The Senyor preferred not to talk about Leo XIII. Both Dona Maria Antònia and I, sitting in the railway carriage that crossed more than half of Italy in less than twenty-four hours, expected him to tell us some details about the audience. Instead of doing so, the Senyor spoke about Michelangelo, Bramante and Julius II. Dona Maria Antònia was apprehensive. She also preferred not to bring up the matter that was on all our minds. Only once did her practical yet scrupulous sense prevail over her apprehension.
‘Tonet, you should have asked him if lying to the government is considered theft.’
She had never liked paying taxes. The Senyor, who basically felt the same way, tried to justify them just to play devil’s advocate.
‘The government needs money. Otherwise, how could it support its soldiers and its ships?’
‘We all need money. They should ask for it politely, not demand it. If the government’s poor, it should accept whatever it’s given.’
‘When Charles V came to Mallorca,’ he said, going off at a tangent, ‘he demanded nothing, but everyone gave him one thing or another. In Bearn it cost us more than seventy sheep.’
‘See? I think that’s the way it should be,’ Dona Maria Antònia replied; ‘everybody should give what they can, but there shouldn’t be all these demands we have nowadays, which are really nothing but bad manners.’
He tilted his head and made his typical vague hand gesture, which in that case meant: ‘I give up.’ Deep down he was pleased to see his feeble defence of socialist states refuted. He believed that modern politicians represented the worst of every family, manipulators with no education or aesthetic sense worth speaking of; however, that aversion had more to do with his views as a writer than with his sense of justice. Politicians and philosophers perceive the world in different ways. The former are men of action; the latter search for truth. Even the most pagan intellectual is closer to God than most politicians, who invariably have to lie in order to fulfill their objectives. Therefore, he was a nonconformist in regard to power. However, in that instance, at the very thought that he should have asked Leo XIII about such problems, he could not hide his vexation.
‘What would you have expected the Pope to reply, my dear? A lie is a lie, any way you slice it.’
He closed his eyes. She and I looked at each other.
‘He’s tired,’ she said, and turned to look out at the landscape. But I could not be sure that she saw it go by nor was it true that the Senyor was tired. He did not want to be distracted; he wanted to be alone, and for that purpose he had uttered in only a few minutes two insubstantial sentences, more typical of a Marquis of Collera than of an educated man like himself.
What may have been on his mind as the train ran at forty kilometres an hour crossing picturesque Tuscany and fertile Liguria did not seem easy to discern, but he eventually revealed it to me. I was sure he would do so, and preferred not to press him to confide in me. It will remain a mystery why he chose not to make any reference to his private interview with the Pontiff for several months. Evidently he must have asked many questions in the course of that interview, and the conversation must have been very weighty. The Senyor may have seemed superficial, yet he was only so regarding style and form. His temperament was not frivolous and he was concerned about so many spiritual matters that on their account he had neglected the administration of the estate to the point of losing his entire fortune. However, he could not tolerate the solemn or the portentous and never exposed a serious idea without previously elaborating on it and disguising it in such a way that it would appear more insubstantial and airy.
‘Do you believe,’ he sometimes said, ‘that Madame Pompadour was an empty-headed woman, because she dressed in pink? The one who favoured such a belief was Frederick of Prussia, and he had his reasons for doing so. He called her Cotillon II (for him, Maria-Theresa of Austria was Cotillon I). The revolutionaries distorted her meeting with Kaunitz at the villa of Babiole to fit their purposes. I understand that the name, Babiole, which means toy, threw them off, as they were unworldly people, but what was actually discussed were serious matters, such as the renversement des alliances, that is to say, the reconciliation of the House of Bourbon with the House of Austria. If the Republic and the two Napoleonic Empires had abided by that policy, Prussia would not have invaded France thirteen years ago and France would still own the regions of Alsace and Lorraine.’
