I have made of it a sort of solitary divertissement, a joyous contest with my own memory. How was it, how did that passage sound, that chord, that bold modulation?
When the dog days of summer dry the head and the knees, I sit down under the oak that shades our modest cottage, in Pompeo Dulcibeni's favourite seat. Then I close my eyes and gently hum Devize's
rondeau,
once, twice, and then again, in the sure knowledge that my every attempt will be more faded, more uncertain, more distant from the truth.
A few months ago, I sent a letter to Atto. Not having his address in Paris, I sent it to Versailles, in the hope that someone would forward it to him. I am sure that everyone at court knows the famous castrato abbot, counsellor to the Most Christian King.
I confided to him my deep pain at having taken my leave without first expressing to him my gratitude and devotion. I offered him my services, begging him to do me the favour of accepting them and calling myself his most faithful servant. Last of all, I mentioned to him that I had written these memoirs, based upon my diary of those days, of which Atto will not even have suspected the existence.
Yet he has not so far replied to me. Thus, an atrocious suspicion has in recent times begun to disturb my mind.
What will Atto have reported to the Most Christian King on his return to Paris? Will he have succeeded in concealing all those royal secrets which he had discovered? Or will he have lowered his guard, browbeaten by so many questions, thus enabling the King to perceive that he was privy to too many infamies?
Thus, I sometimes imagine a nocturnal ambush in some obscure alleyway, a stifled cry, the footsteps of fleeing ruffians and Atto's body lying in blood and mire...
I shall not give up. Struggling with my fantasies, I continue to hope. And as I await the post from Paris, I sometimes quietly sing a verse or two of his old master, Le Seigneur Luigi:
Speranza, al tuo pallore
so che non speripiu.
E pur non lasci tu
di lusingarmi il core...
Hope, from your pallor
I know you hope no more.
And yet you do not cease
From flattering my heart
...
*
Dear Alessio,
You will at last have completed your reading of my two old friends' opus. It will now be up to you to take the final step that will place it in the hands of the Holy Father. While consigning these lines to paper, I pray that the Holy Spirit may inspire your reading and the decision to which it gives rise.
Almost forty years have passed since I received by post the typescript narrating the tale of the Donzello and its dwarf apprentice. Obviously, my first thought was that here was a work in which fantasy was predominant. True, the two authors had (or so they said) drawn upon a historical document: the unpublished memoir of an apprentice, dating back to 1699. I knew moreover, as a priest and a scholar, that the text was correct in regard to Abbot Morandi and Tommaso Campanella, the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the ancient
Societas Orationis et Mortis,
as well as the no longer existent monastery of the Celestines, and even the bizarre beliefs circulating in the seventeenth century concerning Confession and Extreme Unction. Finally, the many examples of lexical licence and a certain cavalier handling of Latin quotations all point indisputably to the language in use in the seventeenth century.
Indeed, the characters often indulge in all the linguistic and terminological excesses of the writers of baroque treatises, including their heavy pomposity.
Apart, however, from those few points, what was in fact freely invented? Doubt was unavoidable; and not only because of the audacious and at times bewilderingly sensational character of the plot, but the very representation of the two protagonists, who—as I have already mentioned—resemble all too closely the traditional duo of investigators comprising Sherlock Holmes and his assistant and narrator, Watson; not to mention Agatha Christie's Poirot and Hastings, all of whom likewise show a preference for investigating in enclosed spaces (trains, ships, islands): just like the Locanda del Donzello...
Do we not also find in the seventeenth-century memoirs of
Lazarillo de Tormes
an analogous teacher-and-pupil couple, an old man and a young one? And what are we to say then of Dante and his
"maestro e duca”
Virgil, who guides and instructs him in infernal galleries all too like the subterranean tunnels beneath the Donzello?
I therefore assumed that 1 had before me a
Bildungsroman,
to employ the terminology of literary experts, among whom I certainly cannot be numbered: in other words, a novel which instructs; in this instance, written in the form of a memoir. Is it not perhaps true that the ingenuous apprentice becomes an adult in the course of the nights spent underground following Abbot Melani and his teachings?
Be that as it may, I soon realized that such considerations did not answer the question: who was the author of this text? My two friends, or the apprentice himself? Or both? And, if so, in what proportions?
