Gold, then, and diamonds, and all the riches of the Terra Incognita, or of the Islands of Solomon of which he had heard Colbert speak…
It was the evocation of the Islands of Solomon that brought Roberto a kind of revelation. Why, of course, the clocks! What were so many clocks doing on a ship headed for seas where morning and evening are defined by the course of the sun, and nothing else need be known? The Intruder had come to this remote parallel also to seek, like Dr. Byrd, el Punto Fijo!
Surely this was it. By an extraordinary coincidence, Roberto, having set out from Holland to follow, as the Cardinal’s spy, the secret maneuvers of an Englishman, almost clandestine on a Dutch ship, in search of the Punto Fijo, now found himself on the (Dutch) ship of Another, from God knows what country, bent on discovering the same secret.
CHAPTER 16, Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy
HOW HAD HE got himself into this imbroglio?
Roberto allows only brief glimpses of the years between his return to La Griva and his entrance into Parisian society. From scattered hints we deduce that he stayed home to care for his mother until he was almost twenty, reluctantly arguing with stewards about sowing and harvests. Once his mother had followed her husband to the grave, Roberto discovered he was alien to that world. He must then have entrusted the land to a relative, retaining for himself a substantial income, after which he set off to travel the world.
He had remained in correspondence with some men he met at Casale, whose acquaintance had prompted him to extend his knowledge. I do not know how he arrived at Aix-en-Provence, but certainly he was there, for he recalls gratefully two years spent with a local gentleman versed in every science, possessor of a library rich not only in books but in art objects, antiquities, and embalmed animals. While a guest in Aix, he must have met that master to whom he refers often, with devout respect, as the Canon of Digne and sometimes as le doux prêtre. It was with the Canon’s letters of introduction that, at an uncertain date, Roberto finally confronted Paris.
Here he immediately got in touch with the Canon’s friends, and was enabled to frequent one of the most distinguished places of the city. He often mentions a cabinet of the brothers Dupuy and recalls how, every afternoon there, his mind opened more and more, stimulated by men of learning. But I find references to other cabinets he visited in those years, boasting rich collections of medals, Turkish knives, agate stones, mathematical rarities, shells from the Indies….
We can tell the sort of circle in which he moved during the happy April (or perhaps May) of his youth by his frequent quotation of teachings that to us seem dissonant. He spent his days learning from the Canon how a world made of atoms could be conceived, just as Epicurus had taught, and yet willed and governed by Divine Providence; but, attracted by that same love for Epicurus, he spent his evenings with friends who called themselves Epicureans and could combine debate about the eternity of the world with the society of beautiful ladies of scant virtue.
He often mentions a band of friends, carefree but still not ignorant at twenty of things that others would be proud of knowing at fifty: Linières, Chapelle, Dassoucy, a philosopher and poet who went around with a lute slung over his shoulder, Poquelin, who translated Lucretius but dreamed of becoming the author of comedies, and Hercule Savinien, who had fought valiantly at the siege of Arras, composed declarations of love for fantastic lovers, and made a show of affectionate intimacy with young gentlemen, from whom he boasted of having acquired the Italian disease, while at the same time he mocked a comrade in vice “qui se plasoit a l’amour des masles” and said tauntingly that the man had to be forgiven for his shyness, which led him always to hide behind the backs of his friends.
Feeling welcome in a society of keen wits, Roberto became—if not a sage—a scorner of the insipid, which he found both in gentlemen of the court and in certain enriched bourgeois who ostentatiously displayed empty boxes bound in morocco leather from the Levant with the names of the greatest authors printed in gold on the spine.
In short, Roberto had entered the circle of those honnêtes gens who, even if they did not come from the nobility of the blood but, rather, from the noblesse de robe, represented the cream of this world. But he was young, eager for new experiences and, despite both his erudite company and his libertine routs, he did not remain insensitive to the fascination of the aristocracy.
For a long time, as he strolled at evening along rue Saint-Thomas-duLouvre, he had admired from the outside the Palais Rambouillet, its handsome façade adorned with cornices and friezes, architraves and pilasters, in a play of red brick, white stone, and dark slate. He looked at the lighted windows, he saw the guests enter, and he imagined the loveliness, already famous, of the inner garden. He pictured the salons of that little court, celebrated in all Paris, established by a woman of taste who considered the other court coarse, subject to the whim of a king incapable of appreciating the refinements of the spirit.
Finally Roberto sensed that as a Cisalpine he would enjoy some credit in the house of a lady born of a Roman mother, from a line more ancient than Rome itself, stemming from a family of Alba Longa. Not by chance, about fifteen years earlier an honored guest in that house, Cavalier Marino, had led the French to the paths of a new poetry destined to make the art of the ancients pale.
Roberto managed to gain admittance to this temple of elegance and intellect, of gentlemen and précieuses (as they were then called), sages without pedantry, gallants without libertinism, wits without vulgarity, purists without absurdity. He found himself at his ease in that atmosphere: it seemed to him that he was allowed to breathe the air of the great city and of the court without having to bow to those dictates of prudence inculcated in him at Casale by Senor de Salazar. He was not asked to conform to the will of a potentate, but, rather, to show his distinction. Not to simulate, but to test himself—though always observing the rules of good taste—against persons superior to him. He was not asked to be a courtier but to be bold, to exhibit his skill in good and courteous conversation, and to be able to utter profound thoughts lightly…. He did not feel a servant but a dueller, of whom courage, totally intellectual, was demanded.
He was learning to avoid affectation, to use in every circumstance his ability to conceal art and effort so that what he did or said would seem a spontaneous gift, as he tried to become master of that studied ease of manner that in Spain was called despejo and in Italy sprezzatura.
Accustomed to the spaces of La Griva redolent of lavender, after entering the hotel of Arthénice, Roberto moved among cabinets where the perfume of countless corbeilles wafted always, as in an eternal spring. The few aristocratic houses he had known had consisted of cramped rooms around a central staircase; but at Arthénice’s the stairs had been placed in a corner at the end of the courtyard, so that all the rest was a succession of salons and cabinets, with tall doors and windows, one facing the other; the chambers were not tiresomely red or the color of tanned leather but of various hues, and the Chambre Bleue of the Guest had walls of that color, trimmed in gold and silver.
Arthénice received her friends recumbent in her chamber, among screens and thick tapestries to protect guests from the cold: she could suffer neither the light of the sun nor the heat of braziers. Fire and daylight overheated the blood in her veins and made her swoon. Once she forgot a brazier under her bed and came down with erysipelas. She was like certain flowers that, if their freshness is to be preserved, must neither be always in the light nor always in the shade and require gardeners to create for them a special season. Umbratile, Arthénice received in bed, her legs in a bearskin bag, and she covered her head with so many nightcaps that, as she wittily said, she went deaf at Martinmas and recovered her hearing at Easter.
And yet, even if no longer young, this Hostess was the very portrait of grace, large and well-made, with admirable features. The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it enflamed.
In those rooms, the Hostess conducted, without imposition, debates on friendship and love, but they touched with equal levity on matters of morality, politics, philosophy. Roberto discovered the qualities of the other sex in their most tender expression, worshipping at a distance unapproachable princesses, like the beautiful Mademoiselle Paulet, known as “La Lionne” because of her proud mane, and ladies who could enhance their beauty with a wit that the venerable Academies attributed only to men.
After a few years
