that it fell also upon my shoulders. Henceforth, we must scrutinise with the closest attention every slight variation in our lodgers' health. Moreover, any shortcomings on the part of either of us (and he would certainly report any breaches I might commit) would entail grave penalties for us. In particular, we must at all costs ensure that no one should leave the inn before the end of the quarantine. However, to ensure the necessary control, the two rounds of the watch would continue to make sure that no one would attempt to undo the boards or lower themselves from the windows.
'I shall serve you in all things,' I said to Cristofano in order to appease him; yet, I awaited nightfall impatiently.
The otherwise welcome suspension of the roll-call had the unfortunate effect of compromising the plan, hatched out with Atto Melani, of looking into Padre Robleda's Bible. I informed the abbot discreetly of this, slipping a note under his door and returning at once to the kitchen, for I feared that Cristofano (who was moving from one chamber to the next in order to visit his patients) might surprise me in conversation with him.
It was Cristofano himself, however, who called me to the chamber of Pompeo Dulcibeni on the first floor. The gentleman from Fermo had suffered an attack of sciatica. I found him in bed, lying on one side, while he begged the doctor to set him back on his feet as soon as possible.
Cristofano manipulated Dulcibeni's legs pensively. He would raise the one and order me at the same time to bend the other one: with each such movement, the physician would stop and await the patient's reaction. Every now and then, he would cry out, and Cristofano would nod solemnly.
'I see. Here we need a magisterial cataplasm with cantharides. My boy, while I prepare this, anoint all his left side with this balm,' said he, handing me a small jar.
He then informed Dulcibeni that he would have to wear a magisterial cataplasm for eight days.
'Eight days! Do you mean that I must remain immobilised for that long?'
'Of course not: the pain will be attenuated a long time before that,' retorted the doctor. 'Obviously, you will not be able to run. But what does that matter to you? As long as the quarantine lasts, you will not be able to do more than while away the time.'
Dulcibeni grumbled somewhat ill-temperedly.
'Take comfort,' added Cristofano. 'There is one here younger than yourself, yet full of infirmities: Padre Robleda does not show it, but for several days now he has been suffering from rheumatism. His must be a delicate constitution, for the inn does not seem damp to me and the weather these days is fine and dry.'
I gave a start on hearing these words. My suspicions in regard to Robleda became yet more acute. I saw, meanwhile, that the doctor had taken from his bag a jar full of dead coleoptera. He drew out two of a golden- greenish colour.
'Cantharides, or the Spanish fly,' said he, putting the beetles under my nose, 'dead and desiccated. They are miraculous as vesicants-and as aphrodisiacs, too.'
Saying this, he began to pulverise them carefully over a piece of saturated gauze.
'Ah, the Jesuit has rheumatism,' exclaimed Dulcibeni after a while. 'So much the better; that way he will leave off sticking his nose into everyone else's business.'
'What do you mean?' asked Cristofano, busying himself on his beetles with a little knife.
'Did you not know that the Society of Jesus is a nest of spies?'
My heart leapt into my mouth. I must know more. But Cristofano did not seem to be drawn to the subject and Dulcibeni's assertion was thus on the point of dying unanswered.
'Surely you do not mean that seriously?' I asked forcefully.
'Very much so!' replied Dulcibeni with conviction.
In his opinion, not only were the Jesuits masters of the art of espionage, but they claimed it as a privilege of their order, and whosoever practised that art without their express permission was to be severely punished. Before the Jesuits came into the world, other religious orders had also played a part in the intrigues surrounding the Apostolic See. But since the followers of Saint Ignatius had applied themselves to the exercise of espionage, they had outrun them all. This was because the pontiffs had always had an absolute need to penetrate the most recondite affairs of princes. Knowing that no one had ever succeeded in the business of spying as well as the Jesuits, they made heroes of them. They sent them to all major cities and favoured them with privileges and papal bulls, elevating them above all other orders.
