on the past, but why did you not ask the Odescalchi for help with your daughter?'
'I did, I did,' replied Dulcibeni. 'I have already told you. But they said that they could do nothing for me. And then…'
'Ah yes, then came that nasty incident, the beating, the fall…' Tiracorda recalled.
'It was no fall, Giovanni. They struck me on the neck and then they threw me down from the second floor. It was a miracle that I escaped with my life,' said Dulcibeni, somewhat impatiently, once again filling his friend's glass.
'Yes, yes, please pardon me, I should have remembered that from your collar; it is just that I am rather weary…' Tiracorda's voice was growing drowsy.
'Do not excuse yourself, Giovanni, but listen. Now it is your turn. I have three good ones.'
Dulcibeni took out a book and began to read in a warm, resonant voice:
To tell you from A unto Zed, I intend,
What to name I would always presume;
And if I should claim to have Names for it all,
Why, then I'm but Ragges and Spume.
The one thing that counts is to 'wait the Boys' Call;
'Tis for them that my Stuff I consume.
And you, Masters, who tell 'em of me to inquire,
Know well that I am the good Son of a Friar.
The reading continued with two, three, four more bizarre little rhymes, with brief pauses in between.
'What say you, Giovanni?' asked Dulcibeni at length, after reading the series of riddles.
The only reply was a rhythmic bronchial murmur. Tiracorda was asleep.
At that juncture, something unforeseen occurred. Instead of rousing his friend, who had obviously drunk several glasses too many, Dulcibeni returned the book to his pocket and tiptoed to the secret closet behind Tiracorda's back, from which we had seen the latter take two little glasses the night before. Dulcibeni opened the door to the cupboard and began to busy himself with a number of vases and containers of spices. He then pulled out a ceramic vase on which were painted the waters of a pond, a few aquatic plants and strange little animals which I was unable to identify. There were little holes in the sides of the vase, as though to allow air to enter. Dulcibeni raised the vase to the candlelight and, removing its lid, looked into it. He then replaced the vase in the cupboard and began to rummage about in there.
'Giovanni!'
A woman's voice, strident and most disagreeable, came from the staircase and seemed to be approaching. Paradisa, the terrible wife of Tiracorda was beyond any doubt arriving. For a few instants, Dulcibeni stood as though petrified. Tiracorda, who seemed to be fast asleep, gave a start. Dulcibeni probably succeeded in closing the secret cupboard before the doctor awoke and surprised him searching among his things. Atto and I could not, however, observe the scene: yet again, we were caught between two fires. We looked all around, in desperation.
'Giovanniiii!' repeated Paradisa, drawing ever nearer. In Tiracorda's study, too, the alarm must be at its height: we heard a discreet but frenetic shifting of chairs, tables, doors, bottles and glasses; the doctor was hiding the evidence of his alcoholic misdeed.
'Giovanni!' declaimed Paradisa at last with a voice the colour of a clouded sky, as she entered the antechamber. At that precise moment, Abbot Melani and I were face to the ground among the legs of a row of chairs against the wall.
'Oh sinners, oh wretches, oh lost souls,' Paradisa began to chant, solemn as a priestess, as she drew near to the door of Tiracorda's study.
'But, my dear wife, here is our friend Pompeo…'
'Silence, child of Satan!' screamed Paradisa. 'My nose does not deceive me.'
As we could hear from our uncomfortable position, the woman began to turn the study upside down, moving chairs and tables, opening and noisily slamming doors, cupboards and drawers, and knocking statuettes and ornaments one against the other in her search for proof of misconduct. Tiracorda and Dulcibeni strove in vain to calm her, assuring her that never, but never had it so much as entered their minds to drink anything but water.
'Your mouth, let me smell your mouth!' screeched Paradisa. Her husband's refusal provoked yet more screams and a great to-do.
It was at that moment that we resolved to slip out from under the chairs where we were hiding and to flee in silence but with all possible speed.
'Women, women, curses. And we are even worse than they…'
Two or three minutes had passed and we were already underground, commenting upon the events which had just transpired. Atto was furious.
'I shall tell you what Tiracorda and Dulcibeni's mysteries were all about. The first one, that which you heard last night, do you remember it? One had to guess: what was there in common between 'Enter dumb into here' and 'Number to dine: three'. Solution: it is an anagram.'
'An anagram?'
'Of course. The same letters in a sentence so disposed as to form another one. The second was a game to test one's presence of mind: a father has seven daughters; if each daughter has a brother, how many children has that father?
'Seven, multiplied by two: fourteen.'
'Not even in your dreams! She has eight: as Tiracorda said, the brother of the one is the brother of the others. These are all silly things: that which Dulcibeni read this evening, which begins, 'To tell you from A unto Zed, I intend…' is utterly simple. The answer is: the dictionary.'
'And the others?' I asked, stupefied by Atto's prompt wit.
'What does it matter?' he fumed. 'I am not a seer. What we need to know is why Dulcibeni was trying to get Tiracorda drunk and then rummaging in his secret cupboard. And that we would have known, had it not been for the arrival of that madwoman Paradisa.'
At that moment, I did indeed recall that little was known of Signora Paradisa in the Via dell'Orso. In the light of what we had seen and heard in Tiracorda's house, it was perhaps no accident that the woman almost never left the house.
'And now, what shall we do?' I asked, observing the rapid pace at which Atto was preceding me on the way back to the hostelry.
'We shall do the one thing that remains possible if we are to elucidate matters: we shall take a look in Pompeo Dulcibeni's chamber.'
The one risk of such an operation was, of course, the sudden return of Dulcibeni. We, however, trusted to our own celerity, and to the relative slowness of the elderly Marchigiano, who would also need some time to disengage himself from Tiracorda's house.
'Pardon me, Signor Atto,' I asked, after a few minutes' hard march, 'but what do you expect to find in the apartment of Pompeo Dulcibeni?'
'What stupid questions you sometimes ask. Here we are facing one of the most tremendous mysteries in the history of France, and you ask what we shall find! And how should I know? Surely, something more about the imbroglio in which we are now caught up: Dulcibeni, friend of Tiracorda; Tiracorda, physician to the Pope; the Pope, enemy of Louis XIV; Devize, pupil of Corbetta; Corbetta, friend of Maria Teresa and Mademoiselle; Louis XIV enemy of Fouquet; Fouquet, travelling with Devize; Fouquet, friend of the abbot who stands before you… what more do you want?
Atto needed to unburden himself, and to do so he must needs talk.
'And besides,' he continued, 'Dulcibeni's apartment was also that of the Superintendent, or have you forgotten?'
He left me no time to reply, but added: 'Poor Nicolas, his destiny was to be searched, even after his death.'
'What do you mean?'
'Louis XIV had the Superintendent's cell searched continuously and in every possible manner throughout the twenty years of his imprisonment at Pinerol.'