For as long as the presumed models that I found remained distant in time, I was completely unable to reach any conclusion. What point was there in obstinately referring back to the fact that in the work of Aretino or, better, in Boccaccio's
Decameron
, the narrative is divided up into days, and, above all—just as in the Donzello—the characters are held in captivity because of the plague and, in order to while the time away, tell each other the most varied tales? Might that not be the model present in the mind of our unknown apprentice?
"Books always speak of other books and every story tells a tale which has already been told": so I concluded, to quote someone whose name I forget. I therefore desisted from such wild-goose chases.
There were, however, a number of blatant borrowings which cast far deeper doubts upon the authenticity of the entire text: for example, one of the tirades in which Pompeo Dulcibeni rails against crowned heads, accusing them of opportunism and incest, was lifted in part, without a by-your-leave, from a famous speech by Robespierre, to which the authors themselves jokingly referred by leaving Dulcibeni on his bed
"sans culotte".
Finally, the text contains no few excesses, such as the eccentric figures of Ugonio and Ciacconio: modelled on the archetype of the tomb- robbers or
tombaroli,
those predators of antiquities who still infest our land to this day; like the other
corpisantari
Baronio and Gallonio, they take their names from famous seventeenth-century scholars and explorers of the catacombs. Not to mention the courtesan Cloridia who, when listening to and interpreting the apprentice-boy's dreams, has him lie down on her bed and sits behind his head, obviously in anachronistic imitation of the psychoanalyst's typical posture.
Even the malevolent representation of the personage of Pope Innocent XI seemed to me no more than a clumsy attempt to upset historical reality. As a good citizen of Como, I was of course well acquainted with the figure and the work of this Pope and fellow-citizen. Likewise, I was aware of the malign comments and calumnies which—even during his lifetime—were spread concerning him, for obvious purposes of political propaganda, and which Padre Robleda so foolishly divulged to the young apprentice. Such insinuations had, however, been amply disproved by the most serious historians. To take one example, Papasogli had penned an excellent though weighty monograph of over three hundred pages on the Blessed Innocent XI. Published nearly a century ago, in the 1950s, this work had done much to cleanse his memory of all deceit. Even before that, Pastor, that giant among Church historians, had cleared away many suspicions.
Nor was this the only improbability: there was also the story of Superintendent Fouquet.
In the apprentice's tale, Fouquet dies in the Locanda del Donzello, poisoned byAtto Melani on 11th September, 1683; yet, even in school text-books we read that the Superintendent died in the fortress of Pinerol in 1680, and not in Rome in 1683! A number of fanciful historians and novelists have, it is true, put forward the hypothesis that Fouquet did not die in prison, and the question is too old and too worn for me to need repeat it here. Voltaire, who was able to speak with the Superintendent's still surviving relatives, held that we shall never know with certainty when or where he died. Yet it really did seem to me excessive to affirm, as I had read in the opus sent to me by my two old friends, that Fouquet died in Rome, in a hostelry, assassinated on the orders of Louis XIV
Here, I had found something that simply could not hold water, a mere manipulation of history. I was at that point close to consigning the typescript to the waste-paper basket. Had I not found the proof that it was a forgery? I was soon, however, to discover that matters were not quite so simple.
Everything began to become more and more unclear when I decided to study the figure of Fouquet in depth. For centuries, the Superintendent has been held up by history books as the veritable prototype of the venial and corrupt minister. Colbert, on the contrary, passes for a model statesman. According to Atto Melani, however, the honest Fouquet was an innocent victim of the envy and hostility of the mediocre Colbert. At first, I ascribed that surprising reversal to pure fantasy, all the more so in that I found in the text echoes of an old novel about Fouquet by Paul Morand. I was, however, soon to revise my beliefs. I found in a library an authoritative essay penned by the French historian, Daniel Dessert, who, a century ago—documents in hand— spoke out to restore Fouquet's merited glory and to unmask the baseness and conspiracies of Colbert. In his admirable essay, Dessert set out point by point (and proved unequivocally) all that Atto told the young man in defence of the Superintendent.
Unfortunately, as so often happens to those who call hoary old myths into question, the precious work of Dessert was consigned to oblivion by the consortium of historians, whom Dessert had made so bold as to accuse of laziness and ignorance. It is, nevertheless, significant that no historian has ever had the courage to disprove his weighty and impassioned study.
