of the convent of the nuns of Saint Francis, in Piazza San Cosimato. Abbot Melani arrived some time later, completely out of breath (despite the fact that he had left off running very early on) and sat down by the roadside:
The hunter wastes much time at stalking
The game he's after, riding, walking,
He combs through hill and dale and hedge, Conceals h imself am ong the sedge,
Oft scares away more than he gets
If he's been slipshod with his nets.
'Thus Albicastro would have mocked me with his beloved Brant, if he had seen the state I am in,' Melani sighed philosophically, huffing and puffing like a pair of bellows.
I noticed that the Abbot, as I had discovered many years previously, had a taste for citing quotations on the most varied occasions. Only, especially at difficult moments like this, he no longer had breath enough to sing them; and so, instead of the little songs of Le Seigneur Luigi, his one-time master, he preferred to quote verses.
I then turned to contemplate the piazza. To my surprise, notwithstanding the fact that it was very early on Sunday morning, Piazza San Cosimato was full of people. His Holiness (but this I was to discover only later) had decided freely to grant the little boys and girls of Rome the Jubilee indulgence and the remission of sins, subject only to visiting the Vatican Basilica. For this reason, the children of various quarters were preparing to visit the Vatican in procession, with so many little standards, crosses and crucifixes. The maidens were all dressed in the most splendid lace surplices, and with garlands on their heads, each decorated for some particular devotion. The affecting little procession was attended and guided by the parents and by the nuns of the Convent of Saint Francis, all of whom were crowding into the piazza and witnessed our arrival, all dusty and fatigued, with no little surprise.
The falconer was at his wits' end.
'He is not coming back, I cannot see him,' he blubbered.
He had lost sight of his falcon. He feared that he might have been abandoned, as sometimes happen with raptors apparently tamed by their masters yet still in their hearts wild and proud.
'There he is!' cried Atto.
'The falcon?' asked the falconer, his face lighting up.
'No, the parrot.'
I too had seen. Caesar Augustus, who must have been rather tired too, had just left a cornice and begun to glide in the direction of the nearby Piazza San Callisto. Atto was by now exhausted, while the falconer had thoughts only for his pupil. Only I and the dog were prepared to follow the parrot, with the opposite intentions: I, to save him, he, to slaughter.
The dog barked like mad and charged to the attack, terrifying and scattering all the children from the ranks of the procession, amidst whom I too plunged in pursuit of the parrot, sowing further confusion and provoking the anguished reproofs of the nuns.
By now Caesar Augustus was flying wearily, perching ever more frequently on windowsills, little shrines and balconies, then flying off only when fear of the dog, which bared its teeth angrily, forced him to seek some new refuge. I could not even ask him to land on the ground and give himself up. The dog was always ahead of me, barking wildly and leaping up furiously, simply longing to get its teeth into the poor fugitive. The passers-by watched in shock as our screaming scrimmage, an extraordinary chimera composed of fleeing wings, biting fangs and legs coming to the rescue, made its way forward.
Several times, I narrowed my eyes, peering into the distance: the bird still seemed to have that wretched scrap of paper hanging onto a talon. After covering a considerable part of the Via di Santa Maria in Trastevere, our bizarre trio turned left and came at last to the bridge of the San Bartolomeo island.
Caesar Augustus landed on a windowsill at the corner, just where the bridge begins. He was quite high up, and the dog (which had perhaps realised by now that it had lost all trace of its master) was beginning to tire of that exhausting, absurd circus. It looked at the parrot, which nothing now seemed likely to shift from its position of safety. To my left stood the San Bartolomeo bridge and, beyond it, that beautiful island, the one single piece of insular territory which completes and embellishes the impetuous flow of fair Tiber. The dog at last turned on its heels, not without one last outburst of rage and disappointment.
'So, do you want to come down? We are alone now.'
In the parrot's eyes, I read his willingness to surrender at last to a friend. He was on the point of coming down. Instead, one last cruel reversal intervened.
