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The abbot laughed heartily: "Do you know what brought Colbert to his deathbed?"

"A renal colic, you said."

"Precisely. And do you know why? The King, furious at his latest blunder, summoned him and showered him with insults and contu­mely."

"Was this some administrative error?"

"Far more. To emulate Fouquet's expertise, Colbert stuck his nose into the building of a new wing for the Chateau of Versailles, impos­ing his own opinions on the builders, who were unable to make him understand the risks incurred by his villainous intervention."

"But how so? Fouquet had died in prison three years before, and Colbert was still obsessed with him?"

"For as long as the Superintendent remained alive, although entombed at Pinerol, Colbert lived in a state of constant terror that the King might one day return him to his post. Even when Fouquet was no more, the memory of his all-too-brilliant, genial, cultivated, well-loved and admired predecessor remained etched into the
Coluber's
soul. Col­bert had many sons who were healthy and robust, and he enriched them all; he had immense power, while his adversary's family was dis­persed far from the capital and condemned perpetually to struggle against creditors. Yet the
Coluber'
s thoughts could never be free of that one original defeat inflicted upon him by Mother Nature, who had so despised him as to refuse her own gifts and shower them prodigally upon his rival Fouquet."

"How did the building work go at Versailles?"

"The new wing collapsed, and all the court laughed. The King flew into a rage with Colbert who, overcome by humiliation, suffered a most violent attack of the colic. After days of screaming in pain, the sickness brought him to his death throes."

I was at a loss for words before the power of divine vengeance.

"You were truly a good friend of Superintendent Fouquet," was the only phrase I was able to utter.

"I would have wished to be a better friend."

We heard a door open and then close again on the first floor; then footfalls moved towards the stairs.

"Better leave the way open for science," said Atto, alluding to the approach of Cristofano. "But remember that we shall have work to do later."

And he ran to take shelter on the stairway leading to the cellars, while the doctor passed, after which he moved swiftly upstairs.

Cristofano had come to ask me to prepare dinner, because the other guests were complaining.

"I thought I heard footsteps when I was coming downstairs. Has someone perhaps been here?"

"Absolutely not, you will have heard me: I was just getting ready to prepare the stove," said I, pretending to busy myself with the pots and pans.

I would have liked to retain the doctor but he, reassured by my reply, returned directly to his apartment, begging me to serve dinner as soon as possible. Thank heavens, thought I, that he had decided to serve only two meals a day.

I set myself to preparing a soup of semolina with beans, garlic and cinnamon, with sugar on it, to which I added cheese, sweet-smelling herbs, a few little pancakes and half a pint of the watered-down wine.

While I was attending to my cooking, a thousand turbid thoughts rushed through my poor prentice's mind. In the first place came what Abbot Melani had just told me. I was shaken: here, I thought, are all the present and past troubles of the abbot: a man capable of de­ceit and dissimulation (and to some extent, who is not?) but not in­clined to deny the past. His former familiarity with Superintendent Fouquet was the one mark that not even his juvenile flight to Rome and the humiliations that had followed could cancel out, and which even now made him uncertain of the King's favour. Yet he continued to defend his benefactor's memory. Perhaps he spoke so freely only with me, as I would certainly never be able to report his words to the French court.

I went over again in my memory what he had discovered among Colbert's papers. In all tranquillity, he had confided in me how he had purloined a number of confidential documents from the
Coluber
s study, forcing the devices which were designed to protect them. But this was no surprise, given the character of the man, as I had already learned both from others and from him in person. What had struck me was the mission which he had taken upon himself: to find in Rome his old friend and protector, Superintendent Fouquet. That could be no light matter for Abbot Melani, not only because the Super­intendent had hitherto been believed dead, but also because it was precisely he who had, however involuntarily, involved Atto Melani in the scandal: and I seemed, according to the abbot, to be the one per­son privy to his secret mission, which only the sudden closure of the inn when we were placed in quarantine had, I thought, momentarily interrupted. Thus, when I had entered the gallery under the hostel­ry, I was in the company of a special agent of the King of France! I felt honoured that he should go to so much trouble to resolve the strange affairs which had taken place at the Donzello, including the theft of my little pearls. And indeed it was he who had insistently requested my help. By now, I would not have hesitated one moment to give the abbot copies of the keys to Dulcibeni and Devize's chambers, which only a day before I had refused. However, it was too late: because of Cristofano's instructions, the two would, like the other guests, re­main closed in their apartments all the time, making any search of those apartments impossible. And the abbot had already explained how inopportune it would be to ask questions of them, which might raise their suspicions.

I was proud to share so many secrets, but all that was as nothing when compared with the tangle of sentiments provoked by my col­loquy with Cloridia.

After bringing dinner to every guest in their chambers, I went first to see Bedfordi, then Pellegrino, where both Cristofano and I took care of feeding the patients. The Englishman was jabbering incom­prehensible things. The doctor seemed worried. So much so that he went to Devize's chamber next door, explaining Bedfordi's condition to him and begging him to lay aside his guitar at least for the time be­ing: the musician was, in fact, practising sonorously, rehearsing on his instrument a fine chaconne which was among his favourite pieces.

"I shall do better," replied Devize laconically.

