by Rita Monaldi
"No, they are not here. Otherwise, we'd hear some sound, or at least some secretary would emerge."
It was as though the trio had vanished into nothingness.
"There's something wrong here," said Atto, pensively pinching the dimple on his chin. "Let us get a move on. Standing around here will get us nowhere. And there's much work to be done."
Our goal was the charger. Judging by the picture depicting Capitor's three presents, which we had found at the Vessel two days before, this must be a rather bulky object. It was made of gold, exquisitely wrought and magnificent in appearance. It would have been in Benedetti's interest to show it for all to see in some fine room; however, seeing the state of abandonment of the Vessel, it was not unlikely that someone had put it in a safe place to preserve it from being stolen.
"We found the picture on the second floor," said Atto. "We shall begin there."
This was the floor with the four apartments with a bath chamber and a little shared salon. Our search could not have been more thorough. We inspected beds, wardrobes, dressers and little rooms, all to no effect.
In the process of checking every possible nook and cranny, we had to rummage through each of the four little libraries with which the four apartments were equipped. Climbing onto a chair, I began to look behind every row of books, swallowing some of the dust which had gathered there over who knows how many years. This phase in the search brought me no luck either, apart from a single detail.
As I was inspecting the books in the fourth and last library, my eyes settled on the third shelf from the top. This was a long row of volumes which were all the same, with their spines engraved in gold
letters: HERODOTUS THE HISTORIES
On the first volume, under the title, I read:
Book I LYDIA AND PERSIA
Obviously, I knew the name and works of the famous Greek historian. But what struck me was the title: here was Lydia, the land of Croesus.
"I am going down to the first floor, there's nothing here," called Atto, as he descended the stairs.
"I've still something to do up here, I'll join you in a moment," I replied.
Indeed, I did have something to do. I climbed down from the chair on which I was perched and settled into an armchair. I opened the book to search for the passages containing the story of Croesus.
As I turned the pages, I offered up my silent thanks to the walls within which I sat. Once again, the Vessel had, through ways obscure and ineffable, perceived a request for explanations, a yearning for knowledge. This time, however, it had not replied with its inscriptions but had placed a book before my eyes.
The search was more successful than that for the dish. The passage which explained everything began at the twenty-seventh chapter.
The immensely wealthy Croesus, King of Lydia, received one day a visit from Solon, the Athenian sage. Croesus said to him: "Stranger of Athens, we have heard much of thy wisdom and of thy travels through many lands, from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world. I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom, of all the men that thou hast seen, thou deemest the most happy?"
Croesus, who was extraordinarily wealthy, venerated and powerful, obviously thought that Solon would say that it was he, great Sovereign of the Lydians, who was the happiest of men. Instead, Solon spoke of someone unknown, a certain Tellos of Athens, who had had a prosperous life, many sons and grandsons, and had died in battle against his city's enemies. The second prize, he accorded to the Argive brothers, Cleobis and Biton, two athletes who took the yoke of their old mother's chariot on their shoulders for a good forty-five furlongs to the temple in which the festival of the goddess Hera was being celebrated. Upon reaching the temple, their mother prayed Hera to grant her sons the best fate a man could have. After banqueting and performing the sacred rites, Cleobis and Biton lay down to sleep in the temple and never again awoke: such was their end. The people, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made.
Croesus then broke in angrily, "What, stranger of Athens, is my happiness, then, so utterly set at nought by thee, that thou dost not even put me on a level with common men?" Solon answered with these wise words:
I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but with respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily. For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life.
… If he end his life well, he is of a truth the man of whom thou art in search, the man who may rightly be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate…
… He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, is, in my judgment, entitled to bear the name of 'happy'. But in every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin.
"Boy, are you coming or not? Our work is only beginning!" Atto's voice called me back sharply to the present; the volume of Herodotus jumped in my hand.
I had read enough, I thought. Now I was beginning to understand.
If my reasoning was correct, the name Lidio must conceal no less than the Sun King in person, just as he was hidden behind the metaphor of Croesus in Albicastro's speech. Besides, had not Atto mentioned to me that Herodotus was among Louis and Maria's favourite authors?
Here was the secret I had sought in vain: the Connestabilessa and the King wrote to one another secretly, and Atto was their go-between!
Of course, they were no longer Maria and Louis, the ivory- skinned maiden and the timid youth of the apparitions at the Vessel; their writings were no longer murmurings of love. Nevertheless, the King of France still held the counsel of Maria Mancini in high esteem, so much so that he was prepared to run the risk of a clandestine correspondence in order to enjoy the benefit of her wit. I well remembered that in a post scriptum Atto had written to her:
You know what value he sets upon your judgement and your satisfaction.
Atto had in truth written in the same letter that he had something to deliver to the Connestabilessa: something which, he asserted, might cause her to change her opinion of Lidio. Whatever could that have been?
