In a great cloud of dust they crossed the ground and, amid violent spray, the river, while in the distance some men were still emptying their weapons after them.
They reached the right bank, to applause. Toiras said: “Très bien fait, mon cher ami,” then added, to Roberto, “La Grive, today all of them ran off, and only you remained. What’s bred in the bone … You’re wasted in that company of cowards. You will join my staff.”
Roberto thanked him and then, climbing down from the saddle, held out a hand to his father, to thank him. Pozzo clasped it absently, saying, “I’m sorry for that Spaniard, such a fine gentleman. Well, war’s an ugly animal, that’s sure. Anyway, my son, never forget: always be good, but if somebody comes at you and means to kill you, then he’s in the wrong. Am I right?”
They re-entered the city, and Roberto heard his father still muttering to himself, “I didn’t go looking for him….”
CHAPTER 5, The Labyrinth of the World
ROBERTO RECALLS THAT episode, caught up in a moment of filial devotion, daydreaming of a happy time when a protective figure could save him from the confusion of a siege, but he cannot help recalling what happened afterwards. And this does not seem to me a simple accident of memory. I have said before that Roberto apparently connects those distant events with his experiences on the Daphne, as if to find motives, reasons, signs of destiny. Now I would say that harking back, on the ship, to the Casale days helps him retrace the stages through which, as a youth, he slowly learned that the world was composed of alien architectures.
As if, on the one hand, finding himself now suspended between sky and sea could be only the most consequent development of his three lustra of peregrinations in a territory made up of forked paths; and, on the other hand, I believe that in reconstructing the history of his misfortunes he was seeking consolation for his present state, as if the shipwreck had restored him to that earthly paradise he had known at La Griva and had left behind on entering the walls of the besieged city.
Now Roberto no longer deloused himself in the soldiers’ quarters but sat at Toiras’s table amid gentlemen from Paris, and he listened to their boasts, their recollections of other campaigns, their fatuous or brilliant talk. In these conversations—beginning on the very first evening—he was given reason to believe that the siege of Casale was not the enterprise he had thought he was to take part in.
He had come here to bring to life his dreams of chivalry, nourished by the poems he had read at La Griva: to come from good stock and to have finally a sword at his side meant becoming a paladin who might cast away his life for a word from his king, or for the rescue of a lady. After his arrival, the devout host he had joined proved to be a mob of slothful peasants ready to turn and run at the first sign of a fight.
Now he was admitted to an assembly of heroes who welcomed him as one of their own. He knew that his heroism was the result of a misunderstanding: he had stayed in the outwork, all right, but only because he was even more frightened than those who had fled it. And, worse, after Monsieur de Toiras retired, and the others stayed up all night gossiping freely, Roberto came to realize that the whole siege was nothing but one more chapter in a meaningless history.
True, Don Vincenzo of Mantua had died and left the dukedom to Nevers, but if someone else had been present at the old man’s deathbed, the story could have turned out quite differently. For example, Charles Emmanuel also boasted some claim to Monferrato through a niece or a granddaughter (sovereigns all married among themselves), and for some time he had wanted to lay hands on that marquisate that was a thorn in the side of his duchy, penetrating to within a few dozen miles of Turin.
So, immediately after the naming of Nevers, Gonzalo de Cordoba, exploiting the ambitions of the Savoy duke to frustrate those of the French, suggested joining the Spaniards in taking Monferrato, dividing the territory afterwards. The Emperor, who already had his share of troubles with the rest of Europe, did not consent to the invasion, but neither did he pronounce himself against Nevers. Gonzalo and Charles Emmanuel acted promptly, and one of the two started by taking Alba, Trino, and Moncalvo. A good man but not a stupid one, the Emperor sequestered Mantua, entrusting it to an imperial commissioner.
This truce was to apply to all claimants, but Richelieu took it as an insult to France. Or else it suited him to take it as such. He did not act, however, for he was still besieging the Protestants of La Rochelle. Spain looked favorably on that massacre of a handful of heretics, and allowed Gonzalo to exploit it to muster eight thousand men and lay siege to Casale, defended by little more than two hundred soldiers. That was the first siege of Casale.
