earlier, he had got the better of our adversaries by disguising a pipe as a pistol, succeeding perfectly in deceiving the enemy. Now, however, he must truly fear for his own safety, said I to myself, if he has decided to travel armed.
After looking through shoes and purses, I began unwillingly to rummage through clothing; as usual, the Abbot had brought with him enough to last ten years. I diligently perused the long series of greatcoats, collars, short coats, hussar-style cloaks and cloaks in the Brandenburg style, capes and capouches, sashes and jabots in pleated Venetian lace, breeches, cuffs, mantles of pleated silk and long stockings. My rough hands smoothed the precious silks, the shining satins, the twills, the chamois leathers, the suedes, the damasks, the silk taffeta, the grograms, the striped and flowered linens, the ermines, with silks patterned or damasked, or in the Florentine style, the ferrandine silk and wool blends, the doublets, the brocaded cloth of gold and silver, the satins, shiny or quilted, the Milanese salia and the Genoese sateen. My eyes scanned the most recherche hues, from mouse-grey, pearl, fire, musk rose, dried roses, to speckled colours, scarlets, black cherry, dove-grey, jujube-red, berrettino grey, nacre, tawny, milky white, moire and gris castor, and the silver and gold foil and thread of fringes and braiding.
Among all that rich attire, the mauve-grey soutane in which Abbot Melani had appeared to me on that day, after so many years' silence, seemed distinctly out of place. With surprise, I saw that there were in fact no other outmoded items of apparel in that sumptuous wardrobe; on the contrary. I quickly realised that Atto had worn it deliberately for my sake, so that the sudden change in his manner of dress should not add to the gradual erosion which time effects upon faces and to ensure that his appearance today should correspond as far as possible to my memory. In other words, he knew how much I had missed him and wished to make a strong impression.
Still uncertain whether I should be grateful to him or resentful (it depended from which viewpoint one chose to consider the matter), I examined the soutane, which, I confess, was for me not without precious and distant memories of my youth. On its breast I felt something which I took initially for a jewel of some sort, but it turned out to be sewn onto the inside. Examining the lining of the soutane, I discovered not without extreme surprise a small scapular of the Madonna of the Carmel, the miraculous little scapular which the Most Holy Virgin had promised would, if worn on one's person, free the wearer from the torments of purgatory on the first Saturday after their death. What had, however, captured my attention were three little protuberances: in a tiny bag sewn onto the scapular, exactly at the level of the heart, were three little pearls.
I recognised them at once: they were the three margaritae, the Venetian pearls which had played so important a part in the last stormy discussion between Atto and myself seventeen years earlier at the Inn of the Donzello, before we lost sight of one another. Only now did I learn that Atto had lovingly gathered them up from the floor where I had thrown them down in a rage, and kept them; and, for all these years, he had worn them close to his heart, perhaps in a mute prayer to the Holy Virgin…
The thought crossed my mind that Atto must not have worn the scapular with my little pearls every single day, since he had now left them hanging inside the soutane in the wardrobe. It was, however, also true that he had found me again, so perhaps he now considered his vow to have come to an end. Ah, rascal of an abbot, I protested inwardly, while yielding to emotion at discovering myself to be so dear to him; for all my old bitterness, I too still loved him from the depths of my soul, there was no use in denying that now. And if my feelings — with which I had lived uneasily for almost two decades — had not been extinguished by his most recent misdeeds, very well, I must then perhaps resign myself to that love.
I reproved myself severely for having wanted to spy on him, yet, when I was on the point of leaving shamefully, I stopped on the threshold, hesitating; I was no longer a child, the movements of my heart no longer obscured the light of the intellect. And the intellect was now whispering in my ear that, in any case, one could place but little trust in Atto.
It was thus that my state of mind altered yet again. Were it only for myself, I began to reason, never would I have dared violate the Abbot's privacy. Yet Atto's deep affection for me, as mine for him, must not make me forget the task I had assumed, namely to keep a diary of his words and deeds during those days, which might in all probability (of this I was certain) involve all manner of risks and pitfalls. What if someone were to accuse him of being in Rome in order to spy and to disrupt the proceedings of the forthcoming conclave? Such a danger was not that remote, given that he himself had made no mystery of his desire to protect the interests of the Most Christian King of France at the election of the next pontiff. This might also affect Cardinal Spada, my master and his unsuspecting host. It was therefore not only my right, I concluded, but my bounden duty, also toward my beloved family, to know both the nature and extent of the risks to which I was likely to be exposed.
