she with a voice almost broken by her bombast, while she began to put her equipment back into her bag. 'Until three years of age, no child should touch a single drop of the milk produced by beasts. And even after the age of three, this will be most harmful. So everyone, both fathers and mothers and their little sons and daughters, should keep well away from beasts' milk throughout their lives, if they mean to live in good health and clarity of mind. Deo gratias, we have finished.'
She crossed herself, as she did after every birth, and we heard her impart her last recommendations to the new mother as Atto and I rushed to the stables and the mule which was to take us back, weary and disappointed, to the Villa Spada.
We were already in the inner courtyard, still asleep under the mists that herald the early morning, when we heard a grim, disquieting sound. It came from our left, where there stretched out an immensely long gallery of singular magnificence, followed by an equally long avenue, flanked by hedges and terminating in a garden.
It was then that we caught sight of a dreadful colossus, a quadruped higher than two men and as long as a carriage, as black as night and covered with thick, disgusting hair. For a few interminable moments (at least so it seemed to me) I was paralysed with terror, almost hypnotised by that infernal monster. I saw it leap over the hedges in the avenue and rush at an unimaginable speed towards us, again emitting the thunderous roar which we had just heard.
With a superhuman burst of speed, I fled, forgetting even Abbot Melani, and in the twinkling of an eye I had shut myself into the stables.
Atto was already there: unlike me, he was clearly unperturbed and had got out of the way at once.
'The monster… the colossus…' I panted, my face contorted with terror.
I looked at Melani. He had a grin imprinted on his face.
'What do you find so funny?' I asked, thoroughly irritated.
'What you too will soon see. Follow me.'
A few minutes later, Atto was at the opening of the gallery, seated on the base of one of the columns, tranquilly caressing the colossus. For it was no colossus at all, but a nice little dog. The creature had been sleeping out in the garden beyond the gallery and, surprised by my arrival, had reacted with a typical canine growl, then drawn near to challenge the invader. What had seemed to me a monster of incredible proportions was in reality a little animal that came up to my knee.
'Do you understand?' asked Melani.
'I think so, Signor Atto.'
Yet it still seemed incredible to me. The gallery from which the dog had emerged was a masterpiece of the great Borromini, whom the Spada had often employed to improve and enlarge their palace. It was so constructed as to delude the observer, through a clever play with perspective which only someone who knew the trick could detect. As the visitor entered the gallery, it grew steadily smaller: the pairs of columns by either side became lower, the black and white chequerboard paving went upwards and grew narrower, while the squares themselves became smaller, imitating the flight towards infinity which painters know so well how to simulate in their creations when they depict roads, cities and temples.
Even the stucco mouldings on the semicircular vaulting were formed into an ever smaller quadrangualar grid, so as to keep in proportion to the shrinking of the vault itself. Beyond the other end of the gallery, there was no spacious garden stretching out to infinity, but a modest little courtyard in which, however, imitation box hedges had been carved from stone and painted with two coats of green. With their regular parallelepiped form, these became ever lower and narrower as the distance from the gallery, and thus, from the observer, increased, thus creating the irresistible impression of a distant avenue running to meet the sky. The sky itself, which I had thought I saw behind the hedges, was in fact painted with clever chromatic counterfeiting a few paces beyond, upon the wall that concluded the whole illusion.
I entered the gallery and timidly caressed the first pair of columns, then the second, then the third… each time narrower and lower. Borromini's optical illusion was so cleverly designed and carried out that it had tricked me to the extent even of terrifying me. Besides those sham hedges, even that little dog had seemed to me gigantic. Its growl, distorted and amplified by the echo of the vault, had seemed on reaching me to be the roar of a wild beast.
'We fear what we cannot understand: here, as in the gallery of mirrors at the Vessel,' said Melani in paternally admonitory tones as we trotted on our mule back to Villa Spada.
'I had heard tell of Palazzo Spada's gallery in perspective and of its marvellous optica! illusion: princes and ambassadors come to visit it from all the world over. But I did not know what it might be and, caught unawares, I took fright… You know, I am very tired…' said I, trying to justify myself and to cover my shame.
'You saw an immense portico, which in reality was very small. Within a small space, you saw a long road. The more distant they are, the larger small objects can appear, rightly placed,' Atto philosophised. 'Greatness is but an illusion on this earth, the wonder of art and the image of a vain world.'
I knew what he really had in mind: the Vessel. But not the gallery of mirrors. Rather, he was meditating upon those mysterious apparitions which we had witnessed, and upon his faint hope of finding a rational explanation for them in the end.
I therefore said nothing, while we wended our weary way across the Holy City, meeting the first passers-by, still half wound in the coils of sleep, and formless nocturnal cogitations made way for clear thinking.
On our return to Villa Spada, we found a letter for Abbot Melani: the usual one. Atto's reaction upon opening and reading it was no different from the times before: he became sombre and dismissed me hastily, on the pretext that he wanted to take a rest. In reality, he had to reply to the letter, in which the Connestabilessa announced her latest delay.
In the hours that followed, I was unable to enjoy so much as one moment of rest. The programme for the day consisted of a rather demanding entertainment, and Cardinal Spada had repeatedly insisted to Don Paschatio that he was counting on him to ensure its complete success, informing him that any servants who failed to fulfil their duties would be most severely punished. Don Paschatio had for his part ensured that, this time, none would dare absent themselves: he had, of course, sworn as much on all previous occasions, without being proved right. This time, too, a pair of waiters had let the Major-Domo down, on the pretext that they were ill (whereas they had in fact gone fishing on the island of San Bartolomeo, as I had gleaned from their conversation the day before).
There was indeed a great deal of work to be done, nor was it easy to carry out. For the guests' entertainment, there had been laid on a shooting party, the game being birds. This outing was open not only to the gentlemen and cavaliers present but to ladies too, since the hunt for fowls involves no dangers, only joyous recreation. This was, in other words, to be a pleasure party, consisting of many and various kinds of hunting merriment, as had been announced to the guests the day before by no less than Cardinal Spada in person.
The territory of Villa Spada was, however, too small for the beat, which would require much space in which to hide, set up ambuscades and entrap birds. It had therefore been agreed with the excellent Barberini household that the entertainment could also take place in the plot of land adjoining the Spada estate (where, two days before, the falconer had tried in vain to catch Caesar Augustus with his hawk).
The guests were to be organised into groups, according to the means they would be employing. The first squad, consisting of about ten people in all, was to be issued with special bird traps: sham bushes within which had been set a Y-shaped wooden stick. This stuck out from the top of the bush and at either extremity were placed two pieces of iron rather like scissor blades which, operated from a short distance by means of a long, thick cord, would snap shut, crushing the bird's legs.
The second group of huntsmen received a number of artificial trees, to be planted in the earth with the sharp point at the base of their trunk. At the top of these little trees was fixed a horizontal stick which would look quite inviting to birds seeking a perch. At the base of the bush was hidden a great crossbow, pointing upwards, into which was notched a sort of big rake with many sharp points. If fired at the right moment (even from a short distance, by activating the trigger of the crossbow with a stout brown string) the bizarre mechanism would shoot up and impale any unlucky fowl perching on top of the tree.
For other participants, special arquebuses had been prepared, to be set into the ground (by means of a handle with an iron point) to be aimed at some clearly visible branch and fired the moment some passing bird came to rest there. Here too, the arquebuses were to be operated at a distance by means of an invisible thread.
Those cavaliers gifted with sharp eyesight were given fine crossbows of the highest quality with which to shoot at birds in flight.
