dark powder, announced that this was a wondrous medicine, whereupon he began to extol its great and incomparable qualities. Part of the public began to murmur, having realised that the actors were really charlatans and the speaker was the arch-charlatan. However, most of the people remained most attentive to the explication: the powder was none other than a magical quinte essence, capable of instantly rendering its possessor wealthy. On the other hand, when mixed with good oil, it became a miraculous ointment against the scrofula; and when mixed with cat's excrement, it was perfect for preparing plasters and poultices.
While the arch-charlatan was selling the first little jars of powder, enthusiastically acquired by some passing peasants who had listened open-mouthed to the talk, we moved away from the tight, malodorous throng which now packed the side-street and returned to the main road. On arriving in front of a tavern, I made my proposal as though it were some mere passing thought.
'I am sure that, instead of a well-earned rest, you would not be displeased to raise your spirits in another way,' said I, tarrying a little.
'Ah… Yes, I do indeed think so,' said he, hesitantly, his nose tilting upwards towards a campanile.
Then, catching sight of the tavern's sign, but above hearing the clinking of glasses and the clamour of the drinkers issuing forth from within, his tone changed.
'No, by the powers of darkness, of course not!'
While I dipped the ring cake which I had ordered for breakfast in a glass of good red wine, Buvat resolved to satisfy my curiosity and began at last to reveal to me something of the life of the Connestabilessa.
'In the decade before he died, the last years of his rule in France, Cardinal Mazarin called from Rome to Paris a multitude of kinsmen: two sisters and seven young nieces. And every one of the latter was marriageable.'
The nieces of the Cardinal's first sister, Anna Maria and Laura Martinozzi, married the Prince of Conti and the Duke of Modern. Two better matches could not have been hoped for. However, there remained on the Cardinal's hands those nieces for whom it would be harder to find suitable husbands: the daughters of the other sister, the five Mancini sisters: Ortensia, Marianna, Laura, Olimpia and Maria.
They were capricious and astute, cunning and most attractive, and their arrival had set off throughout the court twin passions that mirrored one another: the women's hatred and the men's love. Someone called them mockingly 'the Mazarinettes'. But they, the Mazarinettes, knew how to mix in the cup of seduction the opposing nectars of innocence and malice, prudence and boldness. Whoever drank from that cup found himself ruled by them according to the exact and implacable science of the passions.
Despite this (perhaps, indeed, because of their ambitious aims) His Eminence succeeded in time in finding the right husbands for them. Laura was taken soon enough by the Due de Mercoeur. Marianna wed the Due de Bouillon. Ortensia fell to the Marquis de la Meilleraye and Olimpia to the Comte de Soissons. A series of marriages that no one could ever have hoped for. Before coming to Paris, these Roman girls were nothing. Now, they were countesses and duchesses, married to princes of the blood royal, to grand masters of the artillery, to descendants of Richelieu and of Henri IV and what was more, immensely wealthy. Their mothers, Mazarin's sisters, belonged to the Roman nobility, but to its most minor ranks.
'Of course, the Mancini family is of the most ancient nobility,' the secretary insisted. 'It stretches back to before the year one thousand, but the family has never enjoyed the affluence befitting the flower of the aristocracy. Their names betray this: Martinozzi, Mancini…' he chanted, stressing the ozzi and the ini. 'Anyone can see that these are not high-sounding names.'
Despite the girls' temperament, all the marriages of the Mazarinettes were, when all is said and done, arranged and celebrated without excessive difficulties. Only one niece brought Mazarin a veritable mountain of difficulties: Maria.
She had arrived in Paris at the age of fourteen, when the young Louis was one year older. She took up lodgings in the palace of her uncle, almost stunned by the pomp and luxury which, during the years of the Fronde, had excited the people's enmity against the Cardinal. At first, the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, treated her benevolently, as indeed she did Mazarin's other nieces, almost as though they were of the same blood.