Thus, the dramatic case of Fouquet, as evoked with such feeling by Abbot Melani, was anything but a mere narrative invention. Not only that: continuing my library research, I also verified the acquaintance between Kircher and Fouquet which, although not clearly documented, is quite probable, given the fact that the Jesuit (Anatole France mentions this in his opuscule on Fouquet, and it is partially borne out in Kircher's writings) really was interested in the Superintendent's mummies.
Even the thoroughly mysterious tale of Fouquet's sequestration at Pinerol, as I have scrupulously verified, is authentic in every detail. The Sun King really did seem to be holding the Superintendent in prison for fear of what he knew; yet it has never been discovered what that might have been. The ambiguous Comte de Lauzun is also faithfully represented, he who for ten years was imprisoned at Pinerol, where he succeeded in communicating secretly (and quite inexplicably) with Fouquet and was released immediately after the Superintendent's demise.
The book did, then, contain a number of solid and well-documented references to historical reality.
"Now, what if it were all true?" I found myself thinking, as I turned the pages of this disturbing typescript.
At that juncture, I was unable to restrain myself from undertaking a number of other library searches, in the hope of uncovering some gross error which might demonstrate the falseness of my two friends' writings, and which might enable me to be free of the question. I must confess, I was afraid.
Alas, my suppressed fears were borne out. With unimaginable rapidity, bursting out from dictionaries, encyclopaedias and contemporary manuals, there emerged before my eyes—exactly as I had read in the typescript—descriptions of Rome, quarantine measures, all the theories concerning the plague, both in London and in Rome, Cristofano's remedies and the apprentice's menus; and similarly with Louis XIV, Maria Teresa, the Venetian mirror-makers, even down to Tiracorda's riddles and the plan of the underground galleries in the Holy City.
My head was in a whirl of thoughts about the divining rod, the interpretation of dreams, numerological and astrological doctrines, the saga of
mamacoca
(i.e. coca); and lastly, the battle for Vienna, including the secrets of French siege technique which the Turks had so mysteriously acquired, as well as the mystery of the strategic errors which led to the Infidels' ruinous defeat.
In the Casanatense Library in Rome, still incredulous before an original page from the Bible printed by Komarek, I gave myself up for lost: all that I had read proved stupefyingly authentic, down to the most insignificant details.
Albeit unwillingly, I found myself bound to continue. Instead of errors, I had found proven facts and circumstances. I was beginning to feel myself the victim of an astute trap, an evil system of wheels within wheels, a spider's web in which, the further one penetrates, the more one is ensnared.
I therefore decided to look into the theories of Kircher: I already knew quite a few things about his life and writings, but I had never heard either of the
secretum pestis
or indeed of the supposed
secretum vitae
capable of dispelling the plague, let alone of a
rondeau
in which its secret was encrypted. It is true that I had, like Padre Robleda, read Kircher's
Magnes, sive de arte magnetica,
in which the German Jesuit claims that music has therapeutic powers and even recommends the use of a melody composed by himself as an antidote for the bite of the tarantula. I also knew that in modern times Kircher had been labelled a charlatan: in his treatise on the plague, for example, he claimed that he had seen the bacilli of the disease under the microscope. Yet, the historians object, in Kircher's time, there did not exist sufficiently powerful magnifying lenses. So, was it all invented?
If that were the case, I would need to assemble all the necessary proofs. In the first place, I clarified my ideas about the disease known as the plague: this is the bubonic plague, caused by the bacillus
Yersinia pestis
which is transmitted by fleas to rats, and by the latter to man. It has nothing to do with the various animal plagues, or with the so-called pulmonary plague which from time to time strikes in the Third World.
The surprise came when I read that bubonic plague has not existed for centuries, nor does anyone know why.
I even found myself smiling when I read that in Europe (and even earlier in Italy) the plague practically disappeared at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost contemporaneously with the events at the Donzello. I was expecting that.
Many theories exist about its mysterious disappearance, yet none is definitive. Some see in this a consequence of more advanced measures of sanitation adopted by mankind; others, however, think that we must thank the arrival in Europe of
Rattus norvegicus
(the brown rat) which supplanted
Rattus rattus
(the black rat), which is host to
Xenopsilla cheopis
, the flea that acts as carrier of the plague bacillus. Others attribute the merit to new brick and tile buildings, replacing those built of timber and straw, or to the removal of domestic granaries, which drove rats from housing. Yet others insist upon the role played by pseudo-tuberculosis, a benign illness which has the effect of giving immunity to bubonic plague.