"If you knew, my boy, if you only knew!"
"But what exactly do they get up to?"
"They ask for charity."
"Is that all?" I retorted, disappointed. "Begging is no crime. If they are poor, what fault is it of theirs?"
"Who told you they were poor?"
"Did you not tell me just now that they are mendicants?"
"Yes, but there are those who beg by choice, not only necessity."
"By choice?" I repeated, laughing, beginning to suspect that within that mountain of muscle called Sfasciamonti there might be no more than half an ounce of brain.
"Or better: for lucre. Begging is one of the best-paying trades in the world, whether you believe that or not. In three hours, they earn more than you can in a month."
I was speechless.
"Are they many?"
"Certainly. They are everywhere."
For a moment, I was struck by the certainty with which he replied to my last question. I saw him look about himself and scrutinise the avenue full of carriages and bustling with servants, as though he were afraid of having spoken too freely.
"I have already raised the matter with the Governor of Rome, Monsignor Pallavicini," he resumed, "but no one wants to know about this. They say, Sfasciamonti, calm down. Sfasciamonti, go take a drink. But I know it: Rome is full of cerretani and no one sees them. Whenever something ugly happens, it is always their doing."
"Do you mean that, even before, when you were following that young man and Abbot Melani was wounded…"
"Ah yes, the cerretano wounded him."
"How do you know that he was a cerretano?'
"I was at the San Pancrazio Gate when I recognised him. The police have been on his heels for some time, but one can never catch these cerretani. I knew at once that he was up to some mis chief, that he had some mission to accomplish. I did not like the fact that he was so close to the Villa Spada, so I followed him."
"A mission? And what makes you so sure of that?" I asked with a hint of scepticism.
"A cerretano never goes down the street without looking to the right and to the left, in search of people's purses and many other such knavish and swindling things. They are arrant rogues, forever robbing, loitering and engaging in acts of poltroonery or luxuriousness. I know them well, that I do: those eyes that are too sly, that rotten look, they are all like that. A cerretano who walks looking in front of him, like ordinary people, is certainly on the point of committing some major outrage. I cried out until the other sergeants of the villa heard me. A pity he escaped, or we'd have known more."
I thought of how Abbot Melani would behave in my place.
"I'll wager that you'll manage to obtain information," I hazarded, "and so to discover what became of that cerretano. Abbot Melani, who is lodging here at the Villa Spada, will certainly be most grateful to you," said I, hoping to arouse the catchpoll's cupidity.
"Of course, I can obtain information. Sfasciamonti always knows whom to ask," he replied, and I saw shining in his eyes, not so much the hope of gain as professional pride.
Sfasciamonti had resumed his rounds and I was still watching his massive figure merge into the distant curve of the outer wall when I noticed a bizarre young man, as curved and gangling as a crane, coming towards me.
"Excuse me," he asked in a friendly tone, "I am secretary to Abbot Melani, I arrived with him this morning. I had to return to the city for a few hours and now I can no longer find my way. How the deuce does one get into the villa? Was there not a door with windows in it here in front?"
I explained to him that there was indeed a door with a window, but that was behind the great house.
"Did you not say that you are secretary to Abbot Melani, if I heard you correctly?" I asked in astonishment, for Atto had said nothing to me about his not being alone.
"Yes, do you know him?"
"About time! Where were you hiding?" snapped Abbot Melani, when I brought his secretary to his apartment.
While escorting him to Atto, I was able to observe him better. He had a great aquiline nose planted between two blue eyes which sheltered behind a pair of spectacles with unusually thick and dirty lenses and were crowned by two fair and bushy eyebrows. On his head, a forelock strove in vain to distract attention from his long, scrawny neck, on which sat an insolently pointed Adam's apple.
"I… went to pay my respects to Cardinal Casanate," said he by way of an excuse, "and I tarried awhile too long."
"Let me guess," quoth Atto, half in amusement, half in irritation. "You will have spent plenty of time in the antechamber, they'll have asked you three thousand times who you were and who was sending you. In the end, after yet another half an hour's wait, they will have told you that Casanate was dead."
"Well, just so…" stammered the other.
"How many times must I insist that you are always to tell me where you are going, when you absent yourself? Cardinal Casanate has been dead these six months now: I knew that and I could have spared you the loss of face. My boy," said Atto, turning to me, "this is Buvat, Jean Buvat. He works as a scribe at the Royal Library in Paris and he is a good man. He is somewhat absent-minded and rather too fond of his wine; but he has the honour to serve sometimes in my retinue, and this is one such occasion."
I did indeed recall that he was a collaborator of Atto's, as the Abbot had told me at the time of our first encounter, and that he was a copyist of extraordinary talent. We saluted one another with an embarrassed nod. His shirt ill tucked into his breeches and ballooning out, and the laces of his sleeves tightened into a knot with no bow were further signs of the young man's distracted nature.
"You speak our language very well," said I, addressing him in affable tones, in an attempt to make amends for the Abbot's brutality.
"Ah, spoken tongues are not his only talent," interjected Atto. "Buvat is at his best with a pen in his hand, but not like you: you create, he copies. And he does that like no other. But of this we shall speak another time. Go and change your clothes, Buvat, you are not presentable."
Buvat retired without a word into the small adjoining room, where his couch had been arranged among the trunks and portmanteaux.
Since I was there, I spoke to Atto of my conversation with Sfasciamonti.
"Cerretani, you tell me: canters, secret sects. So, according to your catchpoll, that tatterdemalion came accidentally with dagger drawn to try out his blade on my arm. How interesting."
"Have you another hypothesis?" I asked, seeing his scepticism.
"Oh, no, indeed not. That was just a manner of speaking," said he, laconically. "After all, in France too something of the kind exists among mendicants; even if people know of these things only by hearsay and never anything more precise."
The Abbot had received me with his windows open onto the gardens, wearing a dressing gown as he sat in a fine red velvet armchair beside a table bearing on the remains of a sumptuous luncheon: the bones of a large black umber, still smelling of wild fennel. I was reminded that I had not yet eaten that morning and felt a subtle languor in my stomach.
"I do know of a number of ancient traditions," continued Atto, massaging his wounded arm, "but these are things that have now been somewhat lost. Once in Paris, there was the Great Caesar, or King of Thule, the sovereign of those ragamuffins and vagabonds. He would cross the city on a wretched dog-cart, as though mimicking a real sovereign. They say that he had his court, his pages and his vassals in every province. He would even summon the Estates-General."
"Do you mean an assembly of the people?"
"Exactly, but instead of nobles, priests and ladies, he would summon thousands of the halt, the lame and the blind, thieves, beggars, mountebanks, whores and dwarves… Yes, I mean all manner of beings," he broke off, hastening to correct himself, "but please do remove that apron with all those tools, it must be so heavy," said he, trying to change the subject.