An old woman who lived in the house had come to the window. She had seen him. Taken aback by the unusual features of that bizarre and beautiful creature, yet incapable of appreciating such splendour and rendered nervous by her own stupidity, the hag tried brutally to drive him away, threatening to strike him. The poor fowl fled, borne on the wind which in that place generously accompanies the current of the river.
I saw him successfully gain height, like some new falcon, dipping and again rising, until he gave way at last to the caprices of the eddying winds and disappeared from view, a drop in the sea of lost desires.
I returned to the Villa Spada covered in sweat, worn out and embittered. I was to report at once to Abbot Melani with the bad news. He, however, had not yet returned. He must surely be resting, on the way back, from the exertions of the parrot hunt: an ordeal at his age, exacerbated by his painful arm. I decided that, rather than endure a discussion and Atto's complaints, it would be best to slip a note under the door of his apartment reporting on the negative outcome of the hunt. However, even before leaving him that message, I knew as soon as I set foot in the villa that the afternoon would be filled with chores, and yet more occasions for over-exertion.
The wedding festivities included a ludic entertainment: a great game of blind man's buff in the gardens of the villa. Eminences, princes, gentlemen and noble ladies were to challenge one another in joyous competition: hiding, following, finding and getting lost once more among the hedges and avenues of the park, vying for who was to show the greatest sagacity, speed and skill. The game could be played only in a place where vision, access and even hearing were obstructed, making for ease of concealment and difficulty in discovering those hiding: the magnificent gardens of Villa Spada, now rendered almost labyrinthine by decorations ephemeral and floral.
I was advised that my services would be required by Don Paschatio on this occasion, in view of a temporary shortage of staff. No fewer than four servants had deserted the Major-Domo, giving such more or less imaginative excuses as a fit of melancholy humour and the sudden death of a dear aunt.
The day had grown cloudy, the temperature had gone down a little and so the game was to begin not too late. I hastened to find some sustenance in the kitchens; it was by now time for luncheon and the hunt for Caesar Augustus had left me ravenous. I found some leftovers of turkey and toasted eggs, by now grown cold, but a delight both for my taste-buds and for my stomach.
I was still chewing on some little bones when one of Don Paschatio's assistants instructed me to don livery and report to the junction between the avenue alongside the secret garden and that which led through the vines down to the fountain. At that crossroads, a place of refreshment had been set up, with fresh waters, orange juice, lemonade, selections of fruit and vegetables, freshly cut bread and good preserves, all in the shade of a great pentagonal white and blue-striped pavilion, the pilasters of which were decorated with great wooden shields bearing the family arms of the spouses' families, the Rocci and the Spada. All this had been provided to slake the thirst of the players of blind man's buff, overheated by all that running around, but also for the sake of those taking no part in the game and preferring to stay idly stretched out on the great white canvas armchairs in the shade of the pavilion.
Making my way to my post, I could but admire once more the infinite caprices granted by the good architect of nature, of which, now that the work of gardening had been completed, I kept discovering new and admirable details. As in every garden all things must be pleasant, in the Villa Spada, every element had been bent to the pleasure of the eye and the intellect, starting with the order of woods and vegetation; for the art of building is a matter of more than the architecture of walls and roofs and comprises hedges, walks and avenues, meadows, porticoes, pergolas, palm trees, flower beds and kitchen gardens. The greatest villas possessed splendid tree-lined avenues, and it is true that we had none such. Therefore, to give a better tone to the walks, along the edges were aligned rows of noble box shrubs, privets and acanthus.
Barrel-vaulted pergolas gently introduced the shy, admiring visitor to the confluence between one avenue and another, or to crossroads under verdant bosky cupolas. Espaliered laurels were trained as canopies, symmetrically tonsured and seven or even fifteen feet high, vying with sheltering holm-oaks, myrtle bushes shaped like umbrellas
