Fleurissoire arrived back at Rome and Via dei Vecchiarelli that same night. He was extremely tired and convinced Carola to let him sleep.

The next morning, as soon as he was awake, his pimple felt strange to the touch. He studied it in the mirror and saw that a yellowish scab had formed over the headless wound. The whole thing looked gross. At that moment he heard Carola in the corridor outside, and called to her and asked her to examine the afflicted spot. She led him to the window where she could see better, and with her first glance reassured him.

‘It’s not what you think.’

In truth Amédée had not actually been thinking about that, but Carola’s effort to reassure him achieved the opposite of the desired effect, because from the moment she had stated that it was not that, it was obvious that it could have been that. And was she, for that matter, and how could she be, sure that it was not that? In addition, that it might be that seemed entirely natural to Amédée, because he had sinned and therefore he deserved it to be that. It therefore had to be that. A shiver ran down his spine.

‘How did it happen?’ Carola asked.

Aah! What did the physical cause – a slip of the razor,  a chemist’s spit – matter? The deeper cause, the cause that deserved this punishment, was what mattered. Could he decently tell her? Would she understand? She would probably make fun of him … He heard her repeat the question.

‘It was the barber,’ he answered.

‘You should put something on it.’

Her solicitude banished his last doubts: what she had said about it at first had just been to reassure him, and he already saw his face and body consumed by pustules and himself an object of horror to Arnica. Tears welled in his eyes.

‘So you do think that …’

‘No, my pet, don’t be silly. And stop working yourself into a state – you look like a one-man funeral. For one thing, if it was that, you wouldn’t know anything about it yet.’

‘I would, I would! … It’s all over for me, can’t you see? All over!’ he repeated.

She felt sorry for him.

‘Anyway, it’s never like that when it starts. Do you want me to call the manageress? She’ll tell you … No? Well, I think you ought to get out and enjoy yourself then, take your mind off it, have a glass of Marsala.’

She was silent for a moment. Finally, unable to restrain herself, she said, ‘Listen, I need to talk to you about something serious. You didn’t come across a kind of white-haired priest yesterday by any chance?’

How did she know? Stunned, Fleurissoire said, ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well …’ She still hesitated, and then, looking at him and seeing how pale he was, went on in a rush, ‘Well, be very careful of him. Trust me, lovey, he’s going to take you to the cleaner’s. I shouldn’t tell you this, but … be very careful of him.’

Amédée said nothing but got ready to go out, shaken to the core by her words. He was already on his way downstairs when she called after him, ‘And make sure if you do see him again, you don’t tell him I talked to you. You’d be signing my death sentence.’

Life was becoming decidedly too complicated for Amédée. His confusion was becoming physical: his feet felt frozen, his forehead was burning, and his thoughts buzzed wildly around his head. How could he be sure of anything if Father Cave himself was a hoaxer? … In which case, did that mean the cardinal was one too? Then what about the cheque? He took it out of his pocket, rubbed it between his fingers, reassured himself of its reality. No! No, it wasn’t possible. Carola was wrong. And what did she know about the mysterious interests that were forcing poor Father Cave to play a double game, anyway? Doubtless the most likely explanation was that Baptistin, about whom the good father had specifically warned him, had some kind of grudge against him … Too bad! He pulled himself together: from now on his eyes would be sharper, and he would not trust Cave, just as he already did not trust Baptistin, and who knew, even Carola …?

‘So there it is,’ he said to himself, ‘the consequence and the evidence of the original wrongdoing, of the Holy See stumbling on its path: everything started to fall apart then. Who can one trust, if not the pope? The minute that keystone is removed, no part of any other truth ever matters again.’