After the first moments of enthusiasm, however, doubts surfaced: the reference to Herodotus was obvious, but it was less evident that Lidio was the pseudonym for the Most Christian King. Of course, it was not perhaps an accident that Louis should have loved to read Herodotus together with his beloved. Besides, Albicastro had made an all-too-facile comparison between Croesus and the King of France. All in all, one could not completely rule out the possibility that, in Atto and Maria's correspondence, someone quite different might be hidden behind the disguise of the King of Lydia. What was more, I knew too little about Maria Mancini's life since her departure from Paris to be able to find out who this mysterious personage might be.
In other words, I still needed to confirm the identity of one of the personages. I already knew which one: Silvio.
Maria Mancini had written to Atto, sometimes calling him Silvio, and in those passages in her letters she sent him warnings, recommendations and even reproofs, the meaning of which remained thoroughly obscure to me.
And what, I asked myself, if these too were literary quotations, just like the Lidio referred to in Herodotus? I began to imagine that Silvio too might also be a character from some book, perhaps a messenger of love, even one drawn from mythology.
There, I said to myself, if only I could discover where that name, Silvio, came from, perhaps I might obtain a few more clues as to who Lidio might be or even, I hoped, definitive proof that the King and the Connestabilessa were still engaged in amorous conversations.
I soon grew discouraged; I had only one name: Silvio. It was like
looking for a needle in a haystack. Where was I to begin my search? A hand fell heavily on my shoulder, dragging me from my reflections.
"Will you stop meditating with that book in your hand like Saint Ignatius? Come and help me."
The Abbot, covered in dust and perspiration, had come to get me back to work.
"So far, I have found nothing. I mean to continue searching the first floor. Come and help me."
"I am coming, Signor Atto, I am coming," said I, climbing onto the chair and replacing the little volume of Herodotus.
My meditations would have to wait until later.
So we descended to the first floor, with its gallery of mirrors and its distorted perspective and, on either side, the little chapel, the bath chamber and the two little chambers dedicated, the one to the papacy and the other to France.
Suddenly, I found myself facing the delightful image, woven into a tapestry, of a lovely nymph dressed in a wolf's skin, who had been wounded in her flank by the arrow of a young hunter. The nymph's gentle appearance, from her ivory complexion to her soft ebony curls, were in sharp contrast to the blood that gushed from her side and the desperation written on the young man's face. The floral frame punctuated with scrolls and medallions in relief completed the tapestry with exquisite elegance.
Then I recognised it. This was one of the two Flemish tapestries before which Abbot Melani had stood, lost in ecstatic admiration, on our previous visit to the Vessel. Atto had explained to me that it was he himself who had persuaded Elpidio Benedetti to purchase it when the latter was visiting France some thirty years previously. What else had the Abbot said to me? This I pondered, while my thoughts began dancing in my head like Bacchantes moving in procession towards some exciting, yet unknown goal. Originally, there had been four tapestries — that, Melani had told me — but two of them he had made Benedetti present to Maria Mancini, because the scenes depicted in them were drawn from an amorous drama, The Faithful Shepherd, much appreciated by her and the young King (but this detail I had almost had to drag from him, so reticent had Atto become at that juncture). A drama of love…
Turning to Abbot Melani with an ingenuous smile, while I struggled to feign a bad bout of coughing, brought on by all that dust, I begged his leave to absent myself awhile from our search. Then, without even awaiting his permission, like some new Mercury flying on winged heels, I dashed up the stairs to the second floor and in a matter of seconds I was again visiting the four libraries, in one of which I had left the Histories of Herodotus.
Perched on a chair, my fingers almost scratching at the spines of the volumes, I scanned their titles, as though my eyes needed help from the sense of touch to confirm what they were reading.
At last I found it: tiny, no more than a booklet, some six inches high and less than half an inch thick. It was bound in black leather patterned with golden squares, its spine decorated with Florentine lilies. I
opened it: PASTOR FIDO,
I then placed my trust in the book-mark, of fine maroon satin, by now faded; opening at the place where it had lain since time immemorial, I read at random:
Happy Dorinda! Heav 'n has sent to thee That bliss you went in search to find.
I exulted. Dorinda: that was the name of the wounded nymph whom I had just seen in the tapestry. Abbot Melani had told me when we saw it for the first time. And Dorinda was also the name which the Connestabilessa had given herself in her last letter, in which she addressed Atto as Silvio.
1 had found what I was looking for. Now it only remained for me to seek the name Silvio. If, as I thought, he was one of the characters from The Faithful Shepherd, I had succeeded. So, with my breast trembling with emotion, I began to leaf through the pages of the little book, in search of a Silvio who might perhaps be a messenger of love between Dorinda and her beloved, just as Melani was perhaps the go-between linking the Connestabilessa and the Most Christian King.
Very soon, I found it:
Know you not Silvio, son to famed Montano?
That lovely boy! He's the delightful swain.
O prosp'rous youth…
This Silvio was, then, no go-between, as I had hoped, but a wealthy and beauteous youth. Apart from his wealth, he seemed hardly a portrait of Abbot Melani…
What I then read surpassed all my imagining:
O Silvio, Silvio! Why did nature give
Such flower of beauty, delicate and sweet,
In this thy Spring of life, to be so slighted?
