commented. 'But Signor Atto, I must insist. Is it possible that the King's feelings should have remained unchanged for thirty years? After all, he never saw her again.' This I added in the hope that he might at last give something away.
He hesitated for a moment, looking pensive.
'Nor have I seen her for thirty years,' he answered quietly.
'Now at last she is coming,' I encouraged him.
'Yes, so it seems.'
The minutes that followed passed in total silence. Atto was musing.
'I shall go outside again to catch a breath of air,' said the Abbot all of a sudden. 'I cannot take all this dust any longer. You, do whatever you feel like; we shall meet here in twenty minutes.'
I looked at him questioningly.
'Of course, you have no watch,' he remembered. 'Come, let us go downstairs.'
We stopped on the second floor where Melani began to open the drawers of a tallboy.
'I saw a carriage clock somewhere around here. Ah, there we are.'
He placed it on the edge of a nearby desk and began to wind it up. Then he set the time and handed it to me.
'There, this way you can make no mistake. I shall see you later.'
Atto was exhausted. We had spent hours rummaging. But the true reason for his going out was the rush of memories which had swelled his chest. He now needed a little solitude in which to calm his emotions. Thus it was that I soon found myself in complete silence, holding the clock in my hand like a lantern.
I sat down on an old cordovan leather stool and set to thinking once again about Abbot Melani's long narration. Three were the Sun King's women of whom he had spoken to me, and three the storeys of the Vessel which we had inspected. This might have seemed too bold a leap of fantasy, but as I had already sensed, the three floors of the Vessel were just like the three women: the gardens on the ground floor, the secret garden and the little grotto, airy and graceful as la Valliere; on the first floor, the decep- tiveness and sophistication of the splendid gallery of mirrors and the magnificent, breathtaking Aurora of Pietro da Cortona were like la Montespan, 'the most beautiful woman in the kingdom', the 'reigning mistress', while, next to the Aurora, the fresco of Midday with the fall of Phaeton from the Sun's chariot seemed to be a warning against the arrogance of Louis XIV who, at the time of Madame de Montespan was at the very height of his reign. Finally, the third floor was as bare and ordinary as the face of Madame de Maintenon, as sad as the King's life beside her, as empty as the Sovereign's old age.
By now, I knew everything, or almost, about the Most Christian King's intimate life, with the exception of what mattered most to me: his current relations with the Connestabilessa and the purpose of the love mission which the King (as I had by now guessed) had confided to Atto. It was just then that I discovered I was not alone.
Does the day the night surpass?
And can a human make an ass?
Did Socrates or Plato run?
Such learning's in our schools begun.
He is a fool who doesn't falter
At trying what he cannot alter.
I turned sharply: the voice which had recited those verses was Albicastro's and he stood on the threshold with his violin hanging from one hand.
'Are you calling me mad too, now?' I asked him, surprised by that speech. 'Have I perhaps offended you in some way?' Far from it, son, far from it. I was only joking. On the contrary, I wanted to pay you a compliment. Does not Christ thank God for having hidden from the wise the mystery of beatitude, manifesting it rather to the little children, that is, to the fools. For in Greek, nepiois means both little child and fool and is the opposite of sofois, or sage.'
'Perhaps, Sir, my small stature makes me like a little boy, but you should know that you and I are about the same age,' said I with a certain embarrassment. 'You should also know that you have not offended me in this.'
'I thank you, son,' insisted Albicastro, nonchalantly installing himself on a porphyry console, 'but I was referring to your spirit, which I find to be still as pure as a child's. Or a fool's, if you prefer,' he added with a little laugh.
'In that case, I'd be in the best of company. Was not Saint Francis called 'God's buffoon'?' I replied, by now completely distracted from my previous meditations.
'Even better, as the apostle said: 'Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?' and 'God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.''
'What should one then do, become mad?'
'No, not become it, just simulate it.'
'I do not understand you.'
'In the first place, everyone is agreed on the well-known proverb: 'Where reality is missing, the best thing is simulation.' That is precisely why our children are taught early on the verse: 'To simulate folly at the right time is the highest wisdom.''
'Simulation does not seem to me to be a great virtue.'
'It is, however, when used to save oneself from cunning schemers. And pretending to be mad is a sign of the greatest wisdom, as well the young Telemachus, Ulysses' son, knew. He was the author of his father's triumph, and do you know how? He simulated madness at the right moment.'
I did not understand what he meant, but just then something else was on my mind.
'Signor Albicastro,' I broke in, 'please be so kind as to answer my question: why do you always speak of folly?' To this, the Dutch musician's sole response was to shoulder his violin and start playing his folia.
'Said Saint Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians,' he recited slowly, as he produced the first slow sounds with his bow. ''Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.' And do you know why? Because, through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, the Lord warned: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will set at nought.''
I was intrigued and fascinated by this good-humoured and bizarre disputation on the topic of folly, into which the Dutchman seemed to be taking pleasure in dragging me, while in the background he continued to play the notes of the folia. Perhaps Atto was right: he ate too much cheese.
'So, in your opinion, true wisdom is masked under the semblance of folly. And why ever is that?' I asked, standing up and approaching him.
'As Sertorius demonstrates so well, it is impossible in one go to tear out a horse's tail, but one can perfectly well attain that aim by pulling out the hairs of his tail one by one,' Albicastro candidly answered, giving three light touches of his bow to the strings of his violin, as though to reproduce the sound of horsehairs pulled out one by one.
I could not restrain myself from laughing at that funny idea.
'If during a play someone were to tear off an actor's mask to reveal his true face, would he not perhaps spoil the whole show?' the violinist went on to explain, 'and would he not deserve to be driven from the theatre with brickbats? To raise the veil on that deception means to ruin the spectacle. Everything on this earth is a masquerade, my boy, but God has determined that the comedy be played in this manner.'
'But why?' I insisted, while in my soul there awakened a sudden and impatient thirst for knowledge.'Just imagine: if some sage, fallen from heaven, were suddenly to start clamouring that, for example, one of the many whom the world adores as lord and master is in truth no such thing and that he's not even a man, because he's nothing more than a piece of living flesh in thrall to the basest passions, like a beast; or worse still, he is nothing but one of the vilest slaves, because he spontaneously serves other infamous lords and masters above him, whom we down here cannot even imagine; tell me, what else would he obtain thereby, save to become odious to all peoples and, what is more, ignored and unheard? There is nothing more damaging, for oneself or for others, than untimely wisdom.'
Having said which, Albicastro descended from the porphyry console and, whirling to the notes of his folia, moved towards the spiral staircase.
And well we can with Terence state: Who spawns the truth gives birth to hate.
After declaiming those verses which I guessed must come from his favourite poem which he was forever