'Excuse me,' objected Cristofano, 'but how could the Jesuits spy so well? They cannot frequent women, who always gossip too much; they cannot be seen in the company of criminals or persons of low station, and moreover…'
The explanation was simple, replied Dulcibeni: the pontiffs had assigned the sacrament of Confession to the Jesuits, not only in Rome but in all the cities of Europe. Through Confession, the Jesuits could insinuate their way into the minds of all, rich and poor, princes and peasants. But above all, they thereby scrutinised the inclinations and disposition of every counsellor and minister of state: with practised rhetoric, they mined the depths of men's hearts for all the resolutions and reflections which their victims were secretly nurturing.
In order to dedicate themselves entirely to Confession, and to gain ever greater profit from that source, they had obtained from the Holy See the right to exemption from other holy offices. Meanwhile, the victims took the bait. The kings of Spain, for instance, had always used Jesuit confessors and wished their ministers to do likewise in all the lands under Spain's rule. Other princes, who had hitherto lived in good faith and were unaware of the malice of the Jesuits, began to believe that these fathers possessed some special virtue as confessors.
Gradually, they came to follow the example of the kings of Spain and also chose Jesuits as their confessors.
'But someone must surely have exposed them,' argued the physician, while he continued to make the carcasses of the cantharides crackle under his little scalpel.
'Of course. But once their game was discovered, they placed themselves at the service of this or that prince, as the opportunity presented itself, always ready to betray them.'
That was why everyone loved them and everyone hated them, said Dulcibeni: they were hated because they served everyone as spies, they were loved because no better spies could be found to fulfil the sovereigns' purposes. They were loved, because they offered their services voluntarily as spies; they were hated because they thereby gained the greatest profit for their order and inflicted the greatest damage upon the whole world.
Cristofano applied the magisterial cataplasm to Dulcibeni, sprinkled with little fragments of beetle, and we both took our leave of him. I was absorbed in a jumble of thoughts: first, the physician's reference to Robleda's curious rheumatisms, then the revelation that the Spanish Jesuit had, at the seminary, been trained more to spy than to pray: all confirmed me more in my suspicions about Robleda.
I was about to retire at last (I really needed rest after the exertions of the previous night) when I noticed that the Jesuit had left his chamber, accompanied by Cristofano, in order to go to the pit near the kitchen where it was possible to deposit organic dejections. Faced with so propitious an opportunity, thought and action were one: I moved silently to the second floor and carefully pushed the door of the Jesuit's chamber, slipping inside. But it was too late: I thought I heard Padre Robleda's footsteps climbing back up the stairs.
I rushed out and turned hurriedly towards my own chamber, disappointed by this failure.
On my way, I stopped to call on my master, whom I found sitting up in bed. I had to help him loosen his bowels. He put some confused and listless questions to me concerning his own state of health because, he stammered, the Sienese physician had treated him like a child, hiding the truth from him. I endeavoured in my turn to calm him down, after which I helped him to drink, arranged his bedding as best I could and stroked his head for a long time, until he fell asleep.
Thus I could shut myself into my own room. I took out my little notebook and, in a state of extreme fatigue, I wrote down-in truth, somewhat hurriedly-the latest events.
Once I had retreated to the bed, my need for rest struggled with all the thoughts which came crowding in, striving in vain to arrange themselves into a reasonable and orderly whole. Perhaps the page of the Bible found by Ugonio and Ciacconio had belonged to Robleda, and he had lost it in the underground galleries near the Piazza Navona: it was probably he who had stolen the keys, and in any case, he had access to the tunnels. The assistance which I had given to Abbot Melani had exposed me to unspeakable terrors, as well as the struggle with the loathsome corpisantari. Yet the abbot himself had resolved the situation with the aid of a mere pipe disguised as a pistol: a success which he had then repeated, planning and carrying out the deception of the three emissaries of the Bargello, and thus circumventing the danger of a state of pestilence being declared, with all the frenzied controls to