With my scruples thus silenced, I therefore resumed my search. One last inspection under and behind the bed, on top of the wardrobes, under the cushions of the armchairs and the little brocatelle sofa ornamented with golden plumes proved fruitless. Behind the pictures, nothing; nor was there any sign of anyone having opened them to conceal anything between the canvas and the frame. Further investigations into the remaining anfractuosities of the apartment likewise yielded nothing. Buvat's few personal effects in the modest adjoining chamber concealed even less.
Yet I knew for a fact that Atto travelled, as I well recalled from our first encounter, with a fair quantity of paper. The times had changed, and I with them. Atto, however, had not; at least, not in the habits arising from his natural bent for intrigue and adventure. In order to act, he must know. In order to know, he must remember, and for that purpose he needed the letters, memoirs and notes which he carried with him, the living archive of a lifetime of spying.
It was then that, breaking off the pointless exercise of eyes and muscles, intent upon the search for the hidden papers, I had a flash of inspiration: specifically, a reminiscence from seventeen years before, a distant yet still vivid memory of how Atto and I had, by night, retraced the key to the mystery which had wound us in its coils. This had consisted of papers, and these we had found in a place to which instinct and logic (as well as good taste) had hitherto failed to lead us: within a pair of soiled drawers.
'You have underestimated me, Abbot Melani,' I murmured to myself as, for the second time, I opened the basket of dirty clothes and groped, no longer among but inside them. 'How very imprudent of you, Signor Atto, said I with a self-satisfied grin when, feeling inside a pair of Holland drawers, I felt crumpling beneath my fingers a bundle of papers. I grasped the drawers; the lining was not sewn but attached to the main body of the item of apparel by a series of minuscule hooklets. Once I had unfastened the latter, I could reach into the space between the two layers of stuff. This I did, and found my fingertips touching a wide, flat object. I extracted it. It was a parchment envelope, tied with a ribbon. It was well designed, in such a way as to contain a number of papers, and only those; in other words, it was as flat as a pancake. In silent triumph, I turned it over in my hands.
Not much time remained to me. Atto was certainly keen to explore the villa and to meet the other guests who, like him, had arrived early for the wedding. It would, however, take only some necessity on his part to return to his apartment for the Abbot to surprise me. I was spying upon a spy: I must move swiftly.
I undid the bow. Before opening it I noted on the cover, written near the bottom in a minuscule hand, an inscription so tiny that it seemed destined only to be to be found by an eye already aware of its existence:
Spanish succession — Maria
I opened the envelope. A set of letters, all addressed to Melani, but all unsigned. The agitated, irregular calligraphy which appeared before my eyes seemed incapable of repressing any emotion. The lines were not, so to speak, confined by the margins of the page; the additions which the writer's hand had inserted into a number of sentences curled their way into the following lines. Moreover, this writing belonged without any possible doubt to a feminine hand. It seemed clearly to be that of the mysterious Maria: the name which I had overheard Atto sighing.
What the Spanish succession might be, I was soon to learn in great detail from those letters. The first letter, which seemed to be deliberately imprecise, so as to betray neither the identity of the writer nor morsels of news that might be too pleasing to unfriendly eyes, began, as I recall, as follows:
My dearest Friend,
Here I am, already in the environs of Rome. Things are moving fast. I learned during a halt something of which you will already be apprised: a few days ago the Spanish Ambassador, the Duke of Uzeda, obtained a double audience with the Pope. On the day after he had attended the Holy Father in order to thank him for conferring a Cardinal's hat on his compatriot Monsignor Borgia, Uzeda received by special courier an urgent dispatch from Madrid, which induced the Duke to request yet another audience with His Holiness. He delivered a letterfrom the King of Spain, containing an entreaty: El Rey requests a mediation by Innocent XII on the question of the Succession!