And, instead of leaving off from playing, he launched into the notes of his
rondeau.
Cristofano was about to protest, but the mys­terious enchantment of that music enveloped him, lighting up his face, and, nodding benevolently, the physician went out of the door without making a sound.

A little later, whilst I was descending from Pellegrino's chamber, up under the eaves, I was called in a stage whisper from the second floor. It was Padre Robleda, whose room was near the stairs. Leaning out from his door, he asked me for news of the two patients.

"And the Englishman is no better?"

"I would say not," I replied.

"And has the doctor nothing new to tell us?"

"Not really."

Meanwhile, the last echo of Devize's
rondeau
reached us. Robleda, hearing those notes, permitted himself a languid sigh.

"Music is the voice of God," said he, explaining himself.

Seeing that I was carrying the unguents with me, I took the op­portunity to ask him whether he had a little time for the administra­tion of the remedies against the infection.

With a gesture, he invited me to enter his little chamber.

I was about to put my things down on a chair which was situated just past the door.

"No, no, no, wait, I need this!"

He hurriedly laid on the seat a little glass box with a black pear- wood frame, with inside it a Christ child and fruit and flowers, stand­ing on little feet shaped like onions.

"I bought it here in Rome. It is precious, and it will be safer on the chair."

Robleda's weak excuse was a sign that his desire for conversa­tion, after long hours passed in solitude, was now equal to his fear of contact with someone who must, he knew, touch Bedfordi every day. I then reminded him that I was to apply the remedy with my own hands, but that there was no cause for mistrust, as Cristofano himself had reassured everyone of my resistance to the infection.

"Of course, of course," was all he answered, marking his cautious confidence.

I asked him to uncover his chest, since I would have to anoint him and to place a poultice in the region of his heart and especially around the left pap.

"And why is that?" asked the Jesuit, perturbed.

I explained that this was what Cristofano had recommended, as his anxious character might risk weakening his heart.

He became calmer and, while I was opening the bag and looking for the right jars, lay supine on the bed. Above this there hung a por­trait of Our Lord Innocent XI.

Robleda began almost at once to complain of Cristofano's inde­cision, and the fact that he had not yet found a clear explanation for the death of Mourai or for the distemper which had laid Pellegrino low; indeed, there were even uncertainties concerning the plague to which Bedfordi had fallen victim, and all this was sufficient to affirm without the shadow of a doubt that the Tuscan physician was not up to the task. He then went on to complain about the other guests and about Signor Pellegrino, whom he blamed for the present situation. He began with my master, who was, according to him, insufficiently vigilant about the cleanliness of the hostelry. He came next to Brenozzi and Bedfordi, who, after their long voy­age, could certainly have brought some obscure infection to the inn. For the same reason, he suspected Stilone Priaso (who came from Naples, a city where the air was notoriously unhealthy) and Devize (who had also journeyed from Naples), Atto Melani (whose pres­ence at the inn and whose dreadful reputation surely called for re­course to prayer), the woman in the little tower (of whose habitual presence at the inn he swore that he had never heard, otherwise he would never have set foot at the Donzello); and lastly he inveighed against Dulcibeni, whose mean Jansenist expression, said Robleda, had never pleased him.

"Jansenist?" I asked, curious about that word which I was hearing for the first time.

I then learned in brief from Robleda that the Jansenists were a most dangerous and pernicious sect. They took their name from Jansenius, the founder of this doctrine (if indeed it could be called one), and among his followers there was a madman called Pasqual or Pascale, who wore stockings soaked with cognac to keep his feet warm and who had written certain letters containing matter gravely offensive to the Church, to our Lord Jesus Christ and to all honest persons of good sense with faith in God.

But here the Jesuit broke off to blow his nose: "What an im­modest stink there is in this oil of yours. Are you sure it is not poisonous?"

I reassured him as to the authority of this remedy, prepared by Antonio Fiorentino to protect people from the pestilence at the time of the republic of Florence. The ingredients, as Cristofano had taught me, were none other than theriac of the Levant boiled with the juice of lemons, carline thistle,
imperatoria
, gentian, saffron,
Dictamnus albus
and sandarac. Gently accompanied by the massage I had begun to give his chest, Robleda seemed to be lulled by the sound of the names of these ingredients, almost as though that cancelled out their disagreeable odour. As I had already observed with Cloridia, the pun­gent vapours and the various techniques of touch with which I ap­plied Cristofano's
remedia
pacified the guests to the depths of their souls and loosened their tongues.

"When all is said and done, are they not almost heretics, those Jansenists?" I resumed.

"More than almost," replied Robleda with satisfaction.

Indeed, Jansenius had written a book the propositions of which had been harshly condemned many years ago by Pope Innocent X. "But why are you of the opinion that Signor Dulcibeni belongs to the sect of the Jansenists?"

Robleda explained to me that on the afternoon before the quar­antine, he had seen Dulcibeni return to the Donzello with a number of books under his arm which he had probably acquired from some bookshop, perhaps in the nearby Piazza Navona where many books are sold. Among these texts, Robleda had noticed the title of a forbidden book which precisely inclined towards that heretical doctrine. And that, in the Jesuit's opinion, was an unequivocal sign that Dulcibeni belonged to the Jansenist sect.

"Is it not strange, however, that such a book may be purchased here in Rome," I objected, "seeing that Pope Innocent XI will doubt­less have condemned the Jansenists in his turn."