Yet, what kind of love can there be between two old persons who have not seen one another for forty years? The answer was to be found in a letter from Atto to Maria, which I recalled at that moment:
Silvio was proud, 'tis true, but he venerates the gods, and was one day vanquished by your Cupid. Since then he has ever bowed down before you, calling you his.
Altho' his you were not.
A love made up of memories and lost opportunities, such was the King's for Maria Mancini.
And I who had believed that Atto was referring there to his wretched castrato's estate! No, Atto was referring to the unbroken chastity of that love, and to how present it still was in the old Sovereign's soul.
I then thought of all the passages in Maria's letters in which she wrote addressing Silvio, and I understood at last the meaning of the warnings and reproaches which she borrowed from The Faithful Shepherd.
O, Silvio, Silvio! who in thine early years hast found the fates propitious, I tell thee, too early wit has ignorance for fruit.
These words, which were impenetrable when I believed them to be addressed to Abbot Melani, now calmly revealed their meaning to me. The Most Christian King had indeed ascended to the throne very young; thus, his destiny had matured 'when still unripe'. But he who comes to power too early must, 'on attaining maturity, surely reap the fruit of ignorance', in other words remain arrogant throughout his whole life. And now that the burning question was that of the Spanish succession, Maria was warning Louis XIV to act wisely.
In the same way, was Maria Mancini not perhaps accusing the Sovereign of being somehow himself responsible, through his own arrogant conduct of both life and government, for the series of disasters which had befallen France's friends in Spain?
Vain boy, if you imagine this mishap
By chance befell, you widely are deceived.
These accidents so monstrous and so strange
Befall us mortals by divine permission.
Don't you reflect the Gods by you were slighted,
By this your haughty pride and high disdain
Of love and ev 'rything the world deems human.
They cannot abhor, although it be in virtue.
Now are you mute, who were but now so haughty!
Very soon, the game had become perfectly clear to me. The Connestabilessa, writing with consummate skill, spoke to Atto of Lidio in the third person, sending messages and replies through the Abbot; and then addressed Atto, calling him Silvio, the message really being for the King's eyes. Two identities, to confound unwelcome readers and thus to protect the writers from any spies. With me, the trick had worked perfectly. Never could I have discovered the truth, had it not been, first, for Albicastro, then, the Vessel, both of which had showed me the way that led to Lidio. The Flying Dutchman and his Phantom Vessel, as Melani called them… Yes, indeed, 1 observed, turning The Faithful Shepherd over and over in my hands. All these illuminations had come to me through the Vessel. First, there was the phrase of Albicastro, the eccentric occupant of the villa, which with singular clairvoyance compared Croesus to the King of France. That explained why Atto had given such a start and turned rapidly on his heels without replying to the Dutch musician; he himself had been perturbed by that arcane oracle. Then came the book of Herodotus, followed by that of the Gavaliere Guarini, thanks to which my ideas were made completely clear. Benedetti's mysterious villa had once again proved its fathomless faculties.
Suddenly, I smiled to myself: it was, when one came to think of it, most probable that the villa's one-time owner, Abbot Elpidio Benedetti, in his capacity as an agent of Cardinal Mazarin in Rome, had collected in his villa books, pictures, works of art and everything that a fashionable Francophile could not fail to have or know.
One thing was by now certain: neither the conclave nor the Spanish succession was the matter or purpose of the meeting planned between Atto and Maria, but love. Political manoeuvres were the basis, not the heart of their epistolary conversations. They were just a cover, and might arouse the interest of those keen on intrigue, but no more.
That was why Atto became so heated when, in our incursions to the Vessel, he told me the old story of that broken royal romance. For him it was something still alive, and one might even posit that the apparitions and phantasms of the past which we had witnessed at the Vessel were none other than the spiritual emanations of that long-distant (yet still potent) passion between the Connestabilessa and the aging Sovereign.
This, in all probability, was the true motive behind Melani's presence at the Villa Spada during that time: he and the Connestabilessa were taking advantage of the invitation extended to both to attend the Spada wedding to meet once more. All of this was, I thought, far removed from the conclave or the Spanish succession.
Maria, however, was late arriving. She had already missed the day of the ceremony. Whatever could be keeping her? Perhaps she really was suffering from a persistent fever, as she declared in her letters; or perhaps, I came to imagine, she was held back by a natural reluctance to engage in amorous skirmish, leading her to play hard to get, almost as though Atto himself were her former love, rather than his ambassador.
I heard Abbot Melani's footsteps. He had woken up and was coming up to see what I had done. I looked again at The Faithful Shepherd. The book was really tiny, I thought. It would be child's play to slip it into my pocket and take it with me without the Abbot seeing. I would return it later. Now, it was useful to me. I would read Maria's letters in the light of those verses.
'At long last! May one know what you are up to?' he exclaimed, seeing me at the top of the stairs.
'As you had gone to sleep, I thought I'd let you rest awhile.'
'And that was wrong of you, for without your help I have been able to get practically nothing done,' retorted Atto, trying to hide his embarrassment.
It was an elegant way of confessing that, as soon as I had left him alone, he had dozed off.
'Now it will be enough to feel our way,' the Abbot continued. 'I mean to explore the Vessel systematically, from top to bottom. The dish must be somewhere here. We have already searched the second floor more than enough. We shall therefore begin with the ground floor, then we shall go up to the first floor and, lastly, to the third floor, where the servants' quarters are.'
As he descended the spiral staircase in front of me, I scrutinised from behind his bent and age-worn figure, still, however, made vibrant by the call to action. Looking at him, I was moved by the thought of the nature of his mission. For once, Melani had surprised me, revealing sentiments and ideas nobler than those I had ascribed to him, rather than the base ones which had, alas, all too often driven him in the past.
It was thus, with my soul overflowing with emotion, that I entered the other parts of the villa, to help Atto in his search for Capitor's three gifts, and above all, the dish.
We inspected the great hall on the ground floor: the shelves, the dressers, the drawers. Every single object (cutlery, glasses, ornaments) was where we had found it on our first visit. It was in that room that were exhibited, as we knew, a number of portraits of lovely and noble ladies of France (including the portrait of Maria which I had admired on our first tour of the premises). As I was rising after pointlessly stirring up the dust under a divan, I found myself face to face with one such portrait to which I had not previously accorded any attention.
'Madame de Montespan,' announced Melani as he too approached that face of extraordinary, disturbing beauty. 'Onetime favourite of the King of France. A relationship which lasted ten years and produced seven children; almost a second Queen.'
I had just enough time to admire the abundant flesh of her bosom, the blue eyes fired with the will to elicit desire, the lips ready for kisses, the well-rounded arms. Atto had already passed to the next portrait.
'Louise de la Valliere,' he announced. 'His Majesty's first official adultery, as I have already told you,' he added, pointing to that face of singular purity, crowned by thick silvery blonde tresses, a veritable synthesis of finesse, elegance and ethereal refinement, so much so that she seemed to have been formed by the Lord to manifest to humanity the blessed triad of grace, modesty and tenderness and almost magically, through her sea- coloured eyes, to win hearts and fidelity.
'How different they are!' I exclaimed. 'This one is so pure, and the other so… how can I put it?'
'Turbid and sinful? Come straight out with it: that la Montespan was no angel one can see at a glance,' laughed the Abbot, 'but almost importantly, they are both far removed from the frank and impetuous temperament which radiated from Maria's person. These are two Frenchwomen, even if the one's the opposite of the other. Maria is Italian,' concluded Atto, emphasising the last words, while his eyes lit up with renewed ardour at the thought of
