will add thereto whatever I may suggest to you as being desirable and opportune. You will then deliver the manuscript to me without retaining any copy thereof or thereafter reproducing any of its contents. There, those are my terms. For the time being, that is all.'
I remained perplexed.
'Are you not content? Were it not for writers, men and their fame would die together on the same day and their virtues would be entombed with them, but the mem'ry thereof which remains written in books — that can never die!' Thus spake the Abbot with courtly prose and honeyed voice, in his endeavours to flatter me.
He was not so mistaken, I reflected, while Atto continued with his homily.
'Thus spake Anaxarchus, a most wise and learned philosopher, saying that one of the most worthy things that one can possess in this life is to be known by the world as intelligent in one's own profession. Indeed, even where there are millions of men learned and expert in one and the same art, only those who take pains to make themselves known will be held worthy of praise, nor will their fame die out in eternity.'
Abbot Melani wished, if I had understood him well, for a sort of biographer to celebrate his deeds during those days: a sign that he was intent upon accomplishing memorable feats, so I bethought myself, as I anxiously recalled the Abbot's enterprising audacity.
'… Wherefore I, considering these things,' continued Atto with an air at once pompous and vigorous, 'took great pains, when young, to learn, and when I had come of age, to put into practice that which I had learned; and now I strive so to act that the world may know me. Thus, having through my words pleased several princes and great men, and having penned for them divers masterly reports in the art of diplomacy, many there have been who have availed themselves and who yet avail themselves of my skills.'
'But not all profited thereby,' thought I to myself, recalling the cavalier manner in which Atto would transfer his fidelity from one master to another.