Amédée was walking with quick, short steps towards the post office, where he hoped there would be some news, truthful news, from home, in which he could place his battered trust at last. The foggy morning, with its blanket of light that made every object dissolve and look faintly unreal, reinforced his feelings of dizziness. He walked as if in a dream, doubting the solidity of the walls and the physical existence of passers-by, doubting more than anything his own presence in Rome … He pinched himself, to try to wake himself from the dream and find himself back home at Pau, in his bed, with Arnica already up and bending over him, as she always did, and eventually asking him, ‘Did you sleep well, my dear?’

The post-office clerk recognised him and, dispensing with formalities, handed him his wife’s latest letter. ‘I have just heard from Valentine de Saint-Prix,’ she wrote,

And so on. Hurriedly scribbled in pencil across the fourth page were a few words from Blafaphas.

A bugle blast of joy filled Amédée’s heart, mingled with slight unease: Thursday, the day of Julius’s audience, was today. He had not dared ask for his clothes to be washed, and he had run out of clean shirts. At least he was afraid he had. That morning he had put on yesterday’s collar again, but at the news that he might be meeting Julius it had stopped seeming sufficiently clean, and the pleasure he might have taken in the possibility of seeing his brother-in-law was dashed. Going back to Via dei Vecchiarelli was not an option if he wanted to be in time to catch Julius as he emerged from his audience, which would be less awkward than paying him a visit at the Grand Hotel. He did what he could, by turning his cuffs. As for his collar, he wound his scarf over it, which had the advantage of more or less hiding his pimple too.

But what did the details matter? What was important was that Fleurissoire felt inexpressibly cheered up by Arnica’s letter. The prospect of renewing contact with one of his relations, and with it his former life, put the monsters spawned by his traveller’s imagination back in perspective. Carola, Father Cave, the cardinal: they floated in front of him like a dream suddenly interrupted by the crowing of a cock. Why on earth had he left Pau? What did this absurd fable, which had shattered his happiness, mean? Good Lord! There was a pope, and in a short while Julius was going to be able to say to him, ‘I’ve seen him!’ A pope: that was all that was necessary. Would God have allowed such an outrageous substitution to take place? A substitution that he, Fleurissoire, would never have believed in, had it not been for his ridiculous pride in having a part to play in the affair.

Amédée walked with short, hurried steps, hardly able to stop himself breaking into a run. His confidence was flowing back at last, and the objects around him took on reassuring mass and scale, their natural place and a convincing reality again. He clutched his straw boater in his hand, and when he arrived at the basilica was overcome by such a feeling of exhilaration that he began by walking round its right-hand fountain, and as he walked in the lee of its spray, letting it moisten his upturned face, he smiled at its rainbow.

He suddenly stopped dead. There, nearby, sitting at the foot of the colonnade’s fourth pillar, wasn’t that Julius? But he paused as he was about to call out to him, for if Julius’s appearance was respectable his behaviour was less so: Count de Baraglioul was bareheaded, his black straw Cronstadt next to him, hung on the chough’s-head knob of his stick, which he had planted between two paving stones, and, heedless of the square’s solemnity, he sat with his right foot resting on his left knee like some prophet in the Sistine Chapel, balancing a notebook on his right knee and sporadically writing, his pencil poised in midair before it swooped down onto the pages, gripped to the exclusion of everything else by the dictation of a train of thought so urgent that Amédée could have performed a headstand in front of him without Julius noticing. As he wrote he talked. The burbling of the fountain masked the sound of his words, but you could clearly make out the movement of his lips.

Amédée approached, walking discreetly around the back of the pillar. As he was about to tap Julius on the shoulder, his brother-in-law said loudly, ‘AND IN THAT CASE, WHAT DOES IT MATTER!’

He recorded the words in his notebook with a gesture of finality, replaced his pencil in his pocket and, getting briskly to his feet, came face to face with Amédée.

‘By the Holy Father, what are you doing here?’

Amédée, quivering with emotion, stammered, unable to speak. He clasped one of Julius’s hands tightly between both of his. Julius looked him up and down.

‘My dear friend, what a mess you look!’

