whom he was even so good as to marry, was betraying state secrets to churchmen in order to bring them to govern the land. Once more, the place we were in seemed squalid and hostile and I wanted to return to the magnificent rooms below. Likewise, perhaps, the King of France may have missed la Montespan's beautiful face when he found that his colourless wife was in reality no less poisonous than she had been.
'Just think of it,' continued Atto, 'the King had already had quite enough of Cardinal Mazarin. The blood went to his head. How dare this nondescript little woman whom he had amused himself imposing upon the court as his wife, conspire behind his back and reveal to that handful of zealots the most secret affairs of state; she whom the King had never even permitted to eat at his table! She who to this day occupies a mistress's apartments in the Palace of Versailles. She who, if she may be addressed as 'Your Majesty' in private, must in public be content with taking last place.'
'And why did he not dismiss her, as he did with Madame de Montespan?'
'He would have had to have her put on trial. The accusation in the air was one of political conspiracy. But that would have meant exposing to ridicule he who had insisted on flouting all good sense by marrying her.'
What did the King then do before the court, which awaited his reaction with bated breath? He surprised everyone by pretending that nothing had happened; instead of exiling the traitress, he moved his daily meetings with ministers… to her bedchamber!
King and ministers, seated, faced each other. Behind the latter sat Madame de Maintenon, crouching in the shadows of her 'niche', the padded wooden cabin she had had built for her, hypochondriac that she had always been, to shelter from draughts. Every now and then, the King would even ask her opinion. But this was only for show. The proof of that is that she had perforce to answer in the most general terms. And there would be trouble if she spoke without having been asked explicitly for her opinion by the Sovereign. She would at once be confronted with her spouse's most extreme fury.'His Majesty is not prepared to admit before the court that he allowed himself to be hoodwinked by that counterfeit saint, so he has chosen to impose her even more than before,' the Abbot concluded.
Behind an old stove, we found an improvised palliasse, with next to it a box of fresh figs, some of which were still intact, a canvas bag with a few slices of bread and another bigger one full of cheeses. Next to that, stood a half-empty bottle of red wine, with a fine goblet of historiated blue glass. A fat, half-consumed candle completed the refuge.
'So our Flying Dutchman sleeps here,' observed Atto scornfully. 'That is why he's always in our way. Look at how much cheese he eats. Too much, like all Dutchmen. Can one be surprised that he rants so much after that?'
Hunger, however, took the upper hand. The Abbot indolently reached out for a fine piece of caciocavallo, placed it on a slice of bread and added half a fig (for nothing is more pleasant than sweet fruit, offsetting the saltiness of the cheese) and greedily bit into it. I too felt the pangs of hunger, so I took the same ingredients and imitated him, sharing with him both wine and glass. But while I had soon devoured that meagre dinner, 1 saw Atto chewing more and more unwillingly until, in the end, he threw away the cheese and contented himself with the bread and fig.
'I cannot bear cheese any more. In France, too, they serve it up with everything. I have come to detest it.'
While I was finishing my picnic, Melani rummaged under the palliasse, drawing out a comb and ajar of salted sardines.
'Stuff bought from street vendors,' observed Atto without disguising a certain disdain for Albicastro's frugal habits.
At long last we moved on. At the northern end of this floor, we found a great walnut table, with an enormous drawer set in it which, like the previous one, looked somewhat suspicious to us.
''Tis truly massive,' observed Atto. 'There might be something inside it.'
The Abbot tried with the knife.
'It is not locked, only jammed,' said he. We then tried to get it out with our bare hands, which cost us much time and trouble.
'What with poisons, conspiracies and betrayals,' I commented, 'the gallery of the Most Christian King's wives and mistresses really does him scant honour.'
'Despite that, even to this day, I have to put up with hearing the court speak with disdain and scorn of my Maria,' Atto replied hotly, as he puffed and panted, trying to extract the drawer from the table by brute force. 'They say that the shipwreck of her life has unmasked her for the cold, ambitious, scheming and calculating woman they suspected her of being all along. The most indulgent among them maintain that she has proved less intelligent than her brilliant conversation let one suppose. 'She had wit,' they laugh, 'but no discernment. Ardent and impulsive, her angry outbursts drew one to her for a while, but ended up provoking disgust.' All this 1 have had to hear from those ferocious slandering tongues. Their spite for Maria has never died down. Not even now, after fifty years and many more than fifty lovers in the King's bed.'
'How do you explain that?'
'Because Maria was a foreigner, and what was more, Italian, like Mazarin. And the French had had enough of the Italians imported en masse by the Cardinal. Add to that the fact that his niece made the Sovereign fall for her!'
'But as you were saying, the King has had so many lovers since then! Is it possible that the court should still remember the Connestabilessa to this day?' I insisted, in the hope of gleaning some hint of the current secret contacts between the King and Maria Mancini.
'And how could one forget her? To take just one example: only once did Queen Maria Teresa and Madame de Montespan join in alliance. This was about thirty years ago, and the alliance was against Maria Mancini. Maria, fleeing her husband, asked for sanctuary in Paris. The King, however, was not at court. He had gone off to war with Holland and, according to custom, had entrusted the regency to Maria Teresa. Maria's request thus fell into the hands of the Queen, who turned it down. But it wasAthenai's who convinced her to do so. She had understood everything: Maria had not only been the King's first love, but his last; some flame might still have remained alight.'
Meanwhile, we had completed our (somewhat violent) examination of the walnut table. In our attempt to force its more intimate parts, we had grazed our hands and wrists. Inside, as we found in the end, nothing was hidden.
'By the time that news of Maria's request reached the King's ears,' continued my companion, bandaging his scratches with a handkerchief, 'it was already too late to revoke Maria Teresa's veto.
'But Louis did not decide to return Maria to her husband, although the latter was claiming her. He instructed Colbert to place her in a convent far from Paris and assigned her a pension. Maria, who knew nothing of the manoeuvres of Maria Teresa and Athenai's, exclaimed: 'I have heard of money being given to women to see them, but never not to see them!''
'But you said all this happened thirty years ago,' said I, egging him on.
'Then listen,' countered Atto, irritated by my caution in the face of his passionate assertions, 'I know for certain that Madame de Maintenon has for some time been trying to persuade the King officially to invite Maria to Paris. Now, why do you think she should do that, she who is so jealous?'
'I would not know,' I replied, with feigned hesitation.
'She is doing this because he is more and more frequently muttering half-phrases, or half-sighs, calling for Maria, now that at sixty-two years of age he is wearied and disillusioned and drawing up the balance sheet of his life. Maria is the same age as he. If the King should see her now, or so la Maintenon hopes, perhaps his angelic memory of her will be shattered. Only, she has not taken account of Maria's timeless fascination,' Atto exclaimed pompously, despite the fact that he could know little of Maria's physical appearance, since he too had not seen her for thirty years.
'Presumably Madame de Maintenon has never seen her?' On the contrary, they knew one another and were friends. Maria even brought her with her to watch from a balcony the triumphal entry of the King and Maria Teresa into Paris, immediately after their wedding. But one must live shoulder to shoulder with Maria in order to understand that not a thousand years in time or a thousand leagues in space could ever make her memory pale,' said the Abbot, all in one breath.
'Such an irony of fate: the first woman and the last in His Majesty's life, both together on the same balcony,' I
