That triple abstinence had in fact cost him no little trouble, since in the Apostolic Vatican Library or that of the Jesuits, as well as in the libraries of cardinals' families, Buvat would have had far less difficulty in finding the manuscripts which he was looking for. Fortunately, showing his accreditation as a scribe at the Royal Library in Paris, he had at once been well received at the other great libraries which he had visited. He had been able to touch and even to turn the pages of a Greek codex eight centuries old containing the famous Commentary on the Dream of Nebuchadnezzar composed by Saint Hippolytus, Bishop of Oporto; then he had for the first time been able to consult the famous Antiquities of Pirro Ligorio in eighteen volumes; and also, the works of sacred and profane erudition of the Cavaliere Giacovacci and a Latin codex with the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon emended from the original. His palms had then touched with trembling the personal library of Saint Philip Neri at the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, in which are to be found the Life of Saint Erasmus, Martyr written by Giovanni Soddiacono, a monk at Monte Cassino, who subsequently became pope under the name of Gelasius II (of which, Buvat stressed, the eighteenth volume contains, as is well known, the ancient Collation of Cresconio), a most important codex of the Venerable Bede on the Lunar Circle and the Six Ages of the World and the collections of Achille Stazio Portoghese, Giacomo Volponi da Adria and Vincenzo Bandalocchi, not to mention the famous repertories of the lawyer Ercole Ronconi.
But the most moving visit had been that to the library of the College of the Propaganda Fidei, famed for its printing press where, with magnanimous and providential zeal, and for the benefit of all nations, books are printed in no fewer than twenty-two languages. A special glory of this library, recounted Abbot Melani's secretary, is the most accurate set of indexes of the books in its possession, including the most unusual books printed in foreign nations, listed by languages, varieties of customs, strange religious usages and habits; writings in the most exotic characters, emblems, ciphers, hieroglyphics, colours; and those with mysterious lines traced on elephant's leather, pork rind, fish membranes and dragon's skin.
'Enough, Buvat, enough, damn you!' cursed Atto, beating his fist on his knee. 'What do I care about books printed on fish skin? How is it that, whenever you have to do with books or manuscripts, you always allow yourself to be distracted?'
Silence descended upon our trio. Humiliated, Buvat said nothing. I was impressed by the number of libraries which the French scribe had visited; within a short space of time, he had been through a great part of the bibliographic resources of the city — admittedly situated a short distance from one another — which were universally known to be immense, thanks to the accumulation over the centuries of books both printed and manuscript by dozens of popes and cardinals. Clearly, only a boundless passion for letters and scripture could have inspired so extensive and detailed a search. What a pity, then, that Atto's secretary found it so difficult to pass from analysis to synthesis.'Buvat, I sent you out to search through books because in this city, everyone talks about certain things yet no one knows what they are talking about. Report to me only on what I ordered you to investigate: the cerretani,' the Abbot requested. 'So, what have you to tell me about their secret language?'
'It is very difficult,' answered Buvat, this time in a distinctly less enthusiastic tone of voice. 'The catchpolls can, it is true, learn a few rudiments, but only regular daily practice can enable one to understand correctly what it is that they mutter to one another. It is an ancient language but, from time to time, when they realise that it is no longer impenetrable, they renovate it a little, with minor changes, just the minimum necessary to make it completely incomprehensible once more. Rigid cerretano tradition requires that their king, or Maggiorengo Generale, and only he, may dictate the new rules. He writes them with his own hand (for which reason he cannot be illiterate) and the script is read at a general meeting with representatives of all the sects, who then arrange to spread the new codex far and wide. Thus, for centuries, only they have spoken their language, nor can anyone inform against them, not even when they steal the military secrets of the realm and pass them to an enemy.'
'Espionage!' snarled Atto. 'There, I knew it! That accursed Lamberg!'
'But how do they obtain secrets?' I asked.
'First of all, they always pass unobserved. No one pays any attention to an old, seemingly half-witted, beggar slumped by the roadside,' said Buvat, 'and yet he always sleeps with one eye open, observes when you enter and leave the house, sees who's with you, listens to your conversations from under the window and, if the opportunity presents itself, steals things from under your nose. What's more, there are so, so many of them, and word gets around very fast among them. Supposing one sees something, ten will know of it at once, then a hundred. No one can tell them from one another, for they all look the same, ugly and dirty, and above all no one can understand a word of what they say when they talk. Their sects…'
'Hold on: did you look in that book which I told you of?' Yes, Signor Abbot. As I thought, Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools contains a chapter on German canters. They too have a secret language and are in close contact with the Italian cerretani. So much so that among Italian vagabonds there are groups known as lanzi, lancresine or lanchiesine, probably because those names come from the German landreisig, meaning stray and homeless. What's more, every group of.. '
'Ah, so they're in close contact. Good, excellent; go on.'
'Yes. The Ship of Fools is an excellent historical source for the study of canters and cerretani and their customs, 'tis perhaps even the first such book since it was published in Basel for the Carnival of 1494, while the so-called Liber vagatorum, which is regarded as the oldest surviving document on canters, was already circulating at the end of the fifteenth century but was printed only in 1510…'
'Get to the point.'
Buvat hurriedly drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and read:
They speak a sort of pedlars' French;
They beg and thus their thirst they quench,
Their doxies clothe and bed and board'em
By mumpin', filchin' and by whoredom.
They limp their way across the city,
In robust health, arousing pity.
And what they win, the canter soaks,
Then rolls false dice the bens to hoax.
He'll beat his heels and begone quick
As soon as he has pinched the wick He always plays it fast and loose -
He'll snitch a hen or swipe a deuce,
Which he unleashes, grins and sells
To please the heels, and charm the dells.
In the wide-open, in the mud,
He'll cheat the chewers of the cud.
Every which where, through town and village,
These beggars scrounge and steal and pillage.
'Here at last we have the gibberish, their secret language. Translate!' The doxies are the bawds, mumping and filching are begging and stealing, to soak is to drink, a ben is a fool, pinching the wick means to defraud, to beat one's heels means to run for it, the wide-open means the countryside, deuce is a goose, to unleash means to strangle, to grin means to cut off someone's head, the heels are the accomplices in crime, dells are buxom young wenches, and lastly chewers of the cud are the bumpkins and riff-raff.'
Buvat had rattled all this off in one long breath, without the Abbot or I understanding a word of what he had said.
'Good, good,' commented Atto. 'Excellent, my compliments. So now, at least, the cant language is no longer a secret to us.'
'Ummm… to tell the truth, Signor Abbot,' stammered the secretary, 'I did not translate the gibberish quoted by Brant: the edition which I consulted was annotated.'
'What? Are you saying that you found no other terms for the cant language…?' Melani assailed him.
'No dictionary, manual or list. Nothing whatever, Signor Abbot Melani,' confessed Buvat with a sigh. 'So the language of the cerretani remains completely undecipherable. I guarantee you, no glossary exists which…'
'Are you telling me that you have been loafing at my expense for days on end in libraries,' roared Atto, 'sifting through old papers and scribbling, wasting precious time on Greek codexes, the acts of Church councils and other such idiocies, all to come up with this?'
'Really…' the secretary attempted to object.
