Suddenly, the three carriages moved off and turned to the right. As they drew away, we could clearly see that they were empty. Their passengers (Spada, Spinola and Albani) had descended at the Vessel, where, presumably, their lackeys would later be returning to collect them.
'Take courage, my boy, perhaps this time we're in luck: the trio are 'on board',' commented Melani.
So the three cardinals had returned to meet at Benedetti's villa. The time before, we had attempted to trace them, but in vain. Now we had found them by chance: perhaps it would go better this time.
Seeing that we had almost arrived at our destination, Atto rapidly completed his tale.
'Olimpia was ruined by her own jealous fury. She ended up by commissioning anathemas and poisons for the lovers of the Most Christian King and love potions for Louis himself. All these intrigues came to light with the Affair of the Poisons, which cost her an arrest warrant and compelled her to flee in all haste to Brussels. To this day, she still hops from place to place throughout Europe, a prey to an irreducible hatred for France, striving by all the means in her power to harm the reign of the Most Christian King. She is suspected, among other things, of having poisoned her husband, and even Madame Henriette and her daughter.
'Madame Henriette and her daughter?' I repeated hesitantly.
'For heaven's sake, here we go again, must I always repeat everything to you? Henriette, I have just told you, was the King's sister-in-law; what is more, we have seen her portrait on the ground floor here. She was the mother of Marie-Louise of Orleans, the first wife of King Charles II of Spain. But that is another story,' said the Abbot, cutting short his account. Curiously, he was always in a hurry to terminate our conversation whenever it touched in some way on the present state of Spain.
Now at last I had discovered the identity of the mysterious Countess of S.: the Countess of Soissons was a sister of Maria Mancini. The Connestabilessa had in fact hinted at the suspicions of poisoning hanging over her head after the death of the Queen of Spain, Marie-Louise of Orleans. Her discretion in speaking of her was due, not to any involvement on Olimpia's part in the present state of affairs, but to the fact that she was her own sister. That was why Maria had, when referring to her, expressed such pain at her evildoing. In other words, I had made another fine blunder, the second of the day, after that with the Master Florist: the mysterious Countess of S. was in fact far from mysterious, nor had she anything to do with the dangers which seemed now to hang over Abbot Melani's head.
As Atto was ending his narration, although I was concerned not to show any sign of it, I once again became a prey to anger. For days and days now, I had been spying on the correspondence between Atto and the Connestabilessa concerning the Spanish succession, yet had found out absolutely nothing. What was more, Melani still had not uttered so much as a word on the matter of Spain, nor did he seem to have any intention of ever doing so. All his attention seemed to be taken up with investigating the meetings between my master, Cardinal Spada, Cardinal Albani and Cardinal Spinola di San Cesareo, with a view to the forthcoming conclave. And these meetings were taking place at the Vessel, or so it seemed, for, when all was said and done, despite our repeated visits to that strange villa towards which we were now directing our footsteps, we had never found anything to confirm that. The Vessel, however, with its disquieting and inexplicable apparitions, had led the Abbot to follow the thread of distant memories: Maria Mancini, the youthful King of France, even Superintendent Fouquet, all leading up to Capitor, Don John the Bastard's madwoman (and here we were, back in Spain) who forty years ago gave Mazarin three presents, among them the dish which she called Tetrachion.
The Tetrachion. As though lost in a circular labyrinth, here I was, again thinking of it. The chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy, on whose lips this obscure name had surprisingly appeared, had been skilfully interrogated by Cloridia to help me cast light upon a whole series of intrigues: the stab wound to Abbot Melani's arm, the death of Haver the bookbinder and the exchange of letters between Atto and Maria Mancini on the Spanish succession, in which my master Cardinal Fabrizio was, moreover, also mentioned. The letters reported that the Cardinal Secretary of State Fabrizio Spada had visited the Spanish Ambassador in connection with the King of Spain's request to Pope Innocent XII for assistance and, given the Pontiff's poor state of health, Spada was personally looking after policy in his place.
And here we were back at the start: the Spanish succession, in which the Tetrachion, an indefinable, faceless and formless entity, was said to be the legitimate heir.