I believe it is entirely possible that the Senyor did not make up his mind to speak of Leo XIII, who had definitely impressed him, until he recovered his serenity and his natural tone, his pleasant villa of Babiole. That was only my assumption. If this were indeed the case, one must think of how dangerous such a sentimental transmutation (I almost dare say such a ‘translation’) can be for truth. To what extent can one separate form and content? During the months that had elapsed in preparation for that interview, the Senyor, with his artistic passion for composing, must have endlessly retouched the concepts he exposed, or at least their atmosphere, their tone, changing them gradually, with the best of intentions, into something fundamentally different. The example concerning the policy of Madame de Pompadour is not entirely convincing, because although it is true that the facts have proved that the renversement des alliances might have been beneficial, we must assume that neither the Marchioness nor the abbot Bernis had planned that far ahead, and that Cotillon II, as the King of Prussia claimed, was acting only on the inspiration of her vanity, striving to be treated as a ‘friend’ by Maria-Theresa of Hapsburg. The clothes end up making the man. The ideas attributed to Leo XIII in the Senyor’s Memoirs should be considered with great reservations. I, for whom God had reserved the grace of contemplating the Pontiff’s private cell, with his scourge hanging from a hook on the wall, am a witness that the paganism attributed to him by the Senyor is inaccurate. The fact that he may keep certain ancient sculptures in the Vatican Museum does not imply his approval of their reprehensible symbolism; in fact, most of such works are in the Secret Museum, hidden from curious or lascivious eyes. That is something the Senyor does not seem to understand when he attributes to the Pontiff the sentence that ‘art ennobles everything’, and others in the same vein. Neither is it possible that upon hearing the Senyor’s proposal (‘Faith leads to Truth or Error, whereas Reason leads only to Truth’) Leo XIII smiled graciously, as if he were being told that the weather was sunny outside, and started talking about Bernini’s fountains.
The voyage was uneventful. Most of the time we travelled alone. After daybreak, near the French border, Italy saw us off in the form of an exuberant lady covered in veils and jewels who was leading a girl of eight or ten by the hand. Her arrival was preceded by musical phrases directed to the conductor, who saw them in. Then all the colours of the Renaissance unfolded before our eyes: ‘Intra, bambina, saluta questi signori. Bon giorno, signori. Capiscono l’italiano? Ah, benissimo! Romanesi? Spagnoli? Ah, la Spagna, quel paese così bello, così meraviglioso…E da quale comarca? Forse andalusi? Adoro l’Andalusia…’
And she hummed a few bars from Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
‘What a bird-like disposition!’ the Senyor said softly.
She was a large bird with the feathers of a peacock. Her face was a rainbow. In only a few minutes she told us intimate details about her life that were rather vulgar and did not quite hang together. The train ran in and out of tunnels. The Ligurian landscape is dramatic and full of surprises. Light white clouds floated by, followed by black, menacing ones, and the brightness they created gave way to a miraculous light, like the rays that fall upon a saint rising out of the mist on an old altarpiece; a minute later it would become a spring haze spreading its sweetness to the nearby hills. There were moments when the storm seemed about to break; we heard distant claps of thunder and the wind carried the freshness of wet earth; the sun came out, laughing merrily until the haze so beautifully captured by Botticelli sifted its rays and lavished us for a few seconds with a rain so fine that it only succeeded in lining the compartment windows with droplets as tiny as grains of sand. Then the sun shone again.
‘I know I’ve been criticized,’ the lady said, ‘but do I have to lock myself up in a convent just because my husband left me? No, no. La vita è bella. I’m still young. I want to enjoy myself. I live for my daughter. However, no one has been able to say anything about me. I’m an honest woman…’
She dried a tear and laughed and cried alternately. When we reached the border we said our farewells. The Italian lady embraced and kissed Dona Maria Antònia. When we had already parted, she stepped back: ‘Ho ancora una parolina a dire, signora. Lei ha la bellezza degli trent’anni.’
And she gave her one last kiss.