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The crowd was stirred by a hubbub of incredulity and scepti­cism.

"I know," continued the preacher vehemently. "Persons who live the life of the spirit are accustomed to these evils and would even wish spontaneously to suffer from them. And if they do not find them upon their way, they go out hunting for them!"

Another murmur of disquiet traversed the crowd.

"Think of Simon of Cyrene, who feigned madness in order to be mocked at by the people. Think of Bernard of Clairvaux, who suf­fered from poor health and always took refuge in the iciest and most cruel of hermitages! And do you therefore account them to have been no more than miserable wretches? No, no, listen with me to what the great prelate Salviano said."

Abbot Melani caught my attention by pulling at my sleeve. "The way seems clear, let us go."

We moved towards the way out from the square nearest to the Donzello, hoping that those last footsteps would not hold any bad surprises for us.

"The great prelate Salviano may say what he will, but I cannot wait to get changed," complained Atto, nearing the limits of his pa­tience and endurance.

Without having the courage to turn round, I had the disagreeable impression that someone was following us.

We were on the point of emerging safely from our perilous cross­ing when the unforeseeable occurred. Atto was proceeding ahead of me, skirting the wall of a palazzo, when from a little doorway I saw a pair of robust and decisive hands dart forth, seize him and drag him indoors by force. This terrible vision, together with my overwhelm­ing weariness, almost caused me to lose my senses. 1 was petrified, unable to decide whether to run away or to call for help, in both of which cases I ran the risk of being identified and arrested.

Extricating me from the horns of this dilemma, there came from behind me a familiar voice, whose sound was so improbable as to ap­pear celestial: "Get you ultraquickly into the coneyhole!"

Great though Abbot Melani's scorn for the
corpisantari
may have been, I believe that on this occasion he had no little difficulty in hiding his gratitude for their intervention. Not only had Ugonio mirac­ulously survived the Cloaca Maxima, but after rejoining Ciacconio, he had tracked us down again and—although the method employed may have been somewhat rough—had brought us to safety. It was, however, Ciacconio who had dragged Atto through the little door on the Piazza Navona, whither Ugonio now urged me to enter in my turn.

Once beyond the threshold, and without giving us the time to ask any questions, the
corpisantari
made us pass through another little door and climb down an exceedingly steep flight of stairs which in turn led to a narrow and even more dismal windowless corridor. Ciac­conio produced a lantern which, absurdly, he seemed to have been concealing, already lit, in the folds of his grimy overcoat. Our saviour seemed to be as soaked as we, and yet he trotted along as boldly and rapidly as ever.

"Where are you taking us?" asked Atto, for once surprised and no longer master of the situation.

"The Piazzame Navonio is perditious," said Ugonio, "and, to be more padre than parricide, the subpantheon is more salubricious."

I remembered that, during one of our explorations of gallery C, the
corpisantari
had shown us the way to an exit which led to the courtyard of a palace behind the Pantheon, not far from the Piazza della Rotonda. For a good quarter of an hour, they led us from cellar to cellar, through an uninterrupted sequence of obscure doorways, steps, abandoned store-rooms, spiral staircases and galleries. Every now and then, Ugonio would bring out his ring laden with keys, open a door, let us through, then lock the door behind us with four or five turns of the key. Atto and I, already exhausted, were pushed and dragged along by the two
corpisantari
like two mortal vessels whose souls were ready to abandon them at any moment.

We arrived at last before a sort of great wooden portal which opened creaking onto a courtyard. The daylight again hurt our pupils. From the courtyard, we emerged into a little alleyway and from there into another half-abandoned courtyard, to which we gained access through a door without any lock.

"Ultraquickly into the coneyhole!" exhorted Ugonio, showing me a wooden trap in the ground. We raised the lid, revealing a dark and suffocating well. Across the top was laid an iron bar, from which hung a rope; and this we swarmed down. We already knew where it led: to the network of tunnels connected to the Donzello.

As the trapdoor closed over our heads, I saw the cowled heads of Ugonio and Ciacconio disappear into the light of day. I would have liked to ask Ugonio how he had managed to survive the wreck of our boat in the Cloaca Maxima and how the deuce he had got out from there, but I had no time. While I lowered myself, grasping the rope, for a fleeting instant it seemed to me that Ugonio's eyes met my own. Inexplicably, it seemed to me that he knew what I was thinking. I was happy that he was safe.

Hardly had I returned to my chamber than I changed in a rush and hid my dirty, mud-stained clothing. At once, I betook myself to Cristo-fano's apartment, ready to justify my absence by an improbable visit to the cellars. Too exhausted to worry, I was ready to face questions and objections for which I was utterly unable to find a reply.

Cristofano, however, was sleeping. Perhaps still exhausted by the crisis of the day before, he had gone to bed without even closing his door. He lay clumsily sprawled across the bed, half-dressed.

I took care not to awaken him. The sun was low on the horizon; I still had time for something before the appointment we had fixed with Devize in Bedfordi's chamber: to sleep.

Contrary to my expectations, this sleep did not restore me. My rest was troubled by tormented and convulsed dreams, in which I relived those terrible moments when I was under the capsized bark; then those disquieting discoveries on the islet of the Mithraeum, and lastly, the nightmare of the Cloaca Maxima, in which I believed that I had met with death. That was why, when Cristofano's fists pounded on my door, I arose almost wearier than before.

The physician did not seem to be in good form either. Two heavy bluish bags under the eyes marked his weary countenance; his gaze was watery and distant, and his posture, which I usually found so solid and erect, was slightly bent. He neither greeted me nor asked me anything, thank heavens, about the previous night.

