the domestics' chatter had given way to conspiratorial whispers and amorous murmuring. My spouse and I made our way between stockings and shoes abandoned on the lawn and bare feet echoing on the thresholds of those silken kiosks.
We settled down some way off, on the edge of that curious village, by now silent, yet full of activity. There, under a fluttering tent of Armenian gauze softly interwoven with gentle shades of amaranth red, we prudently unrolled the hangings to close the entrance and, far from prying eyes, my members sank amidst plumed cushions and my memory dissolved utterly in my lady's melting, rounded warmth, while the aromatic perfume of the braziers blended with other secret and ineffable fragrances.
'To what do we owe the honour?' said Cloridia, smiling in the most natural way in the world to someone behind my back.
I gave a violent start and turned sharply, as a hand was laid on my shoulder.
'I have news,' said Abbot Melani, without so much as a hint of embarrassment. 'Get dressed. I shall wait for you at the gate. My respects and my most profound apologies, Monna Cloridia,' he added; then, just before pulling the entrance curtain behind him, 'and my compliments…'
'How dare you!' I shouted, quite beside myself, after dressing and joining him.
'Calm down. I did call you from outside the tent, but you were too busy to hear me…'
'What do you want?' I cut him short, purple in the face with indignation.
'I have spoken with Lamberg.'
'And?' I rejoined, hoping that some light had at least been cast on the assault suffered by Atto.
After a long wait, Abbot Melani had at last come face to face with the powerful Count Lamberg, scion of one of the Empire's most glorious families of ambassadors.
Exercising the greatest possible caution, he had come accompanied by Buvat. But the sombre Lamberg had begged the servants to leave him and his guest in private. Consequently, the secretary had remained in the ante- chamber.
'I know you by reputation, Signor Abbot Melani,' Lamberg began.
Atto was instantly alarmed: was this an allusion to his treatise on the conclaves? Had he perhaps received it by some oblique route, perhaps from Cardinal Albani himself, and already perused it from start to finish?
'When the Emperor sent me here from Ratisbon,' the Ambassador continued, 'I expected to find benign influences here in this Holy City where the Jubilee is now taking place. Instead, I found Babylon.'
'Babylon?' repeated Atto, growing even more circumspect.
'I find myself caught up in a sea of confusion, of horrible wars, of partisan struggles,' he continued, scowling grimly.
'Ah, yes, I understand: the difficult international situation…' said Atto in an attempt to bring some calm to the conversation.
'Wretch!' Lamberg screamed suddenly, banging his fist on the table.
Silence descended on the room. Innumerable pearls of sweat ran down Abbot Melani's forehead. Such threatening and violent behaviour might even presage an attack. Without giving any sign of doing so, Atto had begun to look around him: he feared the sudden attack of assassins ordered to murder him. Damnation, why had he not thought of that? It was too long since he had been on mission in the Empire and he had forgotten how different the Germans were from the French. 'Those damned Habsburgs, mad and bloodthirsty every one of them, from Spain to Austria, ever since the time of Joan the Mad.' Before the meeting, he had promised himself that he would accept nothing from Lamberg's hand, not even a glass of water; but the possibility of an ambush had not crossed his mind.
'No one would ever find me. Only you knew that I had gone to visit Lamberg, but no one would ever have believed you,' observed the Abbot.
He began to curse himself for having brought Buvat; they might kill the pair of them and both would simply disappear from the face of this earth.
At that point in the Abbot's narration, I remembered the Bezoar stone which, as I had secretly read a few days earlier in his correspondence, the Connestabilessa had sent him for its powers in warding off poisons. Atto had promised to keep it in his pocket during the audience, but it would be of little use in the event of an ambush..
As these dark thoughts rushed through the Abbot's mind, Lamberg remained silent, looking him straight in the eye. Melani returned the stare, not understanding whether the Ambassador intended to continue the conversation or to pass from words to action.
A sudden thought consoled him: too many people had seen him enter the Medici palace, which was the Roman property of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, his protector. Atto was well known there. If he were to die of stab wounds, it would be difficult to hush the matter up for long.
Still Lamberg said nothing. Atto dared not move a muscle. He remembered an old story — who knows whether it was true or not? A minister of the Emperor who had apparently died of a heart attack had in fact been killed with an invisible inoculation of poison behind the ear. There were any number of poisons that simulated a natural death: some could be sprayed on clothing, in one's hair, vapourised in the air, poured into the ear, dissolved in baths and foot-baths… All this, Atto knew perfectly well. The serpent of fear again crept up his back.
'Wretch…' hissed Lamberg once more, betraying in his trembling voice anger of an intensity approaching madness.
Fear or no fear, Atto could not allow himself to be insulted like that. Calling up all the audacity of which he was capable, he replied as his honour demanded.
'I beg your pardon.'
Lamberg's eyes, which had for a moment wandered elsewhere, again fixed his own with unbearable intensity. The Ambassador stood up. Atto did likewise, fearing the worst. He grasped his walking stick firmly, ready to defend himself. Lamberg, however, moved to the window, which was ajar. He opened it wide.
'Are you happy in Rome, Signor Abbot Melani?' he asked, suddenly changing the subject.
'That's an old trick,' thought Atto to himself, 'continually changing the subject to confuse the person with whom one is speaking. I must be on my guard.'
Meanwhile, Lamberg was looking out of the window, with his back to him: an unusual, and somewhat embarrassing situation. Atto waited awhile, but as the Ambassador continued to show him his back, which was in terms of diplomatic protocol quite unprecedented, he felt entitled to move so as to be able to see and hear him better. However, hardly had he taken a step forward than he realised the Austrian's chest was shaking rhythmically. Atto could hardly believe his eyes, yet there could be no doubt about it.
Lamberg was weeping.
'Wretch,' he repeated for a third time, 'he did not leave me so much as a scrap of paper. But the Emperor will make him pay for this, ah yes, that he will! He will pay for every one of his misdeeds,' said he, turning and wagging his finger menacingly at Melani. 'That wretched dog Martinitz,' he sobbed, with a crazed expression contorting his face.
Count Martinitz, Atto explained to me, had been Lamberg's predecessor. A few months previously, he had been relieved of his post as Ambassador and hurriedly replaced because he had made himself too many enemies in Rome. Everyone in town had heard of this.
What no one, however, knew of and Lamberg angrily explained to Atto, was Martinitz's revenge. On his arrival in Rome, poor Lamberg had found in the Embassy archives, as he himself had confessed, not one single scrap of paper. His predecessor had carried off the entire diplomatic correspondence with him.
The new Ambassador (who in fact knew neither the city nor the pontifical court) was thus deprived of all the information essential for his work: the contacts upon whom he could count, the list of paid informers, the cardinals with whom there were good relations and those of whom one must be wary, the character of the Pope, his preferences, the details of pontifical ceremonial and so on and so forth. Of course, when he was appointed, he had, as was common practice, received instructions from the Emperor; but the situation really obtaining at the Rome embassy he could only learn from Martinitz, who had instead played this atrocious trick on him.
'I understand, Your Excellency, the matter is extremely grave,' murmured Atto sympathetically.
Atto knew perfectly well: the representatives of the Empire were rigid and intractable and incapable of any spark of imagination. Without a written trail to follow, Lamberg was perfectly incapable of building up his own network of acquaintances and informers.
The Ambassador's outpourings continued like a torrent in full spate. I lardly had he set foot in Rome, he
