Secretum

mention nothing to anyone before speaking to him. I was soon to understand why.

Atto lowered the handle, pushed on the door and entered, lighting his way with a candle.

'But the door has not been forced,' I observed in astonishment.

'No, indeed it has not, as I'd have told you if you'd given me time,' replied Buvat who, during the wild rush that had followed his announcement had barely had a chance to open his mouth.

I advanced too and entered the apartment. A second and then a third candle were lit, revealing the unmistakeable traces of an incursion. Everything — every object, every ornament — was cast into a general disorder. A chair was turned upside down. Books, gazettes and loose papers of every kind were scattered on the floor. Atto's clothes too had been roughly thrown to the ground or heaped up on the furniture, and it was quite clear that they, too, had been thoroughly searched. A window was open.

'Strange, truly strange,' I commented. 'Despite all the guards keeping watch over Villa Spada in recent days, the thieves have had no difficulty in getting right here into the great house…'

'You are right. Yet it must have been a swift job,' observed Atto after taking a rapid look around. It looks to me as though they have removed only the spyglass. 'Tis a tempting enough object. Apart from that, I think that nothing is missing.'

'How do you know?' I asked, given that Atto's survey had lasted only a few seconds.

'Simple: after the attack on you two, I entrusted all my precious things to a servant of the villa. Papers of a certain importance… well, they are not here,' said he with a sly expression which I pretended not to notice, since I too knew the hiding place: the dirty linen where I myself had found Maria's letters.

The Abbot then hastened to put his apparel back in order.

'Look at this,' he groaned, 'how they've crumpled them. One moment…'

Atto was prodding his mauve-grey soutane, within which I knew that he secretly kept the scapular of the Our Lady of the Garmel, the ex voto into which he had sewn my three little pearls.

''Tis not there any more,' he exclaimed. 'Oh heavens, I left it in here!'

'What?' I asked, feigning ignorance.

'Er, a… relic. A most precious relic which I was keeping inside here, in a scapular of the Madonna of the Carmel. They have robbed me of it.'

My poor little pearls, I lamented inwardly, they seemed fated to be stolen. In any case, this showed that the thieves had been through Abbot Melani's apartment with a fine-tooth comb.

We now stood in the light of the large candelabrum which I had lit, the better to be able to carry out our own thorough check. Abbot Melani, who had suddenly sunk to his knees, shifted the day-bed and raised part of the herringbone parquet underneath it, near the window. He removed one block, then another just next to it, then a third one.

'No… By all the saints!' I heard him swearing in a low voice. 'The accursed rogues!'

Buvat and I stayed silent, looking questioningly at one another. Atto stood up, dusted down his elbows and collapsed into an armchair. He stared fixedly before him.

'Dear me, what a disaster. But how is it possible? What sense does it make? Whoever could… I do not understand,' he was raving away to himself, shaking his head with one hand clasped to his brow, quite indifferent to our amazed looks.

'This is a grave misfortune,' said he, once he had recovered his aplomb, 'a serious matter. I have been robbed of some most important papers. At first, I did not even take the trouble to check, so sure was I that no one could get at them. I had replaced the slats of parquet with the greatest of care and skill. I know not how they managed to find them, but that is what they have just done.'

'Were they under the parquet?' I asked.

'Exactly. Not even Buvat knew that they were there,' said Melani, dismissing forthwith any suspicion of a betrayal.

In the brief moment of silence that followed, Atto must have become aware of the question running through Buvat's head and my own. Since we would have to help him recover the stolen papers, he must needs furnish us with a description, however summary, of their contents.

'It is a confidential report which I have written for His Most Christian Majesty,' said he at length.

'And what is it about?' I dared ask.

'The next conclave. And the next pope.'

The problems, explained Atto, were two-fold. In the first place, he had promised His Majesty the King of France to deliver the report as soon as possible. The report in Abbot Melani's possession was, however, the only copy in existence and even if he were to labour for months (making superhuman efforts of memory) that would still not suffice to rewrite it. Thus, Atto ran the risk of making a fool of himself in the King's eyes; but that was the least of things.

The report revealed secret circumstances concerning the election of the last pontiffs and prognostications concerning the forthcoming conclave, and it was signed by Atto. Even if it had not been signed, it would in any case be easy to ascribe it to him, thanks to certain circumstances reported in the text.

The document was at that moment in the hands of strangers, and probably hostile ones at that. Atto thus ran the risk of being charged with espionage on behalf of France. It would not be impossible that the charge might be made even graver by accusing him of intending to disseminate the report, so that he would find himself on trial for criminal libel.

'… A crime which, as you know, is punished most severely in Rome,' he concluded.

'What are we to do?' asked Buvat, no less concerned than his master.

'Since we cannot report the theft to the Bargello, we shall have to make do with the help of Sfasciamonti. Once you have put things back in some order, you, Buvat, will go and call him. Indeed no, go at once.'

Once we were alone, Atto and I spent some time crawling on the floor picking up the scattered pages. Atto uttered not a word. Meanwhile, a suspicion arose in my mind concerning the object of the theft. I decided to take the plunge and ask him.

'Signor Atto, the hiding place which you chose was excellent. How can the thieves have discovered it? And what's more, the door was not forced. Someone must have had a copy of the key. How is that possible?'

'I really do not know. Curses, 'tis a mystery. Now we shall have to place ourselves in the hands of that catchpoll who will torment me with his tales of cerretani or whatever the deuce they call those mendicants, if they really do exist.'

'How will you describe your manuscript? Not even to Sfasciamonti can you say exactly what it is about, seeing that one can trust no one.'

He remained silent, and fixed his eyes on mine. He guessed what I suspected and realised that he could no longer put off giving me an explanation. He made a grimace of vexation and sighed: he was on the point of imparting, unwillingly, something which I did not know.

In the corridor, Buvat's footsteps were already ringing out, accompanied by Sfasciamonti's more resounding ones. I know not whether by chance or by choice, but Atto spoke at just the moment when the catchpoll opened the door, meaning, at the very last free moment after which I would no longer be able to talk with him freely or to trouble him with questions to which he did not wish to reply.

'The manuscript was freshly bound. It was the little book made by Haver.'

Although he still seemed somewhat somnolent, Sfasciamonti listened attentively to the account of what had taken place. He inspected the hiding place under the slats in the floor, made a quick inspection of Atto's lodgings, then asked discreetly the nature of the document that had been stolen, contenting himself with the summary explanation provided by Atto.

'It is a political text. It is of extreme importance and usefulness to me.'

'I understand. The book you had bound by Haver, I suppose.'

The Abbot could not deny that.

'It is a coincidence,' he replied.

'Of course,' Sfasciamonti agreed, impassively.

After that, the catchpoll asked whether Melani intended to report the theft to the Bargello or to the Governor of Rome. Since the victim of the theft was a person of note, an edict could be posted all over the city offering a reward for the return of the loot or the capture of the thieves.

'Come now,' Atto responded at once, 'rewards are worthless. When I was robbed of gold rings and a heart-