It was curious how Atto Melani could draw from his own repertory the perfect little aria for each occasion. He must, I thought, hold a truly lively and tender affection for the memory of his Roman master, Le Seigneur Luigi, as he called him.
'So poor Brenozzi is in a state of great anxiety,' resumed Abbot Melani. 'And he may, sooner or later, ask you again for help. By the way, my boy, you have a drop of oil on your head.' He wiped the little spot from my forehead with a fingertip and carelessly brought it to his lips, sucking it.
'Do you believe that the poison which killed Mourai could have anything to do with Brenozzi?' I asked him.
'I would exclude that,' he answered with a smile. 'I think that our poor glass-blower is the only one to entertain such a fear.'
'Why did he ask me, too, about the siege of Vienna?'
'And you, tell me: where is the Most Serene Republic?'
'Near to the Empire, just to the south, and…'
'That is quite enough: if Vienna capitulates, in a few days the Turks will spread out, above all to the south, entering Venice. Our Brenozzi must have spent quite a long time in England, where he was able to learn English discreetly in person, and not by correspondence. No, he would probably like to return to Venice, but he realises that the time is not propitious.'
'In other words, he risks falling straight into the hands of the Turks.'
'Precisely. He must have come as far as Rome, hoping perhaps to be able to set up shop and thus to find shelter. But he understood that here too the fear is great: if the Turks succeed in Vienna, after Venice, they will come to the Duchy of Ferrara. They will cross the Romagna and the Duchies of Urbino and Spoleto, and moving beyond the gentle hills of Umbria, they will leave Viterbo on their right and head…' * In this hard exile…
'For us,' I shivered, realising clearly for the first time the danger that hung over us.
'It is not necessary for me to explain to you what would happen in that eventuality,' said Atto. The Sack of Rome a century and a half ago would be a mere trifle by comparison. The Turks will lay waste to the Papal States, taking their natural ferocity to its most extreme consequences. Basilicas and churches, beginning with Saint Peter's, will be razed to the ground. Priests, bishops and cardinals will be dragged from their houses and their throats cut, crucifixes and other symbols of the Faith will be torn down and burned; the people will be robbed, the women horribly violated, the cities and countryside will be ruined forever. And if that first collapse takes place, all Christendom may well end up a prey to the Turkish horde.'
The Infidel army, bursting out from the woods of Latium, would next cross the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, then the Duchy of Parma, and, passing through the Most Serene Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Savoy, it would overflow into French territory (and here perhaps I saw on Abbot Melani's face a trace of genuine horror) in the direction of Marseilles and Lyons. And at that point, at least in theory, it could head for Versailles.
It was then that, giving way again to discomfiture and taking my leave of Atto on a vague pretext, I picked up my bag and ran upstairs, stopping only when I reached the short stairway leading to the little tower.
At this point, I gave free rein to all my anxieties, abandoning myself to a doleful soliloquy. Here was I, a prisoner in a cramped hostelry which was suspected, with good reason now, of harbouring the plague. Hardly had I succeeded in shaking off that terror, thanks to the words of the physician, who foretold my resistance to infection, when Melani came telling that I ran the risk of leaving the Locanda del Donzello only to find Rome invaded by the sanguinary followers of Mahomet. I had always known that I could count only on the kindness of a very few persons, among them Pellegrino, who had generously saved me from the hardships and dangers of life; this time, however, I could count only on the (surely not disinterested) company of a castrato abbot and spy, whose precepts were for me almost exclusively a source of fear and anguish. And the inn's other lodgers? A bilious-tempered Jesuit, a shady and inconstant gentleman from the Marches, a brusque-mannered French guitarist, a Tuscan physician whose ideas were confused and perhaps even dangerous, together with my master and Bedfordi, who lay supine in their beds. Never before had I experienced so deeply the sentiment of solitude, when my murmurings were suddenly interrupted by an invisible force which knocked me backwards, leaving me lying spread-eagled on the floor; and there, looking down on me, stood the guest whom I had omitted from my silent inventory.