But as the Emperor showed no sign of giving way, Charles Emmanuel sensed the bad turn things were taking and, while still collaborating with the Spanish, he sent secret messages to Richelieu. In the meantime La Rochelle was taken, Richelieu was congratulated by the court of Madrid on this fine victory of the faith, he expressed his thanks, reassembled his army and, with Louis XIII at its head, he sent it across the Monginevro Pass in February of ’29, and deployed it before Susa. Charles Emmanuel realized that by playing a double game, he risked losing not only Monferrato but also Susa, so—trying to sell what they were taking from him—he offered Susa in exchange for a French city.
One of Roberto’s table companions recalled the affair in an amused tone. Richelieu, with fine sarcasm, inquired whether the duke preferred Orléans or Poitiers, and at the same time a French officer presented himself to the Susa garrison and requested lodging for the King of France.
The Savoy commander, a man of wit, replied that His Highness the duke would no doubt be happy to welcome His Majesty, but inasmuch as His Majesty had come with such a large suite, they should allow the commander first to inform His Highness. With equal elegance the marshal of Bassompierre, cantering over the snow, doffed his hat before his king and, after informing him that the violins had entered and the mummers were at the door, asked his permission to open the dance. Richelieu celebrated a field mass, the French infantry attacked, and Susa was conquered.
Seeing how things then stood, Charles Emmanuel decided that Louis XIII was a most welcome guest and came out to receive him, asking him only not to waste time at Casale, which was already being dealt with, but to help him take Genoa instead. He was courteously invited not to talk nonsense and was given a handsome goose quill to sign a treaty allowing the French freedom of action in Piedmont. Charles Emmanuel managed to retain Trino as a consolation and was authorized to exact an annual rent from the duke of Mantua for Monferrato. “And so Nevers,” the officer said, “to keep what was his, agreed to pay rent to someone who had never been its owner.”
“And he paid!” Another man laughed. “Quel con!”
“Nevers has always had to pay for his follies,” said an abbé, who had been introduced to Roberto as Toiras’s confessor. “Nevers is a jester of God, convinced that he is Saint Bernard. He has always been dominated solely by the idea of assembling the Christian princes for a new crusade. These are times when the Christians are killing one another: who gives a thought to the infidels these days? Gentlemen of Casale, if a stone or two is left of this city, you must expect your new lord to invite all of you to Jerusalem!” The abbé smiled, amused, stroking his well-trimmed blond moustache, as Roberto was thinking: So it goes: this morning I was about to die for a madman, and this madman is called mad because he dreams, as I used to dream, of the days of the fair Melisende and the Leper King.
Nor did subsequent events allow Roberto to untangle the motives behind this story. Betrayed by Charles Emmanuel, Gonzalo de Cordoba realized that he had lost the campaign, recognized the Susa agreement, and led his eight thousand men back into Milanese territory. A French garrison was installed at Casale, another at Susa, the rest of Louis’s army crossed the Alps again to wipe out the last Huguenots in Languedoc and the valley of the Rhone.
But none of those gentlemen had any intention of honoring pacts, and the officers seated around the table told the whole story as if it was all entirely natural, indeed some agreed and remarked, “La Raison d’Estat, ah, la Raison d’Estat.” For reasons of state Olivares—Roberto gathered that he was some sort of Spanish Richelieu, but less blessed with luck—realized he had cut a sorry figure, unceremoniously dismissed Gonzalo, and put Ambrogio Spinola in his place, repeating that the insult offered to Spain was detrimental to the Church. “Rubbish,” the abbé interjected. “Urban VIII favored the succession of Nevers.” And Roberto wondered what the Pope had to do with matters not involving questions of faith.
Meanwhile the emperor—and there was no telling the thousand different ways Olivares put pressure on him—remembered that Mantua was
