'How very interesting,' said I, trying to please Cristofano and conceal my own disgust.
'By the way,' the physician added, following these useful disquisitions, 'in the next few days, the convalescent will have to follow a diet of broths and boiled liquids and waters, in order to recover from so great an extenuation. Today, you will therefore give him half a cup of chocolate, a chicken soup and biscuits dipped in wine. Tomorrow, a cup of coffee, a borage soup and six pairs of cockerel's testicles.'
After dealing Pellegrino a series of vigorous piston strokes, Cristofano left him half-naked and charged me with watching over him until the bodily effects of the enema were crowned with success. This happened almost at once, and with such violence, that I could well understand why the doctor had made me remove my things to the little chamber next door.
I went down to prepare luncheon, which the physician had recommended must be light but nutritious. I therefore prepared spelt, boiled in ambrosian almond milk with sugar and cinnamon, followed by a soup of gooseberries in dried fish consomme, with butter, fine herbs and scrambled eggs, which I served with bread sliced and diced, and cinnamon. I dished this up to the guests and asked Dulcibeni, Brenozzi, Devize and Stilone Priaso when it would be convenient to apply the remedies which Cristofano had prescribed against the infection. But all four, taking the meal with signs of irritation, having sniffed it, sighed that for the time being they wanted to be left in peace. I had a suspicion that such unwillingness and irritability had something to do with my inexpert cooking. I therefore promised myself that I would increase the size of the helpings in the future.
After luncheon, Cristofano advised me that Robleda had asked for me, since he needed a little water to drink. I furnished myself with a full carafe and knocked at the Jesuit's door.
'Come in, my son,' said he, welcoming me with unexpected urbanity.
And after copiously slaking his thirst, he invited me to sit down. Curious at this behaviour, I asked him if he had had a good night's sleep.
'Ah, tiring, my boy, so tiring,' he replied laconically, putting me even more on guard.
'I understand,' said I, diffidently.
Robleda's complexion was unwontedly pale, with heavy eyelids and dark bags under his eyes. It looked almost as though he had passed a sleepless night.
'Yesterday, you and I conversed,' broached the Jesuit, 'but I beg you not to accord too much weight to certain discussions which we may too freely have conducted. Often our pastoral mission encourages us, in order to excite new and more fecund achievements in young minds, to adopt unsuitable figures of speech and rhetorical devices, distilling concepts excessively and indulging in syntactical disorder. The young, on the other hand, are not always ready to receive such fruitful stimulation of the intellect and the heart. The difficult circumstances in which we all find ourselves in this hostelry may also incite us sometimes to interpret others' thoughts erroneously and to formulate our own infelicitously. Therefore, I beg you simply to forget all that we said to each other, especially concerning His Beatitude our most beloved Pope Innocent XI. And, above all, I am deeply concerned that you should not repeat such transitory and ephemeral disquisitions to the guests of the inn. Our reciprocal physical separation might give rise to misunderstandings; I am sure you understand me…'
'Do not worry,' I lied, 'for I retained little of our conversation.'
'Oh, really?' exclaimed Robleda, momentarily vexed. 'Well, so much the better. After reconsidering all that was said between us, I felt almost oppressed by the weight of such grave discourse: as when one enters the catacombs and, suddenly, being underground, one feels out of breath.'
As he moved towards the door to dismiss me, I was astounded by that sentence, which I saw as being highly revealing. Robleda had betrayed himself. I strove swiftly to devise some argument that might prompt him further to expose himself.
'While standing by my promise not to speak again of these matters, I did in truth have one question on my mind concerning His Beatitude Pope Innocent XI, and indeed all popes in general,' said I, the moment before he opened the door.
'Speak on.'
'Well, that is…' I stammered, trying to improvise, 'I wondered whether there exists a way of determining who, among past pontiffs, were good, who were very good and which ones were saints.'
'It is curious that you should ask me this. It was just what I was meditating on last night,' he replied, almost as though speaking to himself.
