'Up the chimney? So that is why he was not even interested to know anything about the windows. But he will have made himself filthy… Excuse me, forget that I said that,' said Atto, remembering that filth was the natural element of the two corpisantari.
Ciacconio had managed to climb without too much difficulty into the chimney of the kitchen on the ground floor. Thence, following the sound of voices, he had succeeded in tracing Tiracorda and Dulcibeni to the study, where they were intent on conversing on matters incomprehensible to him.
'They parleyfied argumancies theoristical, and enigmifications, perhaps even thingamies necromaniacal.'
'Gfrrrlubh,' confirmed Ciacconio, nodding in confirmation, visibly disquieted.
'No, no, have no fear,' interrupted Atto with a smile, 'those were no more than riddles.'
Ciacconio had overheard the enigmas with which Tiracorda enjoyed distracting himself with Dulcibeni and had taken them for obscure cabalistic rituals.
'In parleyfying, the doctorer intimidated that, perduring the nocturn, he would,' added Ugonio, 'ascend unto Monte Cavallo, there to therapise the sacrosanctified personage.'
'I see. Tonight he will go to Monte Cavallo, in other words, to the papal palace, in order to treat that person, that exceedingly important prelate,' Atto interpreted, looking at me with a significant expression.
'And then?'
'Then they ingurgitated alcohols magnomcumgaudio, and into the arms of Murphyus the doctorer fell.'
Dulcibeni had again brought with him the little liqueur to which the doctor was so partial and with it had put him to sleep.
Here began the most important part of Ciacconio's narration. Hardly had Tiracorda entered the world of dreams than Dulcibeni took from a cupboard a vase decorated with strange designs, on the sides of which were various holes to let in the air. From his pocket, he had then extracted a little phial from which he had poured into Tiracorda's vase a few drops of liquid. Atto and I looked at one another in alarm.
'While effectifying this outpouring, he demurmured: ''For her…''
' 'For her'… How interesting. And then?'
'Then thereupon did the furiosa represent herself.'
'The fury?' we both asked in unison.
The good wife Paradisa had burst into the study, where she had surprised her spouse in thrall to the fumes of Bacchus, and Dulcibeni in possession of the abhorred alcoholic potion.
'She greatly disgorgified herself, in manner most wrathful and cholerific,' explained Ugonio.
From what we understood, Paradisa had begun to shower her husband with insults and repeatedly to hurl at him the beakers which had served for their toasts, together with the physician's instruments and whatever came to hand. In order to escape from all those projectiles, Tiracorda had been compelled to take refuge under the table while Dulcibeni had hastily returned to its place the decorated vase into which he had poured those drops of mysterious liquid.
'Exorbitrageous female: most inappropriate for the doctorer, who therapises in order to achieve more benefice than malefice,' pronounced Ugonio, shaking his head, while Ciacconio nodded in concerned agreement.
It was, however, at that very moment that Ciacconio's mission suffered a setback. While Paradisa was venting her hatred for wine and grappa upon the defenceless Tiracorda, and Dulcibeni remained quietly in a corner, waiting for the storm to pass, Ciacconio seized the opportunity to satisfy his baser instincts. Already, before the woman's arrival, he had espied upon a shelf an object to his taste.
'Gfrrrlubh,' he gurgled complacently, producing from his overcoat and showing us, polished and shining, a magnificent skull, complete with the lower jaw, which Tiracorda had probably used when teaching his students.
While Paradisa's raging grew incandescent, Ciacconio had crept into the study on all fours, making his way around the table under which Tiracorda had hidden, and had managed to purloin the skull without being seen. As chance would have it, a large candlestick which Paradisa had hurled at Tiracorda rebounded and struck Ciacconio. Offended and in pain, the corpisantaro leapt onto the table and met fire with fire, uttering as a war-cry the one and only sound of which his mouth was capable.
Upon the unexpected sight of that repulsive and deformed being, who was, moreover, threatening her with her own candlestick, Paradisa screeched at the very top of her voice. Dulcibeni remained where he stood, as though petrified, and Tiracorda flattened himself even more under the table.
Hearing Paradisa's cries, the servant girls came rushing down from the floor above, just in time to encounter Ciacconio who was hurrying towards the stairs down to the kitchen. The corpisantaro, finding himself faced with three fresh young damsels, could not resist the temptation to lay his clutches upon the one nearest to him.
The poor girl, lasciviously groped by the monster just where her flesh was softest and plumpest, instantly lost her senses; the second maid exploded into hysterical screams, whilst the third ran back to the second floor as fast as her legs could carry her.
'It is not cognisable whether she also pissified upon herself,' added Ugonio, cackling rather vulgarly together with his companion.
Crowing savagely at the unhoped-for entertainment, Ciacconio succeeded in regaining the kitchen and the chimney whereby he had made his entry. This, he had rapidly (and in what manner remains inexplicable) ascended until he returned to the roof of Tiracorda's house, thus at last regaining his liberty.
'Incredible!' commented Atto Melani. 'These two have more lives than a salamander.'
'Gfrrrlubh,' specified Ciacconio.
'What did he say?'
'That in the vessel there were not salamanthers but leechies.'
'What? Perhaps you mean…' stammered Abbot Melani.
'Leeches,' I broke in, 'that is what was in the vase which Dulcibeni found so interesting…'
Abruptly, I stopped: a sudden intuition had jolted my thoughts.
'I have it, I have it!' I cried at length, while I saw Atto hanging on my every word. 'Dulcibeni, oh my God!..'
'Go on, tell me,' begged Melani, grasping me by the shoulders and shaking me like a sapling, while the two corpisantari looked on as curiously as two owls.
'… wants the Pope dead,' I gasped.
We all four sat down, almost crushed by the unbearable weight of that revelation.
'The question is,' said Atto, 'what is the liquid which Dulcibeni secretly poured into the vase of leeches?'
'Something which he must have prepared on his island,' I promptly replied, 'in the elaboratory where he slices up rats.'
'Precisely. He quarters them, then he drains their blood. They are sick rats, however,' added Atto, 'for we encountered a number of dead ones and others which were moribund, do you remember?'
'Of course I remember: they were bleeding freely from their snouts! Cristofano told me that this is just what happens to rats which are sick with the pestilence,' I retorted excitedly.
'So they were rats with the plague,' agreed Atto. 'Using their blood, Dulcibeni prepared an infected humour. He then went to Tiracorda and put him to sleep with liquor. In this way, he was able to pour the pestiferous humour into the vase of leeches, which have thus become a vehicle for the distemper. With those leeches, Tiracorda will tonight bleed Innocent XI,' concluded Atto in a voice made hoarse by emotion, 'and he will infect him with the plague. Perhaps we are already too late.'
'We have circled around this mystery for days, Signor Atto. We even heard Tiracorda say that the Pope was being treated with leeches!' I interjected, blushing.
'Good heavens, you are right,' replied Melani, growing gloomy after a moment's reflection. 'That was the first time that we heard him talk with Tiracorda. How could I have failed to understand?'
We continued to reason, to remember and to conjecture, completing and rapidly reinforcing our reconstruction.
'Dulcibeni has read many medical tomes,' continued the abbot. 'One can hear that whenever he touches on the subject. So he knows perfectly well that during visitations of the plague, rats fall ill; and so from them, or rather, from their blood, he can obtain all that he needs. Moreover, he accompanied Fouquet, who knew the secrets of the pestilence, on his travels. Lastly, he is well acquainted with Kircher's theory: the plague is transmitted, not by
