inevitably accompanied by espionage.
'What is more,' continued Abbot Melani, 'Corbetta knew Fouquet well, seeing that he was guitarist to Mazarin's court until 1660: only then did he emigrate to London, even though he in fact continued to make frequent visits to Paris, where he finally returned ten years later.'
'But then,' I concluded, without even wishing to believe my own words, 'even that rondeau might conceal a secret message.'
'Calm down, calm down, first let us consider the other things we know: you told me that the rondeau was given by Corbetta to Queen Maria Teresa who in turn gave it to Devize. Well, this provides me with another piece of precious information: I had no idea that the Queen was in touch with the two guitarists. The thing is so extraordinary that I find it almost hard to believe.'
'I understand,' I interrupted. 'Maria Teresa led an almost reclusive existence…'
I then told him of the lengthy monologue in which Devize described the humiliations which the Most Christian King had heaped upon his poor consort.
'Reclusive?' said Atto at the end. 'I would not use that term.'
And he explained to me that Devize had painted me perhaps too immaculate a portrait of the late Queen of France. At Versailles, even now, one might still encounter a young mulatto girl who bore a curious resemblance to the Dauphin. The explanation of that wonder was to be found twenty years previously, when the ambassadors of an African state had sojourned at court. To manifest their devotion to the consort of Louis XIV the ambassadors had presented the Queen with a little black page called Nabo.
A few months later, in 1664, Maria Teresa had given birth to a hale and lively little girl with black skin. When this prodigy took place, the Chirurgeon Royal swore to the King that the newborn child's colour was a passing inconvenience due to congestion at birth. Days passed, however, and the child's skin showed no sign of lightening. The Chirurgeon Royal then said that perhaps that court blackamoor's over-insistent glances might have interfered with the Queen's pregnancy. 'A glance?' replied the King. 'It must have been most penetrating.'
'A few days later, with the greatest discretion, Louis XIV had the page Nabo put to death.'
'And Maria Teresa?'
'She said nothing. She was not seen either to weep or to smile. Indeed, she was not seen at all. Yet, from the Queen no one had ever succeeded in obtaining anything except words of kindness and pardon. She had always made a point of telling the King of every little thing, in proof of her own fidelity, despite the fact that he dared to appoint his own mistresses as her maids of honour. It was as though Maria Teresa had not known how to appear anything but colourless, opaque, almost devoid of any will of her own. She was too good, too good.'
Devize's phrase came to mind: it was indeed an error to judge Maria Teresa by appearances alone.
'Do you think that she dissimulated?' I asked.
'She was a Habsburg. She was a Spaniard. Two exceedingly proud breeds, and bitter enemies of her husband. How do you think that Maria Teresa felt, exiled on French soil? Her father loved her dearly and had agreed to lose her only in order to conclude the Peace of the Pyrenees. I was present at the Isle of Pheasants, my boy, when France and Spain concluded the treaty and decided the nuptials between Louis and Maria Teresa. When King Philip of Spain had to bid his daughter farewell, and knew that he would never again see her, he embraced her and wept disconsolately. It was almost embarrassing to see a King comport himself thus. At the banquet which followed the agreement, one of the most sumptuous that I have ever seen, he barely touched his food. And in the evening, before retiring, he was heard to groan between his tears, saying, 'I am a dead man,' and other silly phrases.'
Melani's words left me speechless: I had never thought that powerful sovereigns, the masters of Europe's fate, might suffer so bitterly for the loss of a loved one's company.
'And Maria Teresa?'
'At first, she behaved as though nothing had happened, as was her wont. She had immediately let it be understood that her betrothed was pleasing to her; she smiled, conversed amiably and showed herself pleased to be leaving. But that night, everyone heard when in her chamber she cried in torment: 'Ay, mi padre, mi padre!'
'Then it is clear: she was a dissimulator.'
'Exactly. She dissimulated hatred and love and simulated piety and fidelity. And so we ought not to be too surprised that no one should have known of the gracious exchanges of musical scores between Maria Teresa, Corbetta and Devize. Perhaps it all took place under the King's nose!'
'And do you think that Queen Maria Teresa used the guitarists to hide messages in their music?'
'That is not impossible. I recall having read something of the sort many years ago, in a Dutch gazette. It was cheap scribblers' stuff, published in Amsterdam but written in French in order to spread poisonous rumours about the Most Christian King. It told of a young valet at the court of Versailles, by the name of Belloc, if I recall correctly, who wrote scraps of poetry for recital during ballets. In those verses were inserted in cipher the reproaches and sufferings of the Queen for the King's infidelities, and these were said to have been commissioned by Maria Teresa herself.'
'Signor Atto,' I then asked, 'who is Mademoiselle?'
'Where have you heard that name?'
'I read it at the top of Devize's score. There were written the words ' a Mademoiselle'.'
Although the diffuse light of the lantern was faint, I saw Abbot Melani grow pale. And suddenly in his eyes I read the fear which for the past couple of days had begun silently to consume him.
I then told him everything else about my meeting with Devize: how I had accidentally stained the score with oil and how, when endeavouring to clean it, I had read the dedication 'a Mademoiselle''. I recounted the few things which Devize had told me about Mademoiselle: namely, that she was a cousin of the King; and how the latter had, because of her past as a rebel, condemned her to remain a spinster.
'Who is Mademoiselle, Signor Atto?' I repeated.
'What matters is not who she is but whom she married.'
'Married? But was she not to remain unmarried, as a punishment?'
Atto explained to me that matters were rather more complicated than Devize's version. Mademoiselle, who was in reality called Anne Marie Louise, Duchess of Montpensier, was the richest woman in France. Riches, however, were not enough for her: she was utterly set upon marrying a king, and Louis XIV amused himself by forbidding her the joys of matrimony. In the end, Mademoiselle changed her mind: she said she no longer wished to become a queen and to end up like Maria Teresa, subjected to the whims of a cruel monarch in some distant land. At the age of forty-four, she then fell in love with an obscure provincial gentleman: a poor younger brother from Gascony, with neither skills nor fortune who, a few years earlier, had had the good luck to be liked by the King, becoming the companion of his amusements and even acceding to the title of Count of Lauzun.
Lauzun was a cheap seducer, said Atto scornfully, who had courted Mademoiselle for her money; but in the end, the Most Christian King consented to the marriage. Lauzun, however, being a monster of presumption, wanted festivities worthy of a royal wedding; 'like the union of two crowns,' he would boast to his friends. Thus, while the wedding was held up by too many preparations, the King had time to relent and again forbid the marriage. The betrothed couple begged, entreated, threatened; all to no avail. So they married secretly. The King found this out, and that was the ruin of Lauzun, who ended up in prison, in a fortress far from Paris.
'A fortress,' I repeated, beginning to understand.
'At Pinerol,' added the abbot.
'Along with…'
'Exactly, along with Fouquet.'
Until that moment, explained Melani, Fouquet had been the only prisoner in the enormous fortress. However, he already knew Lauzun, who had accompanied the King to Nantes on the occasion of his arrest. When Lauzun was brought to Pinerol, the Superintendent had been languishing in a cell for over nine years.
'And how long did Lauzun remain there?'
'Ten years.'
'But that is so long!'
'It could have been worse for him. The King had not set the duration of his sentence and could have held him at his pleasure.'
'How come, then, that after ten years he was freed?'
That was a mystery, said Atto Melani. The only certain fact was that Lauzun was liberated a few months after the disappearance of Fouquet.
