“I confess I know nothing on this subject. If Your Eminence would enlighten me, perhaps I—”
“Signor Pozzo, you would be amusing if you were not insolent. I would not be the master of this country if I were to enlighten others about things they do not know—unless those others were the king of France, which does not seem to be your case. So do only what you know how to do: keep your ears open and learn things of which before you knew nothing. Then you will come and report them to me, and afterwards you will take care to forget them.”
“That is what I have always done, Your Eminence. Or at least I think so, for I have forgotten doing it.”
“Now that is to my liking. You may go.”
Some time later came that memorable evening when Ferrante heard Roberto expound the theory of the powder. He could hardly believe his luck, able to draw to Richelieu’s attention an Italian gentleman who consorted with the Englishman d’Igby (notoriously connected, some time ago, with the Due de Bouquinquant) and who seemed to know a great deal about the powder.
At the moment when he began casting discredit on Roberto, Ferrante still had to arrange how to take his place. So he revealed to the Cardinal that he, Ferrante, passed himself off as Signor del Pozzo because his job as informer obliged him to remain incognito, but in reality he was the true Roberto de la Grive, a valorous fighter with the French during the siege of Casale. The other man, who so slyly talked about the English powder, was a rascal adventurer. Exploiting a vague physical resemblance, under the name of Mahmut the Arab, he had recently served as a spy in London taking orders from the Turks.
Thus Ferrante prepared for the moment when, having ruined his brother, he could assume his identity, becoming the one and true Roberto not only to the relatives still left at La Griva but in the eyes of all Paris—as if the other had never existed.
In the meantime, as he masked himself with Roberto’s face to conquer Lilia, Ferrante learned, like everyone else, of the misfortune of Cinq-Mars; and risking a great deal surely, but ready to give his life to consummate his revenge, again in the guise of Roberto he made a show of belonging to the company of that conspirator’s friends.
Then he whispered to the Cardinal that the false Roberto de la Grive, who knew so much about a secret dear to the English, was clearly conspiring, and Ferrante promptly produced witnesses who could declare they had seen Roberto with this or that man.
As is clear, a castle of lies and travesties lay behind the trap into which Roberto had fallen. But Roberto had fallen for reasons and in ways unknown to Ferrante himself, whose plans were then upset by the death of Richelieu.
What, in fact, had happened? Richelieu, highly suspicious, was using Ferrante without mentioning him to anyone, not even to Mazarin, whom he obviously distrusted, seeing him by now poised like a vulture over an ailing body. Still, as his disease progressed, Richelieu did pass some information to Mazarin, without revealing its source: “By the way, my good Jules….”
“Yes, Eminence and my beloved father…”
“Keep an eye on one Roberto de la Grive. He goes in the evening to Madame de Rambouillet. It seems he knows a great deal about your Powder of Sympathy…. And, further, according to an informer of mine, the young man also frequents a circle of conspirators….”
“You must not tire yourself, Eminence. I will deal with everything.”
And so Mazarin initiated, on his own, an enquiry into Roberto, until he had learned the little he made a great show of knowing on the night of the arrest. But in all of this he knew nothing of Ferrante.
Meanwhile Richelieu was dying. What would happen to Ferrante?
Richelieu dead, Ferrante was without protection. He had to establish some contact with Mazarin, for a scoundrel is an evil heliotrope turning always in the direction of the most powerful. But he cannot go to the new minister without bringing some evidence of his worth. He finds no further trace of Roberto. Can Roberto be ill? Has he set off on a journey? Ferrante thinks of everything save the possibility that his slanders have had their effect and Roberto has been arrested.
Ferrante does not dare show himself publicly in the guise of Roberto, for fear of arousing the suspicions of those who know that La Grive is far away. Whatever may have happened between him and Lilia, Ferrante ceases all communication with her, impassive as a man aware that every victory costs much time. He knows, also, he should make use of distance; the finest qualities lose their glow if displayed too often, and fancy travels farther than sight; even the phoenix resorts to distant habitats to keep its legend alive.
But time is pressing. On Roberto’s return, Mazarin must already suspect him and want him dead. Ferrante consults his peers at court, and discovers that Mazarin can be approached through the young Colbert, to whom he sends a letter hinting at an English threat and the matter of longitudes (knowing nothing about them, and having heard them mentioned only once, by Richelieu). In exchange for his revelations he asks for a considerable sum, and is granted a meeting, at which he appears dressed as an elderly abbé, with a black eye-patch.
Colbert is not ingenuous. This abbé’s voice sounds familiar, the few things he says have a dubious ring. Colbert summons two guards, goes to the visitor, tears off the patch and the beard, and whom does he find before him? The same Roberto de la Grive he himself consigned to his agents, charging them to put this Italian on board Dr. Byrd’s ship.
In telling himself this story, Roberto exults. Ferrante has walked straight into the trap, all on his own. “You? San Patrizio?” Colbert promptly cried. Then, seeing Ferrante start and remain silent, he ordered the man flung into a dungeon.
It was a great joke for Roberto to imagine the colloquy between Mazarin and Colbert, who immediately informed the Cardinal.
“The man must be mad, Your Eminence. To dare evade his mission, I can understand, but to try to come here to sell us what we had already given him can only be evidence of madness.”
“Colbert, no one could be so mad as to take me for a fool. So our man is playing a game, convinced that he holds winning cards.”
“In what sense?”
“For example, suppose he boarded that ship and immediately discovered what he was to have learned, so he no longer needed to stay there.”
“But if he had wanted to betray us, he would have gone to the Spanish or to the Dutch. He would not have come here to challenge us. And to ask what of us, after all? Money? He knew quite well that if he acted loyally, he could have had even a place at court.”
“Obviously he is convinced he has discovered a secret worth more than a place at court. Believe me, he knows men. We can only lead him on. I will see him this evening.”
Mazarin received Ferrante while with his own hands he was putting the final touches to a table he had laid for his guests, a triumph of things that seemed to be other things. On the board, wicks glowed, protruding from goblets of ice, and bottles in which the wine was of unexpected colors stood among baskets of lettuces garlanded with artificial flowers and fruits artificially aromatic.
Mazarin, who believed that Roberto, that is to say Ferrante, was in possession of a secret from which he wanted to derive great profit, had determined to make a show of knowing everything (everything, in short, that he did not know) to induce the rogue to let some hint escape him.
On the other hand, Ferrante—when he found himself in the Cardinal’s presence—had already guessed that Roberto was in possession of a secret from which great profit could be derived, and he had determined to make a show of knowing everything (everything, in short, that he did not know) to induce the Cardinal to let some hint escape him.
Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to this puzzle. What a beautiful story, Roberto said to himself as he sought the thread of the skein that he had twisted.
“Signor di San Patrizio,” Mazarin said as he moved a dish of live crayfish that seemed cooked closer to another dish of cooked crayfish that seemed alive, “a week ago we put you on board the Amaryllis in Amsterdam. You cannot have abandoned your mission: you were well aware you would pay for that with your life. Therefore you must have already discovered what you were sent to discover.”
Ferrante, confronted with this dilemma, saw that it was not in his interest to confess having abandoned the mission. So there was only one course open to him. “If it please Your Eminence,” he said, “in a sense I have learned what Your Eminence wanted me to learn,” and he added to himself:
“And meanwhile I have learned that the secret is on board a ship named the Amaryllis, and that it sailed from Amsterdam a week