Providence had not dealt kindly with Julius: of the two brothers-in-law he had left, one had turned into a fanatic and the other lacked both fortune and vitality. It was less than three years since he had seen Amédée but his brother-in-law had aged by more than a dozen: his cheeks had sunk, the deep crimson of his scarf made him look even paler, his chin was trembling, his fish eyes were rolling in a way that ought to have aroused sympathy but just looked clownish, and his journey of the previous day had left him with a strange hoarseness, so that his speech seemed to be coming from far away. He was, as we know, deeply preoccupied.

‘So did you see him?’ he said.

As was Julius.

‘Who?’ he asked.

In Fleurissoire’s ears this who? tolled like a death knell and a blasphemy. Lowering his voice he elaborated.

‘I thought you had just come from the Vatican?’

‘Quite true. Forgive me, I was thinking about something else … If you only knew what has happened to me!’

His eyes were shining: he looked as if he were about to jump out of his skin.

‘Please,’ Fleurissoire begged him, ‘tell me about it later. Tell me about your visit first. I can’t wait to hear …’

‘Are you really interested?’

‘Soon you’ll know just how much. Tell me, please, tell me!’

‘Very well, then,’ Julius began, gripping Fleurissoire’s arm and leading him away from St Peter’s. ‘Perhaps you already know how Anthime was left destitute after his conversion. He’s still waiting vainly for what the Church promised him in compensation for what the freemasons robbed him of. He has been taken for a ride, there are no two ways about it … Well, you must take the whole business as you find it. Personally I consider it an utter farce, and yet thanks to it perhaps I can see the matter which concerns us more or less clearly, and which I urgently want to discuss with you. So – a creature of inconsequence! It’s saying a lot … and no doubt that apparent inconsequence conceals a much more subtle and abstruse sequence. The important thing is that what makes him act is no longer a simple matter of personal interest, or, as one usually says, that his motives are no longer self-interested.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not following you very well,’ Amédée said.

‘True, true, forgive me: I’m getting off the subject. So, I had decided to try to settle Anthime’s problems myself … You should see the apartment he’s living in in Milan! I told him straight away, “You can’t stay here.” And when I think of poor Véronique. But he’s turning into an ascetic, a genuine monk. He refuses to let you feel sorry for him, and you especially aren’t allowed to blame the clergy. “Dear friend,” I told him, “I grant you that the higher clergy are not to blame, but that is because they are not in the picture. Allow me to go and enlighten them.”’

‘I thought Cardinal Pazzi—’ Fleurissoire tried to say.

‘Yes. Nothing came of it. You see, with these high-ranking clerics each of them fears compromising himself. To take charge of the matter someone was needed who was not an insider: myself, for instance. Because, look, you have to admire the way discoveries come about, I mean the most important ones: you think there’s been some sudden illumination, when actually, deep down, you hadn’t stopped thinking about it. By the way, that’s why for a long time I’ve been anxious both about my characters’ excess of logic and about their inadequate characterisation.’

‘I’m afraid,’ Amédée said gently, ‘that you’re getting off the subject again.’

‘Not a bit,’ Julius went on, ‘it’s you who aren’t following my train of thought. In short, I decided it should be our Holy Father himself to whom I should address my petition, and I was going to take it to him this morning.’

‘And? Tell me quickly: did you see him?’

‘My dear Amédée, if you’re going to interrupt me all the time … Well! One has no idea just how difficult it is to see him.’

‘No!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’ll tell you in a moment.’

‘Well, to begin with I had to give up completely the idea of handing over my petition. I had it in my hand. It was a perfectly respectable sheaf of paper, but in the second antechamber – or was it the third? I can’t quite remember – a tall chap in a black and red outfit politely relieved me of it.’

Amédée began to laugh quietly, like a person in possession of certain facts, who knows what he knows.