It was a dialogue between Silvio and his old servant Linco, who reproves the youth for his hard-heartedness. I turned more pages:
O foolish boy, who fly to distant hills
For dang'rous game, when here at home you may
Pursue what's near, domestic and secure?
SILVIO:
Pray, in what forest ranges this wild creature?
LINCO:
The forest is yourself, and the wild creature Which dwells therein is your fierce disposition
Shall I not say thou hast a lion's heart
And that thy hardened breast is cased with steel?
No, it could not be Atto who hid behind the nickname Silvio. Rather, someone else came all too readily to mind when I read of that scornful, rich young shepherd:
Now, Silvio, look around, and take a view Of all this world; cdl that is fair and good Is the great work of love. The heav'ns, the earth, The sea are lovers too.
In short, all nature is in love but you. And shall you, Silvio, be the one exception, The only soul in heav 'n and earth and sea, A proof against this mighty force of nature?
I thought once more of all that Abbot Melani had told me: was not that series of reproofs perfectly suited to His Majesty the Most Christian King of France? Had not the Sovereign's heart turned to ice after his separation from Maria Mancini?
Thou art, my Silvio, rigidly severe To one who loves thee ev'n to adoration. What soul could think, beneath so sweet a face A heart so hard and cruel was concealed?
And, yet again:
O cruel Silvio! O most ruthful swain!
I turned to the frontispiece. I wanted before all else to read the foreword and the initial argumentum or resume of the drama, so as to discover what part was played in it by the nymph Dorinda who provided the Connestabilessa with her nom de plume. Thus I learned that Silvio was betrothed to Amaryllis, but did not love her. He loved no one. He wanted only to go hunting in the forest. Then, however, he accidentally wounded in the side a nymph who was in love with him — Dorinda, to be precise — having mistaken her for a wild beast because she wore a wolf's skin. At that point, Silvio fell in love with her, broke his bow and arrows, cured the wound and the couple married.
Was the tale not perhaps very like that of the young King of France, betrothed to the Spanish Infanta but in love with Maria Mancini? Only the denouement of their love story, as well I knew from Atto, was very different from that of The Faithful Shepherd, for which they themselves so yearned.
Time was growing short. Atto would soon be coming up to look for me. I entered the spiral staircase. There, I heard a strange buzzing. Cautiously descending a few steps, I peeped out to glance at Abbot Melani. Tired, Atto had slumped into an armchair to await my return, and had gone to sleep.
I sat down on a step and drew my conclusions: not only the name of Lidio but also that of Silvio were screens concealing the Most Christian King. Thus, the Connestabilessa was not only what Solon had been for Croesus; she still remained Dorinda, Silvio's lover…
Many things in Atto's and Maria's letters had at last become clear to me. What lay hidden in those letters was not state espionage, not obscure political manoeuvring, not the turbid depths of international diplomacy, as I had suspected all that time when I so ignobly spied on Atto and Maria. No, those letters concealed an even greater secret, an unimaginable, yet purer one: Louis and Maria were still writing to one another forty years after their last farewell.
At last I understood why Atto spoke to me with such confidence of the French Sov
ereign's sentiments for the Connestabilessa and how his suffering at the loss of his beloved had hardened his heart. I understood, too, why he told of these things as though they were alive and kicking today; he was constantly dealing with the most confidential first-hand details of the undying love between the couple! That was why Atto had come to Rome: to meet Maria Mancini, after an absence of thirty years, and to bring who knows what embassy of love on behalf of the Most Christian King. I would have given anything to know at that moment what the King was sending through Abbot Melani. Whatever could necessitate a meeting en tete a tete. A signed letter from the King? A pledge of love?
I could also understand why Abbot Melani had hesitated so much when answering my questions the first time we had seen those tapestries at the Vessel. The Faithful Shepherd had not only been the favourite reading of the two old lovers: it still was. It was their secret code. And Atto acted as their go-between, now as then.
Yet, what kind of love can there be between two old persons who have not seen one another for forty years? The answer was to be found in a letter from Atto to Maria, which I recalled at that moment:
Silvio was proud, 'tis true, but he venerates the gods, and was one day vanquished by your Cupid. Since then he has ever bowed down before you, calling you his.
Altho' his you were not.
A love made up of memories and lost opportunities, such was the King's for Maria Mancini.
And I who had believed that Atto was referring there to his wretched castrato's estate! No, Atto was referring to the unbroken chastity of that love, and to how present it still was in the old Sovereign's soul.
I then thought of all the passages in Maria's letters in which she wrote addressing Silvio, and I understood at last the meaning of the warnings and reproaches which she borrowed from The Faithful Shepherd.
O, Silvio, Silvio! who in thine early years hast found the fates propitious, I tell thee, too early wit has ignorance for fruit.
These words, which were impenetrable when I believed them to be addressed to Abbot Melani, now calmly revealed their meaning to me. The Most Christian King had indeed ascended to the throne very young; thus, his destiny had matured "when still unripe". But he who comes to power too early must, "on attaining maturity, surely reap the fruit of ignorance", in other words remain arrogant throughout his whole life. And now that the burning question was that of the Spanish succession, Maria was warning Louis XIV to act wisely.
