instrument. The cloth contained a collection of glass fragments (presumably, what remained of the lenses), three or four screws, a cog wheel and a half-crushed metal plaque.
'It must have gone like this,' said Sfasciamonti reconstructing the events of the night, as we entered the old clothes shop. 'This was stolen not long ago. I shall check today on whether any other sergeant knows anything of this. Chiavarino must have done the job himself, or perhaps he bought it off someone else. When he heard us at the door, he misunderstood our explanation, confusing the spyglass with this mackeroscopp.'
'Microscope,' I corrected him.
'Well, anyway, whatever it is. Then he left the house and went to the Piazza Navona. He must have been looking for some cerretano,' said he while, nodding to the old clothes merchant, he led me to the inner courtyard where there was a little fountain, so that I could clean myself up.
'But why?'
'Did you not hear what the Maltese said? Chiavarino works for the German. And the German, as I told you, works with the cerretani,' said he gesturing with his head in the direction of the terrace on Campo de Fiore. 'The mackeroscopp was supposed to go to the German. Many real beggars spend the night at the Piazza Navona, but there are plenty of cerretani there too. Chiavarino went to one of these.'
'You mean the one who was on the point of killing me!'
I exclaimed, remembering Sfasciamonti's scream when he saw that it was not Chiavarino.
'Of course. They met behind the fountain. Then the cerretano heard us and fled. We ran after him thinking it was Chiavarino, whom I know perfectly well and who looks quite different: tall and fair with a broken nose. And he's not cross-eyed, as the little monster whom we followed seemed to be.'
So I had risked my life for nothing, I thought, while I took off my filthy clothes and washed quickly, for who could say where Atto's telescope might be, let alone his papers? My bones were all still aching from the fall into the manure, although it had been fresh and soft because of a generous admixture of straw.
Then there was a suspicion which gnawed at me. The Maltese did not know what a spyglass was, and probably did not know what a microscope, a far more unusual object, might be. Nor did Chiavarino know what the two devices were or what they were called, so much so that he confused the one with the other.
'How did you know that this was a microscope?' I asked the catchpoll, pointing to the little packet in which he had placed the fragments of the machine.
'What a question: 'tis written on it.'
He opened the little bundle and showed me the wooden base of the apparatus, on which there was a gracefully framed little metal plaque.
MACROSCOPIUM HOC
JOHANNES VANDEHAR1US
FECIT
AMSTELODAMI MDCLXXXIII
'Microscope made in Amsterdam in 1683 by Jan Vandehaar,' I translated.
He was right, it was written there. And those few simple Latin words even Sfasciamonti had been able to understand, however approximately.
'Someone will have to explain to me how you shoot with a thing like this mackeroscopp with its barrel full of glass,' he muttered to himself, incapable of resigning himself to the fact that the device was not an arm.
Still confused by the breakneck piling up of events, not to mention the physical trials I had had to undergo, only then, while I was drying myself with a piece of cloth and dressing, did I remember to tell my companion of the provocation with which I had tried to confuse the cerretano, warning him that he would die at the hands of the German, and of the man's strange reply which I had by some miracle heard when I was falling from the terrace.
''The German will kill you…' But you are insane!'
'Why? I was only trying to save my life.'
'That's true, damn it, but you went and told an accomplice of the German that his principal would have him killed… The German's dangerous. 'Tis as well that it was, as you said, to save your life.'
'Well, that's precisely why I'd like to know what the cerretano said. Perhaps he threatened that they'd come after me.'
'What exactly did he say to you?'
'I couldn't understand, 'twas a phrase that made no sense.'
'You see, it really was a cerretano. He spoke to you in cant.'
'In what?'
'Cant. Gibberish.'
'What's that, their jargon?'
'Oh, far more than that. 'Tis a real language. Only the cerretani know it, 'tis their own invention. They use it to talk in front of strangers without being understood. But thieves and vagrants of all kinds use it too.'
'Then I understand what you're talking about. I know that criminals, when a sergeant is coming, say 'Madam's coming' or 'Tis raining'.'
'Yes, but those are things that everyone knows, like that martino means a knife, or a piotta is a hundred Giulio coin. Even many of the words of the Jews are well known; if I tell you that two people are agazim, you'll understand perfectly that I am talking of a couple of friends. But then there's a more difficult level. For instance, what does it mean if I say to you: 'The hunchback isn't corn of the first of May?''
'Not a thing.'
'Well, that's because you don't know cant, or slang. 'The hunchback' means 'I', 'corn' means 'afraid' and 'the first of May' is God.'
'So 'I'm not afraid of God',' said I, astonished by the obscurity of that short sentence which seemed so well suited to a cerretano.
'And that's only an example. I know it only because we sergeants do manage to pick up something. But never enough. The cerretano said something to you which you couldn't understand, is that not so?
'If I remember, it was something like… teevooteedie, teeyootiffie, no, teeyooteelie or something like that.'
'That must be another kind of cant. I really don't know how it works, I've never even heard it spoken. I only know that sometimes the vagabonds use normal words but mix them all up, twist them about and complicate them using a secret method which few people know,' said he, twisting, untwisting, tapping and squeezing his fingers one against the other, the better to illustrate the concept, 'and you can't understand a word of it.'
'So how the deuce are we to know what the cerretano said? We do not even have any way of continuing our investigations and finding Abbot Melani's papers,' said I with ill-concealed disappointment.
'We must be patient, and besides, matters are not exactly as you say. We do at least know now that someone is collecting these strange instruments with which one can see large or small, mackeroscopps, spyglasses et cetera, and that he has a passion for relics. We can look for Chiavarino, but he'll already have moved to another house. He's a dangerous fellow, 'tis best to keep well away from him. The track to follow is that of the cerretani.'
'It seems no less dangerous.'
'That's true. But it does lead directly to the German.'
'Do you think it was he who stole Abbot Melani's papers?'
'I believe in facts. And this is the only trail we have to follow.'
'Do you have any idea of how we proceed from here?'
'Of course. But we shall have to wait until tomorrow night. Some things cannot be done by day.'
Meanwhile, we had returned to our horses. We separated: this time too Sfasciamonti had some chores to do on behalf of his mother. Since I was still in shock following my dreadful adventure, the catchpoll thought it would be better if I returned to Villa Spada on foot; he would see to the return of both our mounts.
So it was that, still stinking and rotten but at least not shameful to behold, I made my way towards the San Pancrazio Gate. At that early hour, the city was overflowing with pilgrims, pedlars, prentices, maidservants, swindlers, strollers and tradesmen. Every little alleyway was animated by washerwomen's songs, children's cries, the barking of stray dogs, street vendors' calls, as well as the curses of coachmen whenever some wobbling cart delivering dairy products cut across the path of their carriage. In the markets of each quarter, those great theatres