‘In the next antechamber I was relieved of my hat, which was placed on a table. In the fifth or sixth, where I waited at length in the company of two ladies and three prelates, a sort of chamberlain came to fetch me and led me into the adjoining room where, as soon as I was in the Holy Father’s presence – as far as I could make out, he was perched on a sort of throne overhung by a sort of canopy – he gestured to me to prostrate myself, which I did, so that I couldn’t see anything else.’

‘Yet you didn’t stay bowed down or staring at the floor for so long that you didn’t—’

‘My dear Amédée, you’re talking with the benefit of hindsight. Haven’t you ever experienced how respect makes us blind? And apart from the fact that I didn’t dare raise my head, each time I started to talk about Anthime a sort of steward, who had a kind of ruler, gave me little sort of taps on the back of my neck that made me keep my gaze glued to the floor.’

‘At least he talked to you, anyway.’

‘Yes, about my book, which he admitted he had not read.’

‘My dear Julius,’ Amédée said after a moment’s silence, ‘what you have just told me is something of the utmost importance. So you did not see him, and the strongest impression I retain from your account is that he is strangely uneasy about being seen. Oh! It all, alas, confirms my cruellest fears. Julius, I must tell you now … but step this way, the street is so busy …’

An amused Julius followed him without protest into an almost deserted vicolo.

‘What I am about to impart to you is so serious … It is vital that you don’t show any outward reaction. We should look as if we’re talking about unimportant matters, but you must get ready to hear something awful. Julius, dear friend, he whom you saw this morning—’

‘Whom I didn’t see, you mean.’

‘Precisely… is not the real one.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m saying that you weren’t able to see the pope for the outrageous reason that – I have it from a confidential and reliable source – the real pope has been abducted.’

This astonishing revelation had the most unexpected effect on Julius. He dropped Amédée’s arm and, running ahead of him and zigzagging across the vicolo, shouted, ‘No. No! Oh good heavens, no, not that, not that! No!’

Returning to Amédée, he said, ‘What? I manage, by making the most strenuous effort, to rid my mind of all this. I convince myself that there is nothing to expect from that quarter, nothing to hope for, nothing to gain, that Anthime has been taken for a ride, we’ve all been taken for a ride, they’re all snake-oil salesmen, and there’s nothing left to do but laugh at it all … And then? No sooner have I set down my burden and come to terms with it than you come and say: Stop there! There’s been a misdeal. Deal again! Well, no, frankly! No! No mistakes, no misdeals! I’m sticking with the cards I’ve got. If that one’s not the real one, I don’t give a damn!’

Fleurissoire was disconcerted.

‘But,’ he said, ‘the Church …’ and he regretted that his hoarseness did not allow him to be as eloquent as he wanted. ‘What if the Church herself has been taken for a ride?’

Julius stopped in front of Amédée, half turned towards him and, blocking his way, and in a contemptuous, cutting tone of voice that was completely unlike him, said, ‘So what? What-does-it-matter-to-you?’

And suddenly Fleurissoire experienced a doubt, a new, shapeless, ghastly doubt that had vague origins in the depths of his unease: that Julius, Julius himself, this Julius he was talking to, Julius to whom his expectations and his battered faith had clung, this Julius was not the real Julius either.

‘What? Is it really you saying those things? The person I was counting on? You, Julius? Count de Baraglioul, whose writings—’

‘Don’t talk to me about my writings, I beg you. True or false, I’ve heard enough about them this morning from your pope. And thanks to my discovery, I also very much intend that any future ones will be better. Which is why I’m impatient to talk to you about more serious matters. You’ll lunch with me, I take it?’

‘With pleasure, but I shall have to leave promptly. I’m expected at Naples this evening … Yes, for business that I shall tell you about. You’re not taking me to the Grand Hotel, are you?’

‘No, we’ll go to the Colonna.’

