'Any inscription or sign on the spine or the cover?'
'Nothing.'
The two rapidly agreed on other matters and Atto placed a handful of coins in the old man's hands as an advance on pay ment.
Suddenly we heard a piercing scream coming from the greenery by the roadside to our left.
'After him, after him!' called a stentorian voice.
Out darted a swift shadow and passed between us, colliding heavily with the bookbinder and Abbot Melani and causing the latter to tumble onto the gravel with a dull cry of rage and pain.
All the papers which Atto was holding in his hand were scattered into the air in an unhappy and disorderly swirl, and the same fate befell the bookbinder's basketful of papers, while the shadow which had dashed against us rolled on the ground in a series of dramatic and indescribable somersaults.
When at last it stopped rolling, I saw that it was a dirty and emaciated young man with a torn shirt, several days' growth of beard and a dazed and lunatic expression following the wretched accident. Around his neck he bore a poor pouch of cheap material from which various filthy objects had fallen: it seemed to me a leathern bag, a pair of old stockings and a few greasy papers, per haps the miserable fruit of a visit to some rubbish heap in search of something edible or useful for survival.
1 did not, however, have time to observe any better or to offer assistance to Atto or the stranger, for the uproar which I had first heard was growing louder and more violent.
'Catch him, catch him, by all the blunderbusses!' yelled the powerful voice which I had heard before.
1 heard a clamour of cries and curses coming from the building housing the catchpolls guarding the villa. The young man rose to his feet and began to run again, disappearing once more into the bushes.
Atto meanwhile was propping himself up and trying unsuccessfully to rise to his feet. I was coming to assist him and the bookbinder was starting humbly to gather up the papers in his basket, when a pair of catchpolls from the villa rushed shouting out into our midst and joined the pursuer. The latter, alas, collided again with poor Atto, who collapsed on the ground. The pursuer rolled over in his turn, by some miracle avoiding the lackeys, two nuns whom I often saw bringing small hand-made objects to offer Cardinal Spada, and a pair of dogs. What with the cries of the nuns and the barking of the dogs, the road was in utter turmoil.
I rushed to assist Abbot Melani, who lay groaning disconsolately.
'Aahh, first one madman, then the other… My arm, damn it.'
The right sleeve of Atto's jacket, which seemed to be soaked with some blackish liquid, was badly lacerated by what looked like a slash from a knife. I freed him from the garment. An ugly wound, from which the blood gushed freely, disfigured the Abbot's flaccid and diaphanous arm.
A pair of pious old maids, who dwelled in the great house, where they worked in the linen-room, had seen all that had happened and gave us some pieces of gauze with a little medicinal unguent which, they assured us, would soothe and bring sure healing to Atto's wound.
'My poor arm, it seems to be my destiny,' complained Atto as they bandaged his wound with gauze. 'Eleven years ago I fell into a ditch and injured my arm and shoulder badly; indeed, I came close to dying. Among other things, that accident prevented me from coming to Rome for the conclave after the death of Innocent XI.'
'One might almost say that conclaves are bad for your health,' I commented spontaneously, earning an ugly look from the Ab bot.
Meanwhile, a little crowd of curious onlookers, children and peasants from the neighbourhood, had gathered around us.
'Good heavens — those two!' muttered Melani. 'The first was too fast, the second, too heavy!'
'Zounds!' exclaimed the stentorian voice. 'How say you, heavy? I had almost caught him, the cerretano.'
The circle of people opened up suddenly, growing fearful upon hearing those rough and grave words.
The speaker was a colossus, three times my height, twice my girth and weighing perhaps four times more than I. I turned and stared at him fixedly. Fair he was, and of virile appearance, but an old wound, which had split one of his eyebrows, conferred upon him a melancholy expression, with which his rough and youthful manners contrasted sharply.
'In any case, and that I swear upon the points of all the halberds in Silesia, I had no intention of causing you any offence.' Thus spake the uncouth giant, stepping forward.
Without so much as a by-your-leave, he lifted Atto from the ground and effortlessly set him on his feet, as though he were a mere pine-needle. The huddle of bystanders pressed around us, greedy to know more, but was at once dispersed by the lackeys and valets from the villa, who had meanwhile arrived in large numbers. The bookbinder was busy carefully recovering all of Atto's papers, scattered here and there on either side of the gateway.
'You are a sergeant,' observed Atto, tidying himself and dust ing down his jacket, 'but whom were you following?'
'A cerretano, as I said: a canter, a ragamuffin, a slubberdeguilion, a money-sucking mountebank or whatever the deuce you want to call such rogues. Dammit, Sirrah, perhaps he meant to rob you.'
'Ah, a beggar,' said I, translating.
'What is your name?' asked Atto.
'Sfasciamonti.'
Despite his pain, Atto looked him up and down from head to toe.
'One who smashes mountains… Why, that's a fine name, and eminently well suited to you. Where do you work?' he inquired, not having seen whence Sfasciamonti came.
'Usually, near the Via del Panico, but since yesterday, here,' said he, indicating the Villa Spada.
He then explained that he was one of the sergeants paid by Cardinal Spada to ensure that the festivities should take place undisturbed. The bookbinder drew near, as one with pressing tidings.
'Excellency, I have found the arm which injured you,' said he, handing Atto a sort of shiny dagger with a squared-off handle.
Sfasciamonti, however, promptly seized the blade and pock eted it.
'One moment, Sir,' protested Atto. 'That is the knife that struck me.'
'Precisely. It is therefore corpus delicti and to be placed at the disposal of the Governor and the Bargello. I am here to supervise the security of the villa and I am only doing my duty.'
'Master Catchpoll, have you seen what happened to me? Thank heavens that wretch's dagger caressed my arm and not my back. If your colleagues catch him, I want him to pay for this too.'
'That I do promise and swear unto you, by Wallenstein's power derflask!' roared Sfasciamonti, raising a timorous murmur among the bystanders.
The wound was no light one, and the bleeding still by no means staunched. Two maidservants rushed up with more gauze and bandaged the arm so as to stop the flow. I had occasion to admire how stoically Abbot Melani bore pain: a quality of which I was as yet unaware. He even stayed behind in order to settle arrangements with the bookbinder, who had in the meantime gathered up all Atto's papers, upon which he was to confer the form and dignity of a volume. They rapidly agreed on the price and set an appointment for the morrow.
We moved towards the great house, where Atto intended to summon a physician or chirurgeon to examine the ugly wound.
'For the time being, it is not too painful; let us hope that it will not get worse. Heaven help me and my idea of giving an appointment to that bookbinder, but I cared too much about my little book.'
'Apropos, what was it that you had bound?'
'Oh, nothing of importance,' he replied, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips.
We had returned to the house without exchanging another word. The affected carelessness with which Abbot Melani had replied (or rather, failed to reply) to my question, had left me in some perplexity. Those one thousand two hundred scudi compelled me to share the fate of the Abbot for a period of several days, in order to keep a record of his sojourn at the Villa Spada. Yet it still was not given to me to know what precisely awaited me.
I requested the Abbot's permission to take my leave, on the pretext of a number of most urgent duties which had accumulated since his arrival. In actual fact, I did not have much to do on that day. I was not a regular servant of the household and, moreover, preparations for the festivities were almost complete. I did, however, desire a little solitude in which to reflect upon the latest occurrences. Instead, the Abbot begged me to attend him until the arrival of the chirurgeon.