I spent a good part of the night sewing together some old clean leaves of paper piled up on the table where my master kept his accounts, and then writing down on these the recent events which I had witnessed. I had decided: I would not lose a single word of what Abbot Melani had taught me. I would transcribe it all and conserve it jealously.
Without the help of those ancient notes today, sixteen years later, I could not be here compiling these memoirs.
Day the Second
12th September, 1683
The morning after, I awoke to a strange surprise. I found Signor Pellegrino asleep on his bed, in the chamber which we shared under the eaves. He had made no preparation whatever for our guests' repast; which, despite our exceptional circumstances, was nevertheless required of him. My master, dressed in the clothes he had worn the evening before, lay sprawled across the bedcovers, showing every sign of having fallen asleep under the influence of some cheap red wine. After rousing him with some difficulty, I went to the kitchen. As I was descending the stairs, I heard, drawing ever nearer, a distant cloud of sounds, confused at first, albeit pleasant. As I drew closer to the entrance of the dining chamber, next to the kitchen, the music grew clearer and more intelligible. It was Signor Devize who, clumsily perched on a wooden stool, was practising his instrument.
A strange enchantment overcame all who heard Devize's playing, in which the joy of listening was conjoined with the pleasure of the eyes. His doublet of Isabella-coloured bourette and his unadorned apparel, his eyes whose colour shifted from green to grey, his fine cinder-grey hair: everything in him seemed to give way to the vivid tones which, with extravagant chromatics, he drew from the six strings. Once the last note had vanished into thin air, the enchantment broke; and there before one sat a sulky little red-faced man, almost scorbutic, with minute features, a small nose reaching down towards a fleshy, pouting mouth, the short, bull-like physique of an ancient Teuton, a martial gait and brusque manners.
He did not pay much attention when I entered and, after a brief pause, resumed his playing. Suddenly, from his fingers, there sprang up no mere music, but an admirable architecture of sounds which to this day I could describe, were heaven to grant me the words, and not just the memory. It began with a simple, innocent air which danced, arpeggiato, from the tonal chord to that of the dominant (thus the virtuoso was later to explain it to me, as yet utterly ignorant of the art of sounds), then reprised that movement, and, after a surprising free cadenza passage, repeated it all. This was, however, only the first of a rich and surprising collection of gems which, as Signor Devize later explained to me, was called a rondeau and which was composed of that same first air, repeated several times, but each time followed by a new precious jewel, utterly original and resplendent in its own light.
Like every other rondeau, this one, to which I was to listen on many subsequent occasions, was crowned by the extreme and conclusive repetition of the first stanza, which seemed to endow the whole with meaning and completeness. But, although the innocence and simplicity of that first stanza was utterly delicious, it would have been nothing without the sublime concert of the others which, one after the other, refrain upon refrain, arose ever freer, bolder and more exquisite from that admirable structure; so much so that the last of these was for the intellect and the ears a most sweet and extreme challenge, like those which knights issue to one another over questions of honour. The final arpeggio, after descending prudently, even timidly, towards the bass notes, made a sudden ascent towards the high notes, then jumped to the highest, transforming its tortuous and timorous advance into a clear river of beauty, into which it loosened its long tresses of harmony with an admirable progression to bass. And there it remained, absorbed in mysterious and ineffable harmonies, which to my ear sounded forbidden, even impossible (which is the main reason why words fail me here), and at last moved unwillingly towards peace, making way for the final repetition of the initial stanza.
I listened rapt, without proffering a word, until the French musician had stilled the last echo from his instrument. He looked at me.
'You play the lute so well,' I ventured timidly.
'In the first place, this is no lute,' he answered, 'it is a guitar. And besides, you are not interested in how well I play. You like this music. One can see from how you listen. And you are right: I am rather proud of this rondeau.'
Here, he explained to me how a rondeau was made, and how that which I had just heard differed from others.
'That to which you have just listened is a rondeau in the style we call brise, or broken. In other words, it imitates the lute: the chords are not all played together but strummed, arpeggiato.'
'Ah, I see,' I replied, confusedly.
From my expression, Devize must have understood how unsatisfactory his explanation had been, and he went on to say that, while the refrain was written according to the good old rules of consonance, the alternate passages contained ever new harmonic assays, which all concluded in an unexpected fashion, almost as though they were alien to good musical doctrine. And after reaching its apogee, the rondeau brusquely entered its coda.
I asked him how it was that he spoke our language so fluently (although with a strong French accent; but that, I did not mention).
'I have travelled much, and I have come to know many Italians whom, by inclination and in practice, I regard as the best musicians in the world. In Rome, however, the Pope has already had the Teatro Tor di Nona, which was near this hostelry, closed for years; but in Bologna, in the cappella of San Petronio, and in Florence, one can hear many fine musicians and many magnificent new works. Indeed, our great maestro Jean-Baptiste Lully, who ornaments the King's glory at Versailles, is a Florentine. Best of all, I know Venice where, of all Italian cities, music flourishes the most. I adore the theatres of Venice: the San Cassiano, the San Salvatore, and the famous Teatro del Cocomero where, before I went to Naples, I attended a marvellous concert.'
'Were you intending to stay long here in Rome?'
'It scarcely matters now what I may have intended. We do not even know whether we shall leave here alive,' said he, resuming his playing with a passage which, he said, came from a chaconne by Maestro Lully himself.
Hardly had I left the kitchen where, after my conversation with Devize I had closed myself in to prepare luncheon, when I ran into Brenozzi, the Venetian glass-blower. I advised him that, if he wished for a warm meal, it was ready. But he, without uttering a word, grasped my arm and dragged me down the stairs that led to the cellar. When I tried to protest, he closed my mouth with his hand. We stopped halfway down the stairs and he started at once: 'Calm down and listen to me. Do not be afraid, you must only tell me certain things.'
He whispered in a strangled voice, without allowing me to open my mouth. He wanted to know the comments of the other guests on the death of Signor di Mourai, and whether it was thought that there was a danger of yet another death by poisoning or some other cause, and if anyone in particular feared such an eventuality, and if others, on the contrary, feared no such thing, and how long the quarantine might last, if it might be more than the twenty days ordered by the Magistrate, and whether I suspected that any of the guests might be in possession of poisons, or even so much as thought that use had really been made of such substances; and lastly, whether any one of those present was proving inexplicably tranquil despite the quarantine that had just been imposed on the inn.
'Signore, I really…'
'The Turks? Have they spoken of the Turks? And of the pestilence in Vienna?'
'But I know nothing, I…'
'Now listen once and for all, and answer me,' he continued, impatiently squeezing his rod. 'Marguerites: does that mean anything to you?'
'I beg your pardon, Sir?'
'Daisies, marguerites.'
'If you wish, Sir, I do have dried ones in the cellar for preparing infusions. Do you feel unwell?'
He snorted and raised his eyes to heaven.
'Forget all that I have said to you. My one command is this: if anyone should ask you, you know nothing about
