But that morning, Roberto was convinced he had seen something rise from the trees towards the sun, then melt into its luminous sphere. Probably it was an illusion. Any bird in that light would have seemed to glitter…. Roberto was convinced he had seen the Dove, and yet was disappointed at having lied to himself. In this contradictory mood he felt once again defrauded.
For a creature like Roberto, who by now had reached the point where he jealously enjoyed only what was stolen from him, it took little to dream that Ferrante had been given what to him was denied. But since Roberto was the author of this story and unwilling to grant Ferrante too much, he decided that the wretch would deal only with the other dove, the blue-green one. And this was because Roberto had decided, though without any certitude, that of the couple the orange must be the female, as if to say She. Since in the story of Ferrante the dove was not to represent the conclusion but, rather, the agent of possession, for the present the male fell to him.
Could a blue-green dove, which flies only over the South Seas, go and light on the sill of that window where Ferrante was pining for his freedom? Yes, in the Land of Romances. And anyway, could not the Tweede Daphne have returned only recently from these seas, more fortunate than her older sister, bearing in the hold this bird, now set free?
In any case, Ferrante, ignorant of the Antipodes, could not ask himself such questions. He saw the dove, first fed it a few bread crumbs merely to pass the time, then he wondered if it could not be used to further his own purposes. He knew that doves sometimes served to carry messages: of course, entrusting a message to that animal did not mean it would necessarily reach its destination, but in this total ennui the effort was worth making.
To whom could he appeal for help, he who out of enmity towards all, himself included, had made only enemies, and the few people who had served him were shameless, prepared to follow him only in good fortune and surely not in disaster? He said to himself: I will ask help of the Lady, who loves me (But how can he be so sure? the envious Roberto wondered, after he invented that self-confidence).
Biscarat had left him writing materials, in the possibility that the night would bring counsel and persuade him to send a confession to the Cardinal. So on one side of the paper Ferrante wrote the address of the Lady, adding that whoever delivered the message would receive a reward. On the other side he wrote where he lay (he had heard a name spoken by his warders), victim of an infamous plot of the Cardinal, and he begged to be rescued. Then he rolled up the paper and tied it to the leg of the bird, urging it to fly off.
To tell the truth, he then forgot, or almost forgot, this action. How could he think that the azure dove would actually fly to Lilia? Such things happened only in fairy tales, and Ferrante was not a man to trust in tales. Probably the dove was shot by a hunter, to plunge among a tree’s boughs, losing the message….
Ferrante did not know that the bird instead was caught in the snare of a peasant, who thought to profit from what, judging by appearances, was a signal sent to someone, perhaps to the commander of an army.
Now this peasant took the message to be examined by the one person in his village who knew how to read, namely, the curate, who then organized everything properly. Having identified the Lady, he sent a friend to her to negotiate the delivery, deriving from it a generous offering for his church and a reward for the peasant. Lilia read, wept, sought out trusted friends for advice. Try to touch the Cardinal’s heart? Nothing easier for a beautiful woman of the court, but this woman frequented the salon of Arthénice, whom Mazarin distrusted. Satirical verses about the new minister were already circulating, and some said they came from those rooms. A précieuse who went to the Cardinal to implore mercy for a friend would be sentencing that friend to sterner punishment.
No, a band of brave men had to be assembled, who could be persuaded to mount a surprise attack. But to whom could she turn?
Now Roberto was at a loss. If he had been, say, a musketeer of the king or a cadet of Gascony, Lilia could have appealed to those men, brave, renowned for their esprit de corps. But who would risk the wrath of a minister, perhaps of the king himself, for a foreigner who spent his time among librarians and astronomers? And as for librarians and astronomers, it was best to forget them: though bent on continuing his novel, Roberto could not imagine the Canon of Digne or Monsieur Gaffarel galloping full tilt towards his prison—or, rather, the prison of Ferrante, who at this point everyone thought to be Roberto.
A few days later Roberto had an inspiration. He had set aside the story of Ferrante to continue his exploration of the coral reef. That day he was following a school of fish whose snouts bore a yellow vizor, like swirling warriors; they were about to enter a cleft between two towers of stone where the corals were the crumbling palaces of a sunken city.
Roberto imagined those fish were wandering amid the ruins of that city of Ys he had heard of, which presumably still existed not many miles off the coast of Brittany, where the waves had engulfed it. There, the largest fish was the ancient king of the city, followed by his dignitaries, and all were riding out in search of their treasure swallowed up by the sea….
But why recur to an ancient legend? Why not consider these fish the inhabitants of a world that has its forests, its peaks, its trees, and its valleys, and knows nothing of the world above the surface? Similarly, we live with no knowledge that the curved sky conceals other worlds, where people do not walk or swim but fly and navigate through the air. If what we call planets are the keels of their vessels, of which we see only the shining bottom, then these children of Neptune must see above them the shadow of our galleons and consider them heavenly bodies moving through their aqueous firmament.
And if it is possible that creatures live underwater, could not creatures also live under the earth, nations of salamanders capable of arriving, through their tunnels, at the central fire that animates the planet?
Reflecting in this way, Roberto remembered an argument of SaintSavin’s: We think it is difficult to live on the surface of the moon, believing there is no water there, but perhaps water up there exists in subterranean hollows, and Nature has dug wells on the moon, which are the spots we see. How do we know that the inhabitants of the moon do not find refuge in those niches, to escape the intolerable proximity of the sun? Did not the first Christians live underground? And so the moon-folk live always in catacombs, which to them seem homely.
Nor is there any reason that they must live in the dark. Perhaps there are many holes in the crust of the satellite, and the interior is illuminated through thousands of slits; theirs is a night traversed by brilliant shafts, not very different from the interior of a church or the lower deck of the Daphne. Or perhaps, instead, on the surface there are phosphorescent stones that during the day soak up the sunlight, then release it at night, and the lunarians collect those stones at every sunset so that their tunnels are always more brilliant than any royal palace.
Paris, Roberto thought. Is it not a known fact that, like Rome, the whole city is underlaid with catacombs, where it is said that at night malefactors and beggars take refuge?
Beggars! Here was the idea for rescuing Ferrante! The Beggars, who, as the story goes, are governed by their own king and by a code of iron laws; the Beggars, a society of grim rabble living off thievery and misery, assassinations and extravagances, filth, villainy, and treachery, while they pretend to subsist on Christian charity!
An idea that only a woman in love could conceive, Roberto told himself. For her confidences Lilia did not approach courtiers or gentlemen of the robe, but, rather, the least of her maidservants, a woman engaged in unscrupulous traffickings with a waggoner who knew all the taverns around Notre-Dame, where at sundown the Beggars congregated after spending their day whining in doorways…. This was the path to take.
Now her guide conducts her, in the heart of the night, to the church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, lifts a stone of the floor in the choir, and leads her down into the catacombs of Paris, advancing by torchlight in search of the King of the Beggars.
And this is when Lilia, disguised as a gentleman, a supple androgyne who passes through tunnels, down steps, and along low passages, where in the darkness she can discern here and there,
