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'And, after that?'

'We shall try to enter the stables and take the underground galleries.'

'But that will be extremely difficult; anyone might recognise us.'

'I know. Have you any better ideas?'

We therefore prepared to plunge into the crowd at the market on the Piazza Navona. How immense was our disappointment when we found ourselves facing a half-empty square, animated only by sparse groups, in the centre of which, from the height of a box or a seat, bearded and sweaty orators waved their arms, haranguing and declaiming. No market, no vendors, no stalls piled up with fruit and vegetables, no crowd.

'The deuce, it is Sunday!' said Atto and I, almost in unison.

On Sunday, there was no market: that was why there were so few people in the streets. The quarantine and our too frequent adventures had made us lose count of the days.

As on all feast days, the priests were the lords of the piazza, preachers and pious men who, with edifying sermons attracted, some by the subtleties of their logic, some by the stentorian flow of their eloquence, small gaggles of students, scholars, loafers, mendicants, and even cutpurses, always ready to profit from the distraction of the other spectators. The gay quotidian chaos of the market had given way to a grave, leaden atmosphere; and, as though yielding to that atmosphere, clouds suddenly covered the sun.

We crossed the piazza stunned by disappointment, feeling even more naked and defenceless than we in fact were. We moved away from the centre of the square to the right-hand side, where we tiptoed along the walls, hoping to attract no attention. I was startled when a little boy, coming out from a nearby hut, pointed us out to the adult who was accompanying him. The latter stared briefly at us and then, fortunately, ceased to attend to our furtive and miserable presence.

'They will notice us, damn it. Let us try to merge into the crowd,' said Atto, pointing out to me a nearby group of people.

So we mixed with a small but compact assembly, gathered around an invisible central point. We were just a few paces from the Cavalier Bernini's great Fountain of the Four Rivers in the middle of the piazza; the four titanic anthropomorphic statues of the aquatic deities, almost admonitory in their marmoreal potency, seemed to be participating in the pious atmosphere of the piazza. From within the fountain, a stone lion scrutinised me, ferocious but impotent. Above the monument, however, there stood an obelisk all covered in hieroglyphics and capped with a little golden pyramid, almost naturally pointing towards the Most High. Was this not precisely the obelisk which had been deciphered by Kircher, as someone had told me a few days earlier? But I was distracted by the crowd, which moved further forward, the better to listen to the sermon which I could hear coming from a few paces beyond.

In the forest of heads, backs and shoulders I could descry the preacher for only a few brief instants. His hat revealed him to be a Jesuit brother; he was a rotund purple-faced little man wearing a tri- corn too big for his head and entertaining with torrential eloquence the small, tight group of spectators who had gathered around him.

'… And what is the life of devotion?' I heard him declaim. 'I tell you that it is to speak little, to weep much, to be mocked first by this man, then by that, to tolerate poverty in one's life, suffering in one's body, insults to one's honour, injuries to one's interests. And, can such a life not be most unhappy? I tell you, yes it can!'

The crowd was stirred by a hubbub of incredulity and scepticism.

'I know,' continued the preacher vehemently. 'Persons who live the life of the spirit are accustomed to these evils and would even wish spontaneously to suffer from them. And if they do not find them upon their way, they go out hunting for them!'

Another murmur of disquiet traversed the crowd.

'Think of Simon of Cyrene, who feigned madness in order to be mocked at by the people. Think of Bernard of Clairvaux, who suffered from poor health and always took refuge in the iciest and most cruel of hermitages! And do you therefore account them to have been no more than miserable wretches? No, no, listen with me to what the great prelate Salviano said.'

Abbot Melani caught my attention by pulling at my sleeve. 'The way seems clear, let us go.'

We moved towards the way out from the square nearest to the Donzello, hoping that those last footsteps would not hold any bad surprises for us.

'The great prelate Salviano may say what he will, but I cannot wait to get changed,' complained Atto, nearing the limits of his patience and endurance.

