signalled at last that the time had come to collect the dishes. The victory which I had snatched from the jaws of defeat brought me close to tears.
I then prepared to make my round of the apartments: I did not wish to forego the compliments of the Donzello's guests. However, arriving before Abbot Melani's doorway, I recognised his deeply mournful singing. I was struck by the heart-rending tone of his voice, so much so that I stopped to listen:
Ahi, dunqu'e pur vero; dunque, dunque pur vero…
He was repeating the phrase so softly, and with ever-new and surprising melodic variations.
I was perturbed by those words, which I seemed to have heard already at a time and in a place unknown to me. Suddenly, a revelation came to me: had not my master Pellegrino perhaps mentioned to me that the old Signor di Mourai, alias Fouquet, had, before expiring, with a last supreme effort murmured a phrase in Italian? And now, I remembered: the dying man had pronounced the very words which Atto was now intoning: 'Ahi, dunqu’e pur vero'.
Why, I wondered, why ever had Fouquet pronounced his last words in Italian? I recalled, too, that Pellegrino had seen Atto, leaning close to the old man's face and speaking to him in French. Why, then, had Fouquet murmured those words in Italian?
Meanwhile, Melani continued his song:
Dunque, dunqu'e pur vero, anima del mio cor, che per novello Amor tu cangiasti, cangiasti pensiero…*
At the end, I heard him struggle to hold back his sobs. Torn between embarrassment and compassion, I dared neither move nor speak. I felt a stab of pity for that eunuch, no longer in the flower of youth: the mutilation imposed on the little boy's body by a father's greed had brought him fame, while condemning him to shameful solitude. Perhaps, I reflected, Fouquet had nothing to do with it. Those words pronounced by the Superintendent at the point of death might simply be an astonished exclamation in the face of death; I had heard that such things were not unusual among the dying.
The abbot had, in the meantime, begun another aria, the accents of which were even more anguished and lugubrious: * So it is really true, / soul of my heart, / that for a new Love / you've changed, changed your mind…
Lascia speranza, ohime, ch'io mi lamenti, lascia ch 'io mi quereli.
Non ti chiedo merce, no, no, non ti chiedo merce…*
He emphasised the last phrase, and repeated it ad infinitum. What, I wondered, could so torment him, that in his discreet and subdued song he should exclaim broken-heartedly that he would ask no pity? At that moment, Cristofano arrived behind me. He was doing his rounds.
'Poor fellow,' he whispered to me, referring to Atto. 'He is suffering from a moment of discomfort. Like all of us, what is more, in this wretched reclusion.'
'Yes, indeed,' I replied, thinking of Dulcibeni's solitary discourse.
'Let us leave him to relieve his feelings; I shall come and visit him later and make him drink a calming infusion.'
We went on our way, while Atto sang unceasingly:
Lascia ch'io mi disperi…
Ah Hope, let me lament,
let me complain.
I ask you no mercy,
no, no, I ask you no mercy…
Let me despair…
Night the Fifth
Between the 15th and 16th September, 1683
My mood was rather melancholy when the abbot called on me to descend yet again under the ground. The supper of cows' teats had given fresh heart to our lodgers; but not alas to me, weighed down as I was by the sequence of revelations and discoveries concerning Mourai and Fouquet, not to mention the gloomy judgements of Dulcibeni. Nor had the task of writing my diary improved matters.
The abbot must have sensed my state of mind, for while we went on our way, he made no effort to enliven the conversation. Nor was he in the best of moods, although visibly more tranquil by comparison with the desperate laments which I had heard him singing after dinner. He seemed to be suffering under the weight of some unspoken anxiety, which rendered him unusually taciturn. As might have been expected, Ugonio and Ciacconio did what they could to make the situation worse.
The two corpisantari had already been awaiting us for some time when we joined them under the Piazza Navona.
'Tonight, we must clarify our ideas a little concerning the underground city,' announced Melani.
He produced a sheet of paper on which he had traced a series of lines schematically. DONZELLO
'Here is what I would have liked to obtain from these two wretches, instead of which we have to depend upon ourselves.'
It was a rough map of the galleries which we had explored to date. On the first night, we had descended from the Donzello to the opening onto the Tiber, taking a gallery which Atto had marked with the letter A. In the roof of that gallery we had, later, discovered the trapdoor through which we had taken the passage which led to the ruins of Domitian's Stadium, under the Piazza Navona, corresponding to the letter B. From the Piazza Navona, through the narrow hole in which we had to bend double, we took passage C. From that point, there began a long curve (marked E) along which we had followed Stilone Priaso and which had led us to the space painted with frescoes, in all probability beneath the Palace of the Chancellery. Thence, we had emerged at the Arch of the Acetari. Finally, passage D branched out from the left-hand side of passage C.
'There are three galleries of which we know the beginning but not the end: B, C and D. It would be wise to explore them before undertaking any further pursuits. The first is the left-hand branch of the gallery which one takes upon emerging from the trapdoor. It goes in the general direction of the Tiber, but we know nothing else about it. The second gallery is that which turns off from the Piazza Navona and proceeds in a straight line. The third deviates from that gallery to the left. We shall begin with the third one, gallery D.'
We advanced cautiously until we reached the point where Ugonio and Ciacconio had stationed themselves the night before when they assaulted Stiione Priaso. Atto made us stop there to check our position from the map.
'Gfrrrlubh,' said Ciacconio, to catch our attention.
A few paces in front of us, an object lay on the ground. Abbot Melani ordered us all to halt and advanced first to examine our find. It was a small green glass phial from which there had spilled a (now dry) stream, then clear drops, of red blood.
'What miracle have we here?' sighed Abbot Melani with a tired voice.
It took no little time to calm down the corpisantari, who were convinced that the phial was one of the relics for which they were forever searching. Ciacconio had begun to patter around it, gurgling frenetically. Ugonio had attempted to seize the phial, and Atto had been compelled to thrust him back., without sparing him a few blows. In the end, the corpisantari ceased their agitation and we were all able to gather our ideas together. It was clearly not the blood of a martyr: gallery D, in which we had found the blood was neither a catacomb, a columbarium, nor indeed any ancient holy place, Abbot Melani reminded us, exhorting the two treasure hunters to calm down. Above all, however, the blood which it contained was hardly dry, and had even spilled onto the ground: therefore it belonged to a living being, or to one not long dead-not to a martyr who had lived centuries ago. Atto wrapped the phial in a fine piece of cloth and put it in the pocket of his doublet, erasing with one foot the blackish traces of liquid remaining on the ground. We decided to continue our exploration: perhaps the solution to the mystery would be found further on.
Melani said nothing, but it was all too easy to guess his thoughts: yet another unexpected find, yet another
