If that were the case, I would need to assemble all the necessary proofs. In the first place, I clarified my ideas about the disease known as the plague: this is the bubonic plague, caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis which is transmitted by fleas to rats, and by the latter to man. It has nothing to do with the various animal plagues, or with the so-called pulmonary plague which from time to time strikes in the Third World.
The surprise came when I read that bubonic plague has not existed for centuries, nor does anyone know why.
I even found myself smiling when I read that in Europe (and even earlier in Italy) the plague practically disappeared at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost contemporaneously with the events at the Donzello. I was expecting that.
Many theories exist about its mysterious disappearance, yet none is definitive. Some see in this a consequence of more advanced measures of sanitation adopted by mankind; others, however, think that we must thank the arrival in Europe of Rattus norvegicus (the brown rat) which supplanted Rattus rattus (the black rat), which is host to Xenopsilla cheopis, the flea that acts as carrier of the plague bacillus. Others attribute the merit to new brick and tile buildings, replacing those built of timber and straw, or to the removal of domestic granaries, which drove rats from housing. Yet others insist upon the role played by pseudo-tuberculosis, a benign illness which has the effect of giving immunity to bubonic plague.
From academic discussions, however, only one thing emerges with certainty: between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europe was mysteriously freed of its most ancient scourge, just as Kircher had promised to bring this about by applying his secrets.
The coincidences grew even thicker when I thought of the enigma of the 'Barricades Mysterieuses', the rondeau which seems to be the casket enclosing the secretum vitae, just as Kircher's tarantella contains the antidote to the bite of the tarantula. But it was at this juncture that, may the Lord pardon me, I had the secret satisfaction of at last discovering a fatal historical error.
I needed only to leaf through any old musical dictionary to learn that the 'Barricades Mysterieuses' was not the work of the scarcely known guitarist and composer Francesco Corbetta, as stated in the text of my two friends, but was written by Francois Couperin, the celebrated French composer and harpsichordist, who was born in 1668 and died in 1733. The rondeau is taken from the first book of his Pieces de Clavecin, it was, thus, written for the harpsichord, and not the guitar. Most importantly, it was first published only in 1713: thirty years after the events which are supposed to have taken place in the Locanda del Donzello. The anachronism committed by the two young writers was serious enough to deprive their work of any claim to authenticity, let alone verisimilitude.
Once I had discovered that grave and unexpected inconsistency, it seemed useless to confute the rest of that ingenious narrative. How could a text containing so serious an error possibly threaten the glorious memory of the Blessed Innocent XI?
For some time, in moments of ease at the day's end, I would skim lazily through the typescript, and my thoughts would go out more to the two writers of those pages than to the contents of the story. This disturbing tale, full of poisonous gossip concerning the Pope my countryman, seemed to me an open provocation, even a bad joke. In my soul, there prevailed that distaste and natural mistrust which, I must confess, I have always felt for journalists.
The years passed. By now, I had almost forgotten my two old friends, and with them the typescript which lay buried in an old chest. In an excess of prudence, I had, however, kept it well hidden from the prying eyes of strangers, who might have read it without being armed with the requisite counter-poisons.
I could not yet know how wise that precaution would prove to be.
Three years ago, when I was informed that His Holiness wished to reopen the process of canonisation of Pope Innocent XI, I could not so much as remember where that pile of faded yellow papers might be. Yet it was soon to knock again at my door.
It happened in Como, one damp November evening. Following the pressing insistence of some friends, I was present at a concert organised by an excellent musical association in my diocese. Towards the end of the first half, the nephew of an old companion from my student days played the piano. It had been a hard day and I had, until then, participated rather distractedly in the evening's proceedings. Suddenly, however, an insinuating and ineffable motif attracted me as no music ever had. It was a dance, baroque in style, but with dreaming accents and harmonies which undulated back and forth from Scarlatti to Debussy, from Franck back to Rameau. I have always been a lover of good music and am the proud possessor of a not inconsiderable record collection. If, however, I had been asked from which century those timeless notes came, I would not have known how to answer.
Only at the end of the piece did I open the programme, which I had forgotten on my knees, and read the title of the music: 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses'.
Once again, the apprentice-boy's account had not lied. That music had an incomparable power to enchant, to confound, unaccountably to fascinate the heart and the mind. After listening, the memory could not shake itself loose. I was not surprised that the young man should have been so perturbed by it, or that, years later, he still continued to turn that motif over in his memory. The mystery of the secretum vitae was wrapped within another mystery.
This was not in itself enough to enable me to say that all the rest was true, but it was too much for me to resist the temptation to continue to the bitter end.
The morning after, I acquired a costly complete recording of Couperin's many Pieces de Clavecin. After listening to it most attentively for days and days, the conclusion seemed evident: no music of Couperin's resembled the 'Barricades Mysterieuses'. I consulted dictionaries, I read monographs. The few critics who mentioned it all agreed that Couperin had composed nothing else like it. The dances from Couperin's suites almost all have a descriptive title: 'Les Sentiments', 'La Lugubre', 'L’Ame-en-peine', 'La Voluptueuse', and so on. There are also titles like 'La Raphaele', 'L’Angelique', 'La Milordine' or 'La Castellane': each alluded to some lady who was well-known at court and whom contemporaries would amuse themselves recognizing in the music. Only for the 'Barricades Mysterieuses' did no explanation exist. A musicologist defined the piece as 'truly mysterious'.
It was as though it were someone else's work. But then, whose could it be? Full of bold dissonances, of languishing, distilled harmonies, the 'Barricades' are too far removed from the sober style of Couperin. In an ingenious interplay of echoes, both anticipated and delayed, the four voices of the polyphony merge in the delicate clockwork of an arpeggio. This is the style brise, which the harpsichordists had copied from the lute players. And the lute is the closest relative of the guitar…
I began to admit the hypothesis that 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses' might really have been written by Corbetta, as the apprentice-boy had said. But why then had Couperin published it under his own name? And how had it come into his hands?
According to the manuscript, the author of the rondeau was the obscure Italian musician Francesco Corbetta. It all seemed to be a pure invention: the idea had never entered any musicologist's mind. There was, however, an interesting precedent: even when Corbetta was still living, controversies broke out as to the authorship of some of his pieces. Corbetta himself accused one of his pupils of stealing some of his music and publishing it under his own name.
I was able to verify without the slightest difficulty that Corbetta really had been Devize's master and friend: it was therefore all the more likely that some scores must have passed from the one to the other. In those days, there was little printed music and musicians personally copied whatever was of interest to them.
When Corbetta died in 1681, Robert Devize (or de Visee, according to modern orthography) already enjoyed great fame as a virtuoso and teacher of the guitar, the lute, the theorbo and the large guitar. Louis XIV in person required him to play for him almost every evening. Devize frequented the foremost court salons. There he played in duo with other celebrated musicians, including, as it happens, the harpsichordist Francois Couperin.
So, Devize and Couperin did know one another and they played together; in all probability, they will have exchanged compliments, opinions, advice, perhaps even confidences. We know that Devize amused himself playing Couperin's music on the guitar (some of his transcriptions have come down to us). It is not improbable that Couperin will in turn have tried his friend's suites for guitar on the harpsichord. And it is inevitable that notebooks and scores should have passed from hand to hand. Perhaps, one evening, while Devize was distracted by the co- quettishness of some court ladies, Couperin may have taken that fine rondeau with the strange title from his friend's papers, thinking that he would return it the next time that they met.
Under the charm of that celestial music, and of the mystery that was taking form under my eyes, in a short
