Suddenly, I found myself facing the delightful image, woven into a tapestry, of a lovely nymph dressed in a wolf's skin, who had been wounded in her flank by the arrow of a young hunter. The nymph's gentle appearance, from her ivory complexion to her soft ebony curls, were in sharp contrast to the blood that gushed from her side and the desperation written on the young man's face. The floral frame punctuated with scrolls and medallions in relief completed the tapestry with exquisite elegance.
Then I recognised it. This was one of the two Flemish tapestries before which Abbot Melani had stood, lost in ecstatic admiration, on our previous visit to the Vessel. Atto had explained to me that it was he himself who had persuaded Elpidio Benedetti to purchase it when the latter was visiting France some thirty years previously. What else had the Abbot said to me? This I pondered, while my thoughts began dancing in my head like Bacchantes moving in procession towards some exciting, yet unknown goal. Originally, there had been four tapestries — that, Melani had told me — but two of them he had made Benedetti present to Maria Mancini, because the scenes depicted in them were drawn from an amorous drama, The Faithful Shepherd, much appreciated by her and the young King (but this detail I had almost had to drag from him, so reticent had Atto become at that juncture). A drama of love…
Turning to Abbot Melani with an ingenuous smile, while I struggled to feign a bad bout of coughing, brought on by all that dust, I begged his leave to absent myself awhile from our search. Then, without even awaiting his permission, like some new Mercury flying on winged heels, I dashed up the stairs to the second floor and in a matter of seconds I was again visiting the four libraries, in one of which I had left the Histories of Herodotus.
Perched on a chair, my fingers almost scratching at the spines of the volumes, I scanned their titles, as though my eyes needed help from the sense of touch to confirm what they were reading.
At last I found it: tiny, no more than a booklet, some six inches high and less than half an inch thick. It was bound in black leather patterned with golden squares, its spine decorated with Florentine lilies. I
opened it: PASTOR FIDO,
I then placed my trust in the book-mark, of fine maroon satin, by now faded; opening at the place where it had lain since time immemorial, I read at random:
Happy Dorinda! Heav 'n has sent to thee That bliss you went in search to find.
I exulted. Dorinda: that was the name of the wounded nymph whom I had just seen in the tapestry. Abbot Melani had told me when we saw it for the first time. And Dorinda was also the name which the Connestabilessa had given herself in her last letter, in which she addressed Atto as Silvio.
1 had found what I was looking for. Now it only remained for me to seek the name Silvio. If, as I thought, he was one of the characters from The Faithful Shepherd, I had succeeded. So, with my breast trembling with emotion, I began to leaf through the pages of the little book, in search of a Silvio who might perhaps be a messenger of love between Dorinda and her beloved, just as Melani was perhaps the go-between linking the Connestabilessa and the Most Christian King.
Very soon, I found it:
Know you not Silvio, son to famed Montano?
That lovely boy! He's the delightful swain.
O prosp'rous youth…
This Silvio was, then, no go-between, as I had hoped, but a wealthy and beauteous youth. Apart from his wealth, he seemed hardly a portrait of Abbot Melani…
What I then read surpassed all my imagining:
O Silvio, Silvio! Why did nature give
Such flower of beauty, delicate and sweet,
In this thy Spring of life, to be so slighted?
It was a dialogue between Silvio and his old servant Linco, who reproves the youth for his hard-heartedness. I turned more pages:
O foolish boy, who fly to distant hills
For dang'rous game, when here at home you may
Pursue what's near, domestic and secure?
SILVIO:
Pray, in what forest ranges this wild creature?
LINCO:
The forest is yourself, and the wild creature Which dwells therein is your fierce disposition
Shall I not say thou hast a lion's heart
And that thy hardened breast is cased with steel?
No, it could not be Atto who hid behind the nickname Silvio. Rather, someone else came all too readily to mind when I read of that scornful, rich young shepherd:
Now, Silvio, look around, and take a view Of all this world; cdl that is fair and good Is the great work of love. The heav'ns, the earth, The sea are lovers too.
In short, all nature is in love but you. And shall you, Silvio, be the one exception, The only soul in heav 'n and earth and sea, A proof against this mighty force of nature?
I thought once more of all that Abbot Melani had told me: was not that series of reproofs perfectly suited to His Majesty the Most Christian King of France? Had not the Sovereign's heart turned to ice after his separation from Maria Mancini?
Thou art, my Silvio, rigidly severe To one who loves thee ev'n to adoration. What soul could think, beneath so sweet a face A heart so hard and cruel was concealed?
And, yet again:
O cruel Silvio! O most ruthful swain!
I turned to the frontispiece. I wanted before all else to read the foreword and the initial argumentum or resume of the drama, so as to discover what part was played in it by the nymph Dorinda who provided the Connestabilessa with her nom de plume. Thus I learned that Silvio was betrothed to Amaryllis, but did not love her. He loved no one. He wanted only to go hunting in the forest. Then, however, he accidentally wounded in the side a nymph who was in love with him — Dorinda, to be precise — having mistaken her for a wild beast because she wore a wolf's skin. At that point, Silvio fell in love with her, broke his bow and arrows, cured the wound and the couple married.
Was the tale not perhaps very like that of the young King of France, betrothed to the Spanish Infanta but in love with Maria Mancini? Only the denouement of their love story, as well I knew from Atto, was very different from that of The Faithful Shepherd, for which they themselves so yearned.
Time was growing short. Atto would soon be coming up to look for me. I entered the spiral staircase. There, I heard a strange buzzing. Cautiously descending a few steps, I peeped out to glance at Abbot Melani. Tired, Atto had slumped into an armchair to await my return, and had gone to sleep.
I sat down on a step and drew my conclusions: not only the name of Lidio but also that of Silvio were screens concealing the Most Christian King. Thus, the Connestabilessa was not only what Solon had been for Croesus; she still remained Dorinda, Silvio's lover…
Many things in Atto's and Maria's letters had at last become clear to me. What lay hidden in those letters was not state espionage, not obscure political manoeuvring, not the turbid depths of international diplomacy, as I had suspected all that time when I so ignobly spied on Atto and Maria. No, those letters concealed an even greater secret, an unimaginable, yet purer one: Louis and Maria were still writing to one another forty years after their last farewell.
At last I understood why Atto spoke to me with such confidence of the French Sovereign's sentiments for the Connestabilessa and how his suffering at the loss of his beloved had hardened his heart. I understood, too, why he told of these things as though they were alive and kicking today; he was constantly dealing with the most confidential first-hand details of the undying love between the couple! That was why Atto had come to Rome: to meet Maria Mancini, after an absence of thirty years, and to bring who knows what embassy of love on behalf of the Most Christian King. I would have given anything to know at that moment what the King was sending through Abbot Melani. Whatever could necessitate a meeting en tete a tete. A signed letter from the King? A pledge of love?
I could also understand why Abbot Melani had hesitated so much when answering my questions the first time we had seen those tapestries at the Vessel. The Faithful Shepherd had not only been the favourite reading of the two old lovers: it still was. It was their secret code. And Atto acted as their go-between, now as then.