Julius too was hardly eager to be seen at the Grand Hotel in the company of a derelict like Fleurissoire. At the Colonna, feeling drained and haggard, Fleurissoire was instantly intimidated by the patch of bright light in which his brother-in-law placed him, facing him and under his searching gaze. If indeed that gaze had settled on him. Instead he felt it scrutinising the edge of his deep-crimson scarf, at that shameful spot on his chin where the suspect pimple was erupting, and which he felt to be horribly exposed. And as the waiter was serving the hors d’oeuvres, Julius said, ‘You ought to try sulphur baths.’

‘It isn’t what you think it is,’ Fleurissoire protested.

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Baraglioul went on, not thinking anything. ‘It was no more than a passing suggestion.’ Then, leaning back squarely, in his most professional tone: ‘All right! Now, dear Amédée, to my mind we have all since the days of La Rochefoucauld been no more than the trail to his comet, and yet profit is not what always leads men’s motives, and there are acts that are disinterested—’

‘I do hope so,’ Fleurissoire interrupted with feeling.

‘Please don’t try to understand me before I’ve finished. By disinterested I mean gratuitous, and also that evil, or what we call evil, can be as gratuitous as good.’

‘Well, in that case, why commit them?’

‘Precisely! From indulgence, a compulsion to spend,  or to gamble. For it’s my view that the most disinterested souls are not necessarily the best, in the Catholic sense of the word: on the contrary, the best Catholic soul is the one that keeps the best accounts.’

‘And that always feels its debt to God,’ Fleurissoire added sanctimoniously, attempting to keep up with the discussion.

Julius was visibly irritated by his brother-in-law’s interruptions: he found them whimsical and absurd.

‘A scorn for what is serviceable,’ he went on, ‘is no doubt a sign of a certain aristocracy of spirit … So once they have broken free of God’s regard, self-regard and self-interest, can we conceive of a soul that no longer keeps any accounts whatsoever?’

Baraglioul was expecting acquiescence, but Fleurissoire exclaimed vehemently, ‘No, no, a thousand times no. We shall not conceive of it!’

Then, startled by the sound of his own voice, he leant towards Baraglioul.

‘Let’s keep our voices down. People are listening.’

‘Fah! Who do you think would be interested in what we’re saying?’

‘Dear friend, I see you have no idea what people are like in this country. Personally, I’m beginning to get to know them. In the four days I’ve spent here I’ve gone from one adventure to another, all of them instilling in me, and rather forcefully I can tell you, a caution that’s quite foreign to my character. Our movements are watched.’

‘You’re imagining it.’

‘Oh, I wish I were! How I wish it were all in the mind. But what can one do? When falsehood takes over from truth, truth has no choice but to dissemble. Having been entrusted with this mission, which I’ll tell you about in a moment, I find myself caught between the Lodge and the Society of Jesus. It’s all over for me: I’m suspected by everyone, and I suspect everything I see and hear. What if I were to admit to you, dear friend, that just now, when you were mocking me for my distress, I started to wonder whether it was the real Julius I was talking to or, more likely, some impostor masquerading as yourself … And what if I were to tell you that this morning, before we met, I even doubted my own reality, wondering if it was me here, in Rome, or whether I was perhaps just dreaming that I was here and was soon going to wake up in Pau, tucked up in bed next to Arnica with my everyday life all around me.’

‘Dear friend, you must be running a temperature.’

Fleurissoire clutched his hand and said in a strangled voice, ‘A temperature! You’re right, I’m running a temperature. And it’s a fever that can’t be cured, that one doesn’t want to be cured of. A fever, I’ll admit, that I’d hoped would infect you too when you got to hear what I’ve just told you – a fever I’d hoped to transmit to you, so that we would burn together, dear brother … But no! I’ve realised that the path that stretches out darkly before me is one I’m to follow alone – one I’m compelled to follow now, after what you’ve told me … Oh Julius, can it really be true? That one really doesn’t see HIM? That he can’t be seen?’

‘Dear friend,’ Julius replied, disengaging himself from Fleurissoire’s excitable grip and placing a hand on his arm to calm him, ‘dear friend, I shall confess to you something I did not dare say to you just now: that when I found myself in the Holy Father’s presence … well, I became distracted …’

‘Distracted!’ Fleurissoire repeated in a stunned voice.

