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In order to dedicate themselves entirely to Confession, and to gain ever greater profit from that source, they had obtained from the Holy See the right to exemption from other holy offices. Meanwhile, the victims took the bait. The kings of Spain, for instance, had always used Jesuit confessors and wished their ministers to do likewise in all the lands under Spain's rule. Other princes, who had hitherto lived in good faith and were unaware of the malice of the Jesuits, began to believe that these fathers possessed some special virtue as confessors.

Gradually, they came to follow the example of the kings of Spain and also chose Jesuits as their confessors.

"But someone must surely have exposed them," argued the phy­sician, while he continued to make the carcasses of the cantharides crackle under his little scalpel.

"Of course. But once their game was discovered, they placed themselves at the service of this or that prince, as the opportunity presented itself, always ready to betray them."

That was why everyone loved them and everyone hated them, said Dulcibeni: they were hated because they served everyone as spies, they were loved because no better spies could be found to fulfil the sovereigns' purposes. They were loved, because they offered their services voluntarily as spies; they were hated because they thereby gained the greatest profit for their order and inflicted the greatest damage upon the whole world.

Cristofano applied the magisterial cataplasm to Dulcibeni, sprin­kled with little fragments of beetle, and we both took our leave of him. I was absorbed in a jumble of thoughts: first, the physician's reference to Robleda's curious rheumatisms, then the revelation that the Spanish Jesuit had, at the seminary, been trained more to spy than to pray: all confirmed me more in my suspicions about Rob­leda.

I was about to retire at last (I really needed rest after the exer­tions of the previous night) when I noticed that the Jesuit had left his chamber, accompanied by Cristofano, in order to go to the pit near the kitchen where it was possible to deposit organic dejections. Faced with so propitious an opportunity, thought and action were one: I moved silently to the second floor and carefully pushed the door of the Jesuit's chamber, slipping inside. But it was too late: I thought I heard Padre Robleda's footsteps climbing back up the stairs.

I rushed out and turned hurriedly towards my own chamber, disappointed by this failure.

On my way, I stopped to call on my master, whom I found sitting up in bed. I had to help him loosen his bowels. He put some confused and listless questions to me concerning his own state of health be­cause, he stammered, the Sienese physician had treated him like a child, hiding the truth from him. I endeavoured in my turn to calm him down, after which I helped him to drink, arranged his bedding as best I could and stroked his head for a long time, until he fell asleep.

Thus I could shut myself into my own room. I took out my little notebook and, in a state of extreme fatigue, I wrote down—in truth, somewhat hurriedly—the latest events.

Once I had retreated to the bed, my need for rest struggled with all the thoughts which came crowding in, striving in vain to arrange themselves into a reasonable and orderly whole. Perhaps the page of the Bible found by Ugonio and Ciacconio had belonged to Rob­leda, and he had lost it in the underground galleries near the Pi­azza Navona: it was probably he who had stolen the keys, and in any case, he had access to the tunnels. The assistance which I had given to Abbot Melani had exposed me to unspeakable terrors, as well as the struggle with the loathsome
corpisantari.
Yet the abbot himself had resolved the situation with the aid of a mere pipe disguised as a pistol: a success which he had then repeated, planning and carry­ing out the deception of the three emissaries of the Bargello, and thus circumventing the danger of a state of pestilence being de­clared, with all the frenzied controls to which that would have given rise. My lingering mistrust for Abbot Melani was subtly tempered by thankfulness and admiration, so much so that I awaited with a certain impatience the moment when the search for the thief would resume, almost certainly that very night. I wondered whether the fact that the abbot was suspected of espionage and involvement in political intrigues might not be something of a disadvantage for us all; but then, I thought, it was if anything the contrary: thanks to his cunning, the whole group of guests of the hostelry had been saved from the dreadful prospect of internment in a pest-house. He had, moreover, informed me of his mission, and thus given a token of his trust in me. He had purloined letters from Colbert's house; but such doings were, he affirmed, the direct and ineluctable consequence of his devotion to the French sovereign; nor did proofs exist to the contrary. I rejected with a shiver the sudden appearance, among my lucubrations, of the disgusting mass of human remains which Ciacconio's heap had disgorged onto me, and suddenly felt an overwhelm­ing flood of gratitude for Abbot Melani. Sooner or later, I reflected, finally giving way to the promptings of Morpheus, I would be unable to prevent myself from revealing to the other guests the presence of mind he had shown in dealing with the two
corpisantari
and holding them at bay with promises and threats in equal measure.

Such, I imagined, must be the actions of a special agent of the King of France, and I only regretted that I had neither the knowledge nor the experience necessary adequately to convey such admirable undertakings: a network of secret passages under the city; an agent of the King of France selflessly and and at great peril hunting down rogues and ruffians; an entire group of gentlemen sequestered as a result of a mysterious death and suspected of infection with the plague; and finally, Superintendent Fouquet, believed dead, yet sighted in Rome by informers of Colbert. Now almost overcome by tiredness, I prayed heaven that I might one day, as a gazetteer, be able to write of similar marvellous events.

The door (which I ought in truth to have closed more carefully) opened on squeaking hinges. I turned towards it just in time to see a shadow hide swiftly behind the wall.

I arose and, leaping from my bed to surprise the intruder, rushed out into the corridor. I saw a figure a few paces from the door. It was Devize, who held his guitar in his hand.

"I was sleeping," I protested, "and Cristofano has forbidden us to leave our chambers."

"Look," said he, pointing towards the object of his visit on the ground.