Without having the courage to turn round, I had the disagreeable impression that someone was following us.

We were on the point of emerging safely from our perilous crossing when the unforeseeable occurred. Atto was proceeding ahead of me, skirting the wall of a palazzo, when from a little doorway I saw a pair of robust and decisive hands dart forth, seize him and drag him indoors by force. This terrible vision, together with my overwhelming weariness, almost caused me to lose my senses. 1 was petrified, unable to decide whether to run away or to call for help, in both of which cases I ran the risk of being identified and arrested.

Extricating me from the horns of this dilemma, there came from behind me a familiar voice, whose sound was so improbable as to appear celestial: 'Get you ultraquickly into the coneyhole!'

Great though Abbot Melani's scorn for the corpisantari may have been, I believe that on this occasion he had no little difficulty in hiding his gratitude for their intervention. Not only had Ugonio miraculously survived the Cloaca Maxima, but after rejoining Ciacconio, he had tracked us down again and-although the method employed may have been somewhat rough-had brought us to safety. It was, however, Ciacconio who had dragged Atto through the little door on the Piazza Navona, whither Ugonio now urged me to enter in my turn.

Once beyond the threshold, and without giving us the time to ask any questions, the corpisantari made us pass through another little door and climb down an exceedingly steep flight of stairs which in turn led to a narrow and even more dismal windowless corridor. Ciacconio produced a lantern which, absurdly, he seemed to have been concealing, already lit, in the folds of his grimy overcoat. Our saviour seemed to be as soaked as we, and yet he trotted along as boldly and rapidly as ever.

'Where are you taking us?' asked Atto, for once surprised and no longer master of the situation.

'The Piazzame Navonio is perditious,' said Ugonio, 'and, to be more padre than parricide, the subpantheon is more salubricious.'

I remembered that, during one of our explorations of gallery C, the corpisantari had shown us the way to an exit which led to the courtyard of a palace behind the Pantheon, not far from the Piazza della Rotonda. For a good quarter of an hour, they led us from cellar to cellar, through an uninterrupted sequence of obscure doorways, steps, abandoned store-rooms, spiral staircases and galleries. Every now and then, Ugonio would bring out his ring laden with keys, open a door, let us through, then lock the door behind us with four or five turns of the key. Atto and I, already exhausted, were pushed and dragged along by the two corpisantari like two mortal vessels whose souls were ready to abandon them at any moment.

We arrived at last before a sort of great wooden portal which opened creaking onto a courtyard. The daylight again hurt our pupils. From the courtyard, we emerged into a little alleyway and from there into another half- abandoned courtyard, to which we gained access through a door without any lock.

'Ultraquickly into the coneyhole!' exhorted Ugonio, showing me a wooden trap in the ground. We raised the lid, revealing a dark and suffocating well. Across the top was laid an iron bar, from which hung a rope; and this we swarmed down. We already knew where it led: to the network of tunnels connected to the Donzello.

As the trapdoor closed over our heads, I saw the cowled heads of Ugonio and Ciacconio disappear into the light of day. I would have liked to ask Ugonio how he had managed to survive the wreck of our boat in the Cloaca Maxima and how the deuce he had got out from there, but I had no time. While I lowered myself, grasping the rope, for a fleeting instant it seemed to me that Ugonio's eyes met my own. Inexplicably, it seemed to me that he knew what I was thinking. I was happy that he was safe.

Hardly had I returned to my chamber than I changed in a rush and hid my dirty, mud-stained clothing. At once, I betook myself to Cristo-fano's apartment, ready to justify my absence by an improbable visit to the cellars. Too exhausted to worry, I was ready to face questions and objections for which I was utterly unable to find a reply.

Cristofano, however, was sleeping. Perhaps still exhausted by the crisis of the day before, he had gone to bed without even closing his door. He lay clumsily sprawled across the bed, half-dressed.

I took care not to awaken him. The sun was low on the horizon; I still had time for something before the appointment we had fixed with Devize in Bedfordi's chamber: to sleep.