aim of attempting to escape. Saint-Mars, whose experience as a gaoler was limited to guarding the Superintendent, was unable to tame Lauzun and, faced with such fury, came to call Fouquet 'the little lamb'.
Very early on (but this was discovered far later) Lauzun succeeded in communicating with Fouquet through a hole in the wall.
'But how is it possible that no one should have realised,' I protested incredulously, 'what with all the surveillance which Fouquet had to put up with every day?'
'I have asked myself the same question many times,' agreed Abbot Melani.
Another year passed. In October 1675 His Majesty authorised Fouquet and his wife to correspond. The couple's letters were, however, first to be read by the King who arrogated himself the right to alter or destroy them. But there was more: without any logical reason, some twelve months later, the King had Fouquet sent a number of books on recent political developments. A little while later, Louvois sent Saint-Mars a letter for the Superintendent, adding that if the prisoner should request writing paper in order to reply, it was to be given to him. And that is what happened: the Superintendent wrote and sent two reports to Louvois.
'What did they contain?'
'No one has succeeded in finding out, although rumours immediately started in Paris that they had been copied throughout the city. Immediately afterwards, however, it became known that Louvois had sent them back to Fouquet, saying that they were of no interest to the King.'
This was an inexplicable gesture, commented Melani: first, because if a memorandum is useless, it is simply thrown away; and secondly, because it is practically impossible that Fouquet should not have given the King some good counsel.
'Perhaps they wanted to humiliate him yet again,' I speculated.
'Or perhaps the King wanted something from Fouquet which he would not give him.'
The concessions, however, continued. In 1674, Louis authorised husband and wife to write to each other twice a year, even though the letters first passed through his hands. The Superintendent's health again worsened and the King became worried: he did not permit him to leave his cell, but had him visited by a physician sent from Paris.
From November 1677, he was at last permitted to take a little air; in whose company? Why, that of Lauzun, of course; and the two were even allowed to converse! With the proviso that Saint-Mars should listen to their every word and faithfully report all that was said.
The King's gracious concessions became more and more numerous. Now, Fouquet even received copies of the Mercure Galant and other gazettes. It seemed almost as though Louis wished to keep Fouquet informed of everything important that was happening in France and in Europe. Louvois recommended Saint-Mars to place the accent, in his dealings with the prisoner, on the military victories of the Most Christian King.
In December 1678 Louvois informed Saint-Mars of his intention to hold a free epistolary correspondence with Fouquet: the letters were to be rigorously sealed and secret, so that Saint-Mars' only duty was to see to their delivery.
Scarcely a month later, the astonished gaoler received an aide-memoire penned by the King in person on the conditions to apply to Fouquet and Lauzun. The two could meet and converse as often as they pleased and could walk not only within the inner fortress but throughout the whole citadel. They could read whatever they wished, and the officers of the garrison were obliged to keep them company if they so desired. They could also request and receive any table games.
A few months passed and another opening came: Fouquet could correspond as much as he pleased with all his family.
'In Paris we were so excited,' said Atto Melani, 'for we were now almost sure that sooner or later the Superintendent would be freed.'
A few months later, in May 1679, another long-awaited announcement was made: the King would soon allow all Fouquet's family to visit him. Fouquet's friends exulted. The months passed, one year passed. With bated breath they awaited the Squirrel's liberation which, however, never came. They began to fear some stumbling- block; perhaps Colbert was up to his usual tricks.
In the end, no pardon came. Instead, like a bolt of lightning reducing hearts to ashes, came news of the sudden death of Nicolas Fouquet in his cell at Pinerol, in his son's arms. It was 23rd March, 1680.
'And what about Lauzun?' I asked, as we climbed the vertical well that led back to the inn.
'Yes, Lauzun. He remained in prison a few months longer. Then he was freed.'
'I do not understand; it is as though Lauzun had been imprisoned to stay close to Fouquet.'
'That is a good guess. Yet, I wonder, what for?'
'Well, nothing comes to mind, except… to make him talk. To get Fouquet to say something which the King wished to know, something which…'
'That will do. Now you know why we are about to search Pompeo Dulcibeni's chamber.'
The search was far less difficult than expected. I kept an eye on the corridor, while Atto entered the Marchigiano's chamber carrying only a candle. I heard him rummage for a long time, with intervals of silence. After a few minutes, I too entered, stirred both by the fear of being discovered and by curiosity.
Atto had already combed through a good many of Pompeo Dulcibeni's personal effects: clothing, books (amongst them the three volumes from Tiracorda's library), a few scraps of food, a passport to travel from the Kingdom of Naples to the Papal States and a number of gazettes. One of these was entitled:
Relation of what took place between the Caesarean Armies and the Ottomans on 10th July, 1683.
'It concerns the siege of Vienna,' murmured Abbot Melani.
The other gazettes too, of which there were over a dozen, also dealt with the same subject. We ended by examining the whole room hurriedly; no other object of any significance came to our attention. I was already inviting Abbot Melani to abandon the search when I saw him stop in the middle of the chamber, thoughtfully scratching his chin.
Suddenly, he rushed to the wardrobe and, finding the corner in which the dirty linen was piled, literally plunged into it, groping and pulling with his hands at the underclothing waiting to be laundered. At length, he grasped a pair of muslin drawers. He began to finger them in several places, until his hands concentrated on the piping through which passed the cord that holds up the drawers.
'Here we are. The chore was malodorous, but it was well worth the trouble,' said Abbot Melani with satisfaction, extracting from Dulcibeni's drawers a small flattened coil. This consisted of several folded and compressed sheets of paper. The abbot unfolded them and placed them under the candle in order to read them.
I should be lying to the reader of these pages were I to hide the fact that the image of what took place in the minutes that followed remains engraved in my memory, as vivid as it is chaotic.
We began to read aloud avidly, almost in unison, the letter formed by those few leaves of paper. It was a long discourse in Latin, written in a senile, uncertain hand.
'Optimo amico Nicolao Fouquet… mumiarum domino… tributum extremum… secretum pestis… secretum morbi… ut lues debelletur… It is incredible, truly incredible,' Abbot Melani murmured to himself.
Some of those words sounded strangely familiar to me. At once, however, he invited me to keep an eye on the corridor, in order not to be surprised by Dulcibeni's return. So I posted myself outside the door, keeping an eye on the stairs. While Abbot Melani completed his reading, I heard him muttering undisguised expressions of surprise and incredulity.
There then occurred what I was by now inured to fearing. Stopping his nose and his mouth, with his eyes narrowed and swollen, Abbot Melani rushed out from the chamber and placed the letter in my hands. He squirmed, again and again desperately repressing a dangerous sneeze.
I went straight to the last part of the letter, which he, in all probability, had been as yet unable to read. I, however, understood little of the content, owing to my excitement and to the bizarre contortions whereby Atto Melani was striving to mount his resistance to the beneficial release. My eyes moved directly to the end, where I understood why the words mumiarum domino had not sounded new to me when, almost incredulously, I deciphered the signature: Athanasius Kircher I.H.S.
Now at the limit of his resistance, Atto pointed at Dulcibeni's drawers, into which I hastily returned the letter. Obviously, we could not remove it. Dulcibeni would certainly discover that, with unforeseeable consequences. A few moments after we had left Dulcibeni's chamber and locked the door, Atto Melani exploded in a noisy, liberating,