'One day, the mother of the Mancini girls fell gravely ill and His Majesty went with a certain regularity to visit the sick woman. Here, every time, he found Maria. Of course, in the beginning, everything was rather formal: 'I am so pained at your noble mother's ill health,' etcetera, etcetera; 'Oh, Your Majesty, despite the sad occasion, I am most honoured by your words, and so on,'' said Buvat, miming first royal concern, then womanish modesty.
In the end, Maria's mother died and, on the day of the funeral, some persons noted that the freedom with which the young girl spoke with the Sovereign was considerably greater than when her mother had enjoyed good health.
On the very evening of Maria's mother's funeral, a ballet with a prophetic title was performed at court, L'Amour Malade. Louis, as was his wont when young, was among the dancers. In the great hall of the Louvre, before the entire court, Louis' royal pirouettes opened the first of ten entrees, each of which represented a remedy to cure the languishing deity.
No few courtiers noticed that Louis's steps were livelier than usual, his breath longer, his leaps more ample, his look firmer and more expressive, as though an invisible force sustained him, whispering to him the secret remedy whereby love is first cured and at last triumphant.
At court, no one, among all the King's noble companions of the same age, was able to treat with him on a basis of true friendship. He was too irascible and proud, too serious even when he smiled, and too smiling when he commanded. Whenever they spoke with him, young women, in the grip of awe and embarrassment, hid behind the heavy mantle of curtsies and formalities.
Only Maria was not afraid of Louis. When, in the King's presence, all others trembled with fear (and the desire to be chosen by him), the young Italian girl played the game of love with the same tranquil malice as she might have employed with any good-looking young man.
In public, he was icy and distant; only she distracted and, often without even realising it, melted the mask of indifference, transforming it into that of desire. He was dying to grant her every confidence, as etiquette forbade him to, and even found himself stammering, blushing and comically at a loss for words.
'His Majesty was observed,' swore Buvat, 'at night, before going to sleep, tormented by the memory of minute yet insufferable embarrassments, and he bit his pillow when he remembered how some witty sally of Maria's had caused him first to laugh, then to stutter painfully, losing both his royal composure and the right moment in which to say: 'I love you'.'
Events again took the upper hand because of an illness. At the end of 1658 in Calais, after a series of exceedingly fatiguing voyages and inspections, and perhaps because of the bad air which troubles the humours, Louis became seriously ill. The fever was most violent and persistent, and for a fortnight all Paris feared for the Sovereign's life. Thanks to the skill of a provincial physician, Louis recovered in the end. Upon his return to Paris, the gossip on all court tongues soon came to his ears: in all the city, the eyes which had wept the most, the mouth that had most invoked his name and the hands most joined in prayer for his recovery had been Maria's.
Instead of an open declaration (which none could dare utter to a Sovereign) Maria had thus sent Louis an involuntary and far more potent message, and the whole court, through its whispering, was suggesting to the King: she loves you, and you know it.
In the months that followed, the court sojourned at Fontainebleau, where Mazarin, who still held the reins of government, kept the young Sovereign entertained each day with new diversions: excursions by carriage, plays and trips on the water followed one another without a break, and, whether in his carriage, on the park's drives or on its lawns, Louis' path kept crossing that of Maria. They sought one another constantly and were forever finding one another.
'Permit me to ask you a question,' I interrupted him. 'How come you know all these details so well? These events took place over forty years ago.'
'Abbot Melani knows these things better than anyone else,' was his sole reply.
'Ah, I see. So he has also told you all about that period, as he told me,' said I, deliberately exaggerating, 'about the secret missions he carried out for Mazarin, concerning Fouquet…'
I had purposely mentioned two well-hidden secrets from Melani's past: his friendship (which he himself had revealed to me seventeen years previously) with Superintendent Fouquet, France's Minister of Finance, who was persecuted by the Most Christian King, and the fact (learned from others) that Atto had been a secret agent in the service of Mazarin.
I seemed to detect a sudden flash of surprise in Buvat's expression. He probably thought that Abbot Melani