'Then I am sure that you will have an answer for me too,' I added, hopeful that this might prolong the conversation.
So the Jesuit asked me again to be seated, explaining to me that there had, over the centuries, been an innumerable succession of statements and prophecies concerning the pontiffs, present, past and future.
'This is because,' he explained, 'especially in this city, everyone knows or thinks that they know the qualities of the reigning pope. At the same time, they lament past popes and hope that the next one will be better, or even that he will be the Angelic Pope.'
'The Angelic Pope?'
'He who, according to the prophecy Apocalipsis Nova of the Blessed Amedeo, will restore the Church to its original holiness.'
'I do not understand,' I interrupted with feigned ingenuousness. 'Is the Church, then, no longer holy?'
'I beg of you, my son… Such questions are not to be asked. Rome has always been the target of the propaganda of the papacy's heretical enemies: ever since, a long time ago, the Super Hieremiam and the Oraculum Cyrilli foresaw the fall of the city and Thomas of Pavia announced visions which foretold the collapse of the Lateran Palace, and both Robert d'Uzes and Jean de Rupescissa warned that the same city in which Peter had laid the first stone was now the City of the Two Columns, the seat of the Antichrist. Such prophecies have one aim: to instil the idea that the Church is to be completely demolished and that the pope is not worthy to remain in his post.'
'Which pope?'
'Well, unfortunately, such blasphemous attacks have been directed against all the pontiffs.'
'Even against His Beatitude, our own Pope Innocent XI?'
Robleda grew solemn, and in his eyes I noted a shadow of suspicion.
'They include all popes, including indeed His Beatitude Pope Innocent XI.'
'And what do they foretell?'
I noticed that Robleda was returning to the subject with a bizarre mixture of reluctance and self-indulgence. He resumed in slightly graver tones, and explained to me that, among many others, there existed a prophecy which claimed to know the whole sequence of popes from about the year 1100 until the end of time. And as though for many years he had had nothing else on his mind, he recited from memory an enigmatic series of Latin mottoes: ' Ex castro Tiberis, Inimicus expulsus, Ex magnitudine montis, Abbas suburranus, De rure albo, Ex tetro carcere, Via transtiberina, De Pannonia Tusciae, Ex ansere custode, Lux in ostio, Sus incribro, Ensis Laurentii, Ex schola exiet, De rure bovensi, Comes signatus, Canonicus ex latere, Avis ostiensis, Leo sabinus, Comes laurentius,
Jerusalem Campaniae, Draco depressus, Anguineus vir, Concionator gallus, Bonus comes..?
'But these are not the names of popes,' said I, interrupting him.
'On the contrary, they are. A prophet read them in the future, before they came into the world, but he identified them by the symbolic mottoes which I have just been reciting for you. The first was Ex castro Tiberis, meaning 'from a castle on the Tiber'. Well, the Pope designated by that motto was Celestine II who was indeed born at Citta di Castello on the banks of the Tiber.'
'So the prediction was accurate.'
'Indeed, it was. But so was the next one, Inimicus expulsus, which surely indicated Lucius II of the Cacciaenemici family, a precise translation of the Latin which speaks of expelling enemies. The third pope is Ex magnitudine montis this is Eugene III, born in the city of Grammont, which in French is an exact translation of the motto. Number four…'
'These must be very ancient popes,' I interrupted. 'I have never heard of them.'
'They are of great antiquity, it is true. But even the modern ones were foretold with the greatest of exactitude. Jucunditas cruris, number 82 in the prophecy, was Innocent X. And he became pope on the 14th of September, the Feast of the Holy Rood. Montium custos, the guardian of the mountains, number 83, was Alexander VII, who founded the Montes Pietatis* Sydus olorum, or the star of the swans, number 84, is Clement IX. He in fact lived in the Chamber of the Swans in the Vatican. The motto of Clement X, number 85, was De flumine magno or 'from the great river', and he was in fact born in a house by the Tiber, just where the river overflowed its