‘Yes: suddenly I was startled to find myself thinking about something else.’

‘Am I really to believe what you say?’

‘Yes, because it was at exactly that moment that I experienced my revelation. “So,” I said to myself – going back to my earlier idea – “so supposing this wicked act, this crime, were gratuitous, it would be impossible to attribute authorship to it, and the said author would therefore be unassailable.”’

‘No! You’re back on that again,’ Amédée sighed despairingly.

‘Because the motive, the reason for the crime is the hook on which the criminal is caught. And if, as the judge will usually say, Is fecit cui prodest …10 You know your law, don’t you?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Amédée said, beads of perspiration forming on his brow.

At that moment their conversation was interrupted without warning: the messenger boy stood at their table with a plate on which there was an envelope with Fleurissoire’s name written on it. Gaping in astonishment, Fleurissoire opened the envelope and on the piece of paper inside read these words:

‘You see? What did I tell you?’ Amédée muttered, obscurely relieved by the note’s arrival.

‘I must say, that is more than unusual. How the devil did they know my name, and that I have business with the Credito Commerciale?’

‘These people know everything, I tell you.’

‘I don’t like their tone. The person who wrote this note might at least have apologised for interrupting us.’

‘What’s the point? He’s well aware that my mission has absolute priority … A cheque to be cashed … No, impossible to talk to you about it here. You can see for yourself that we’re under surveillance.’ He pulled out his watch. ‘Yes, we’ve just got time.’

He called the waiter.

‘Leave it to me,’ Julius said, ‘you’re my guest. The Credito isn’t far, if necessary we’ll take a cab. No need to panic … Ah yes, I also wanted to say to you that if you are going to Naples tonight, use this round-trip ticket. It’s in my name, but it doesn’t matter.’ Julius liked to be helpful. ‘I rashly bought it in Paris, thinking I’d be going further south, but I shan’t be able to get away from this conference. How long are you thinking of staying?’

‘As short a time as possible. I hope to be back by tomorrow.’

‘Then I shall expect you for dinner.’

Thanks to the Count de Baraglioul’s introduction, at the Credito Commerciale Fleurissoire cashed the cheque without difficulty and was handed six thousand-franc notes, which he slipped into the inside pocket of his jacket. On the way to the bank, and then to the station, he provided a muddled account of how he had come by the cheque, and of the cardinal and priest. Baraglioul listened with half an ear.

They made one more stop, at a shirtmaker’s where Fleurissoire bought himself a new collar, although he did not put it on there and then, for fear of making Julius, who was waiting outside the shop, impatient.

‘You’re not taking any luggage?’ Julius asked when he emerged.

Fleurissoire would have liked to collect his shawl and his nightshirt and toilet things, but to have to reveal to his brother-in-law the Via dei Vecchiarelli …

‘It’s only one night!’ he said carelessly. ‘In any case we haven’t got time to stop at my hotel.’

‘Where are you staying, by the way?’

‘Behind the Colosseum,’ Fleurissoire answered evasively. He might just as well have said ‘under a bridge’.

Julius stared at him again.

‘What an odd chap you are!’

Did he really seem so odd? Fleurissoire mopped his forehead. Their cab stopped outside the station and they walked a few steps in silence.

‘Well, it’s time to say goodbye,’ Baraglioul said, holding out his hand.

‘You … you wouldn’t come with me, would you?’ Fleurissoire stammered shyly. ‘I don’t know why, but I feel a bit anxious about going on my own …’

‘You came all the way to Rome on your own, didn’t you? What can possibly happen to you? Forgive me for not coming onto the platform with you, but the sight of a train pulling out always leaves me feeling unspeakably sad. Farewell! Bon voyage! And bring me back my return ticket for Paris when you come to the Grand Hotel tomorrow.’