Ever since the Abbot and I had set forth together on this adventure, I had kept returning again and again to the same considerations, yet without ever getting anywhere. Everything seemed to be connected — but how? Perhaps the solution was there, close at hand, yet I could not get at it. That tangle of clues was rather like the folia, a circular motif, pervasive yet intangible, a sort of sea serpent, at once evasive and insinuating, which in the end holds the innocent listener in its hybrid embrace, immobilising him in its coils.
The folia, the Abbot and I were crossing the threshold of the villa and already that music was enveloping us in the Lethe of its warm, spicy embrace.
Once again, we found Albicastro perched on his cornice, drawing from the magic quiver of his violin the scintillating sounds of the folia.
'Does he always have to be in the way?' muttered Atto. 'He has no fear of making himself ridiculous!'
Albicastro left off playing and looked at us. I started, fearing that the musician had overheard the Abbot's unflattering remark, despite the fact that he had uttered it under his breath.
'Human affairs, like the Sileni of Alcibiades, always have two faces, each the opposite of the other. Did you know that, Signor Abbot Melani?' the Dutchman began enigmatically. 'Like those ridiculous and grotesque statuettes which contained divine images, what seems from the outside to be death, when examined from within, proves to be life; and vice versa, what seemed alive, is dead.'
The musician had, alas, heard Atto's acid words.
'In human affairs, what seems beautiful turns out to be deformed, what seems rich, poor, what seems infamous, glorious; the learned man may prove ignorant, the strong weak, the generous ignoble, the joyful sad; prosperity may reveal itself to be adversity, friendship hate, the enjoyable harmful. All in all, when you open up the Silenus, you find everything suddenly transformed into its opposite.'
'Do you mean that what to me seems ridiculous, is perhaps divine?' said Melani teasingly.
'I am taken aback, Signor Abbot, that you, who come from France, should have difficulty in grasping my meaning. Yet you have the perfect example before your eyes. Who among all you Frenchmen would ever say that your king is not rich and master of all that surrounds him? But if he's in thrall to many vices, is he not perhaps equal to the most ignoble of slaves? And above all, if his heart is devoid of the soul's wealth and he dies without having been able to satisfy it, should he not be called most poor? You doubtless know what Solon said to Croesus, King of Lydia: 'The richest man is no happier than he who lives for the day, unless, having enjoyed a life in the midst of great wealth, he has the fortune to end it well.'
Upon hearing these last words, Melani gave a start and walked off disdainfully, without deigning so much as to salute the Dutchman.
As I followed him, I too grew pensive. Croesus, King of Lydia: the name of that famous monarch of ancient Greece reminded me of something. The pallor I found on Atto's face when I cast a sidelong glance at him, walking tense and silent beside me, made me suspect that the musician had touched a tender place on his heartstrings. I strove for some resonance from another string, that of memory. Where had I heard the story of the sage Solon and the Lydian Croesus? I strove in vain. So I said to myself that, where memory would not reach, reasoning could. Albicastro had compared Croesus to the Most Christian King…
It took only a few seconds, then, for that name to come to mind: Lidio, which kept cropping up so enigmatically in Atto's correspondence with the Connestabilessa. Croesus was King of Lydia — another 'Lidio'. That mysterious personage was sending Maria messages through Atto, and through the same channel, she was replying to him. What was the Connestabilessa conveying to him? 'In every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin.' And, yet again: 'With respect to that whereon you question me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that you have closed your life happily.' Thinking about this, it all sounded as though these were quotations from some ancient book. What was more, did not these phrases resemble what Solon told Croesus, as quoted by Albicastro? I promised myself to seek out the episode between Croesus and Solon as soon as I possibly could in the library of Villa Spada.
I joined Atto and we looked all around us. Of the three cardinals, there was no trace.
'No, they are not here. Otherwise, we'd hear some sound, or at least some secretary would emerge.'
It was as though the trio had vanished into nothingness.
'There's something wrong here,' said Atto, pensively pinching the dimple on his chin. 'Let us get a move on.