'You frightened me, silly!'
Cloridia, feeling a strange presence behind her door (on which I had in fact been leaning) had opened it suddenly, causing me to roll into her chamber. I rose to my feet without even trying to excuse myself and hastily wiped my face.
'And anyway,' she went on 'there are disasters worse than the plague or the Turks.'
'Did you hear my thoughts?' I responded, astonished.
'In the first place, you were not thinking, because whoever truly thinks has no time for snivelling. And besides, we are in quarantine on suspicion of infection, and in Rome these days no one can sleep a single night without dreaming of the Turks entering through the Porta del Popolo. Whatever should you have to whine about?'
And she handed me a dish with, on it, a glass half full of spirits and an aniseed ring-cake. I was about to seat myself timidly on the edge of her high bed.
'No, not there.'
I stood up instinctively, spilling half the liquor on the carpet and somehow catching the cake but covering the bed with crumbs. Cloridia said nothing. I fumbled for an excuse and tried to make amends for the little disaster, wondering why she had not harshly scolded me, like Signor Pellegrino and indeed all the guests of the locanda (except, it is true, Abbot Melani whose conduct in regard to me was more liberal).
The young woman who stood before me was the one person of whom I knew so little, yet what I knew was certain. My contacts with her were limited to the meals which my master ordered me to prepare and bring to her, to the sealed notes which she would sometimes ask me to deliver to this or that person, to the maids whom she often changed and whom from time to time I would instruct in the use of the water and the pantry in the hostelry. That was all. For the rest, I knew nothing of how she lived in the little tower where she received guests who entered through the passage that gave on to the roof; nor did I need to know anything.
She was not a common prostitute, she was a courtesan: too rich to be a harlot, too avaricious not to be one. Yet all that is not sufficient to understand properly what a courtesan might be, and of what refined arts she might be mistress.
Everybody knew what took place in the 'stufe', those hot vapour baths imported into Rome by a German and recommended for eliminating putrid humours through perspiration. Those baths were for the most part kept by women of easy virtue (indeed, there was one within a stone's throw of the Donzello which was generally regarded as the most famous and ancient in Rome and was known as the Stufa delle Donne, the Women's Baths. Everybody knew, except me, what commerce one could have with certain women near Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, or in the vicinity of Via Giulia, or at Santa Maria in Via; and it was common knowledge that at Santa Maria in Monterone an identical business took place even in the parish apartments; and in former centuries the pontiffs had found it necessary to forbid the clergy to live in the same neighbourhood as such women, yet these prohibitions had as often as not been ignored or circumvented. In any case, it was perfectly clear who hid behind such noble Latin names as Lucrezia, Cornelia, Medea, Pentesilea, Flora, Diana, Vittoria, Polisse- na, Prudenzia or Adriana; or what was the true identity of the Duchessa or the Reverendissima, who had been so bold as to filch their titles from illustrious protectors; or, again, what lusts Selvaggia and Smeralda enjoyed unleashing, or what was the true nature of Fior di Crema, or why Gravida-the Fragrant One-was called by that name, or indeed what trade Lucrezia-the-Slut carried on.
What point was there in investigating all this? That had already been done a century and more ago and, furthermore, a classification had even been made of all the categories: meretrici, puttane, curtail (those of the Curia), whores of the lamp, of the candle, of the Venetian blinds, of the silhouettes, and 'women in trouble, or of lesser fortune', while some burlesque ballads sang, too, of the Sunday girls, the church mice, the Guelf girls, the Ghibellines and a thousand others. How many were they? Enough to give Pope Leo X the idea, when repairs had to be made to the road leading to the Piazza del Popolo, of levying a tax on the harlots, of whom many lived in that quarter. Under Pope Clement VII, some swore that every tenth Roman was engaged in prostitution (not even counting bawds and pimps), and perhaps Saint Augustine was right when he said that if prostitutes were to disappear, unbridled licence would flourish everywhere.
The courtesans, however, were of quite another kind. For, with them, mere amorous beguilements were