Suddenly, 1 realised that I was walking on a carpet of small stones, whose crunching had accompanied me from the moment I had left my bed. I felt the ground with the palm of my hand.

"It looks like salt," I said to Devize.

I brought one of the little stones to my tongue.

"It is indeed salt," I confirmed in alarm, "but who can have spread it on the ground?"

"In my opinion, it was..." said Devize, but as he pronounced the name, he handed me his guitar and his last words were lost in the silence of the night.

"What did you say?"

"This is for you," said he with an ironic little laugh, as he handed me the instrument, "seeing that you like the sound of it so much."

I felt myself vaguely touched. I was not certain that I could not produce from those gut strings some agreeable sound, or perhaps even a pleasing melody. Indeed, why not attempt that ineffable melody which I had heard performed by the French musician? I de­cided to try at once, in his presence, despite knowing that I was ex­posing myself to his scorn. I was already exploring the fingerboard with my left hand, while the other felt the gentle resistance of the strings near to the sound hole in the instrument beloved by the Most Christian King, when I was surprised by a touch as familiar as it was unexpected.

"It has come to see you," remarked Devize.

A fine tabby cat with green eyes, imploring a little food, was laying siege to me, rubbing its tail with polite insistence against my calf. I was more alarmed than ever by this surprise visit. If a cat had found its way into the inn, I thought, perhaps there existed another way of communicating with the outside world which Ab­bot Melani had not yet discovered. I raised my eyes to share my thoughts with Devize. He had disappeared. A hand gently shook my shoulder.

"Should you not have closed yourself in?"

I opened my eyes. I was in my bed, and Cristofano had roused me from my dream, asking me to prepare and serve dinner. Reluctantly and confusedly, 1 abandoned my visions.

After quickly restoring some order to the kitchen, I prepared a soup of artichoke stalks with dried fish stock and good oil, onions, peas and
involtini,
little rolls made up of tunny-fish slices with a let­tuce filling. This I served up with a generous piece of cheese and a quarter of a pint of watered-down red wine. Over everything, I sprin­kled cinnamon, as I had again promised myself that I would. Cristo­fano himself assisted me with serving, personally feeding Bedfordi while I was thus freed to bring food to all the others and, above all, to feed my master.

Once I had fed Pellegrino, I felt a compelling need for a little pure air in my lungs. The long days of seclusion, most of them spent in the kitchen with the door and window sealed and barred, amidst the smells of cooking continuously wafting from the fireplace, had weighed down on my chest. I therefore resolved to tarry a while in my little chamber. I opened the window, which gave onto the alley­way, and looked down: not a soul was to be seen on that sunny late summer afternoon. Only the watchman dozed placidly, huddled in the corner of the building on the Via dell'Orso. I leaned on the sill with my elbows and breathed in deeply.

"But sooner or later, the Turks will clash with the most powerful princes in Europe."

"Ah yes? And with whom exactly?"

"Well, for example, with the Most Christian King."

"Well then that will be the ideal occasion for them to shake hands without hiding."

The voices, excited yet prudently muted, were unmistakeably those of Brenozzi and Stilone Priaso. They came from the second floor, where the windows of their adjoining chambers were set quite close together. I leaned out discreetly to take a look: like some new Pyramus and Thisbe, the two had devised a rather simple mode of communication beyond Cristofano's strict surveillance. Both being restless and curious by temperament, they could thus give free rein to their irrepressible anxiety.

I wondered whether I ought to profit by that unhoped-for oppor­tunity: unseen, I could perhaps glean some additional information from these two singular personages, one of whom had proven to be a fugitive. And perhaps I might learn something useful for the compli­cated investigations in which I was assisting Abbot Melani.

"And Louis XIV is the real enemy of Christendom: he, not the Turks," proclaimed Brenozzi in bitter, impatient tones. "You will be well aware that in Vienna the Christian princes are fighting to save Europe from the Infidel. Yet the King of France was unwilling to lend his assistance to the enterprise. That was no accident, truly no ac­cident!"

As I have already told, and as I had crudely learned in those months from the chattering of the populace and from the new visitors to the hostelry, Our Lord Pope Innocent XI had worked strenuously to form a Holy League against the Turks.

"It is shameful," assented Stilone Priaso. "And yet he is the most powerful sovereign in all Europe."

"1 tell you, better Mahomet than those arrogant Frenchmen! They bombarded Genoa with a thousand cannon-shots for no better reason than that their fleet had received no salute when passing before the port."

Brenozzi stopped, perhaps gloating over the disconsolate expres­sion which I could imagine painted on the Neapolitan's countenance.

Stilone, for his part, soon resumed with other pressing observations, so that the conversation became more animated.

I leaned out cautiously from my unsuspected position, looking down on their heads from above: in the heat of their conversation, the pair recovered the vitality lost in the darkness of solitude, and political passion almost dispelled fear of the pestilence. Did not the same thing occur with the other guests, whenever my visits or those of the physician—sometimes accompanied by inhalations of pungent vapours, spicy oils and gentle pressures—loosened their tongues and caused them to release a flood of their most intimate reflections?

"In all Europe," resumed Stilone Priaso, "only Prince William of Orange, despite the fact that he is always hunting for loans, has suc­ceeded in stopping the French, who have gold to spare, and in impos­ing the Peace of Nijmegen."

Once again, the Dutchman William of Orange made an appear­ance in our lodgers' talk, he whose name had first arisen in Bedfordi's delirium and then been sketched by Abbot Melani. I was curious about this noble and impoverished David whose military prowess was equalled by the fame of his debts.