On the contrary, I found myself reminding him that we would soon have to make the usual arrangements for our guests' breakfast. First, however, we must turn our minds to the emergency. It was time to put Robleda's theories to the test: Bedfordi's infection would, this time, be treated by the notes of Devize's guitar. I went to inform the Jesuit that we were about to follow his advice. We called Devize and we then went to the adjoining chamber, where the poor Englishman lay.

The young musician had brought his little stool with him so that he could play in the corridor without entering the sickroom and thus risking his own health. The door would remain open, so that the gui­tar's (we hoped) beneficent sound could penetrate within. Cristo­fano, however, posted himself right by Bedfordi's bed, in order to observe the patient's reactions, if any.

I stood discreetly in the corridor, a few yards from the musician. Devize sat on his little stool, sought the most comfortable position and began to tune his instrument. He soon broke off and warmed his hands with an allemande. This, he followed with a courante, after which he turned to a severe sarabande. He stopped again to tune and asked Cristofano for news of the patient.

"Nothing new."

The concert continued with a gavotte and a gigue.

"Nothing new—nothing, nothing, nothing. He does not seem even to hear," said the doctor, both discouraged and impatient.

It was then that Devize at last played what I had long awaited, the one piece which, among all the dances I had heard him perform, seemed capable of capturing the attention and the heart of all the guests at the inn: the superb
rondeau
which his master Francesco Corbetta had written for Maria Teresa, Queen of France.

As I suspected, I was not alone in awaiting those fatally fascinat­ing notes. Devize executed the
rondeau
once, then again, and then a third time, as though to let it be understood that, to him, too, those notes were—for unknown reasons—most sweet and delectable. We all remained in silence, rapt in like manner. We had listened to this music so many times, yet we could never hear it enough.

But while we were listening to the
rondeau
for the fourth time, my pleasure in the sounds gave way to something utterly unexpected. Lulled by the cyclical repetition of the
ritornello
, I suddenly thought: what was it that Devize had said about it on the first day? The al­ternate strophes of the
rondeau
"contain ever new harmonic assays, which all conclude in an unexpected fashion, almost as though alien to good musical doctrine. And after reaching its apogee, the
rondeau
brusquely enters its finale."

And what had Abbot Melani read in the letter from Kircher? That the plague, too, is cyclical and "there is in the final stages something unexpected, mysterious, foreign to medical doctrine: after reaching the height of its strength, the disease
senescit ab abrupto
, or suddenly begins to come to an end."

The words used by Devize to describe the
rondeau
were almost identical to those used by Kircher when speaking of the plague.

I waited until the music ended and at last put the question which I should have asked long—too long—before: "Signor Devize, has this
rondeau
a name?"

"Yes, 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses'," he pronounced slowly.

I remained silent.

"In Italian, one says...
barricate misteriose,
mysterious barricades," he added, as though to fill the silence.

I froze, utterly speechless.

Mysterious barricades,
les barricades mysterieuses:
were those not the same obscure words which Atto Melani had muttered in his sleep the afternoon before?

I had no time to answer my own question. Already, my mind was galloping out of control towards other mysterious barricades, the
arcanae obices
of Kircher's letter...

My thoughts were swept away. Cast into a sea of suspicion and illusion by the exasperating buzz which those two Latin words had left in my mind, I was seized by vertigo. I rose suddenly to my feet and rushed straight to my chamber, under the astonished gaze of Cristo­fano and Devize, who was just beginning to play the same piece once more.

I slammed the door behind me, crushed by the weight of that discovery and by all the consequences which, like the most ruinous of avalanches, it carried with it.

The terrible mystery of Kircher's
arcanae obices
, the mysterious obstacles which concealed the
secretum vitae
, had at last taken form before my very eyes.

I needed a pause for reflection, in total solitude, in my own room; not so much in order to clarify my ideas as to understand with whom I could share them.

Atto and I were on the trail of those
arcanae obices
or "mysterious barricades" which had the supreme capacity to overcome the pes­tilence, as mentioned by Kircher in the ravings of his last letter to Superintendent Fouquet; then, I had heard the abbot, in his sleep, name the still unidentified
barricades mysterieuses
in the language of his chosen country. And now, when I asked Devize the name of the
rondeau
which he was playing in order to heal the plague-ridden Bed­fordi, I learned that its very title was "Les Barricades Mysterieuses". Someone knew far more than he was prepared to admit.

"But you really have no idea about anything!" exclaimed Abbot Mel­ani.

I had just awoken him from a deep sleep in order to obtain explanations and suddenly the fire of the news had rendered incandescent both his words and his gestures. He asked me to repeat my account word for word: about Devize who was playing the
rondeau
for Bedfordi's health and who had freely confessed to me that the music was entitled "Les Barricades Mysterieuses".

"Pardon me, but you must leave me a few minutes in which to reflect," said he, almost overcome by what I had told him.

"Yet you know that I desire your explanations, and that..."

"Yes, of course, of course, but now please let me think."

So, I had to leave him and again to knock at his door a few minutes later. From his eyes, which had regained their vigilance and pugnac­ity, I would have thought that he had never slept.

"Just at this moment when we are near to the truth, you have cho­sen to become my enemy," he began, in almost heartbroken tones.

"Not your enemy," I hastened to correct him, "but you must understand that..."

"Enough," he interrupted me. "Just try to reason for one mo­ment."

"If you will permit me, Signor Atto, this time I am able to reason perfectly well. And I say to myself: how is it possible that you should know the title of that
rondeau
, and that it should also be the transla­tion of
arcanae obices?"