John laughed. "I had always thought it was a tortoise the eagle dropped, but still – You see what I mean, Severn, about the wrong reasons. Taylor is lively, there is no gloom of death in him. Read on."

" 'Death meets us everywhere, and is procured by every instrument and in all chances, and enters in at many doors; by violence and secret influence, by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and the meeting of a vapour, by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone, by a full meal or an empty stomach -' "

"That bites hard, Severn, very hard."

" '- By watching at the wine or by watching at prayers, by the sun or the moon, by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or sleeping days, by water frozen into the hardness and sharpness of a dagger, or water thawed in the floods of a river, by a hair or a raisin, by violent motion or sitting still, by severity or dissolution, by God's mercy or God's anger; by everything in providence and everything in manners, by everything in nature and everything in chance -' "

"He takes such pleasure in his doublets. Hair or raisin, indeed. There's no death in it at all."

" '- Eripitur persona, manet res; we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and get our death in the purchase; and the person is snatched away, and the goods remain. And all this is the law and constitution of nature; it is a punishment of our sins, the unalterable event of providence, and the decree of heaven: the chains that confine us to this condition are strong as destiny, and immutable as the eternal laws of God.' " Severn looked up. "May I stop there? I can hardly keep my eyes open."

"Sleep then. I shall not leap out of bed to buy beefsteaks or laudanum." And then: "Poor Severn. Poor Joseph. Did they call you Joe at home?" Severn nodded and the nod turned to a nodding off which he jerked himself out of abruptly when John said: "Sometimes in the night's deep watches I anagrammatise my name, give its constituent letters to such things of the world to survive as will take them. Keats takes steak. Alas, he does not. Stake takes Keats. A different stake, for martyr's burning. John Keats thanks Joe. And so the name is pulled apart and there is an end to it. Have you made arrangements for my Protestant burial yet?"

"I would – I have -"

"Sleep, sleep, Joe. Ah, alas, you cannot yet." For there was a knocking at the door of the apartment. Severn tottered from John's bedroom to open up to Signora Angeletti, very voluble with much hand work, and two stolider persons, men in stained blue uniform. Severn could not well understand what was being said. These were officials of some sort, sent by whom? Signora Angeletti babbled on about la legge, la legge. "Bring them in to me," called John.

They stood then at the bed's foot. One of the men, smelling death, made a sign of the cross with great speed. Signora Angeletti spoke on and on, apologetic, bold, sympathetic, asserting her rights.

"What is it?" Severn said. "What in God's name -"

"Wait." And John heard her out and heard what she said confirmed more briefly in the Roman basso of the elder of the two men. "It's the law, Severn. Everything is to be burnt at the stake – furniture, books, the very wallpaper. I am a source of infection to the city. I am to be allowed to die first, but then comes the burning."

"It's that man Clark brought, it's that damnable priest at the top of the Steps -"

"It's the law, Severn. La legge, capisco," he said to Signora Angeletti and the two men. They all nodded, thankful to be understood. Nothing personal, they would that the signore could live and flourish, but as he was dying and they had it on medical authority confirmed by the Church that he was then there was nothing for it but the burning and they were sincerely sorry about the expense. "We have to find the money, Severn. To replace what is to be burnt. La legge, you understand. I'm truly sorry, truly. I take back what I said about wishing to die quickly. I must die slowly and grant you time to raise the money." Severn raised pathetic fists towards his temples and was ready to scream. "Calm, calm. There will be time, I promise you. I will expire slowly, like a good boy."

NINE

John Keats's nightly music was from a tiny fountain in the shape of a boat; Belli's was the torrent of Trevi, which he lived above. He and his wife had an apartment in the Poli palazzo, whose windows, like the eyes of the sculpted figures that preside over the waters, looked straight on to the pool and the jets that thrashed into it. Belli was in his study with Gulielmi a week after Epiphany, both standing, both looking down absently into the foam rainbowed by the bright noon. Gulielmi was just back from the north. He had announced that Carlo Porta was dead. He had died of gout the day before Epiphany.

"I should have gone to Milan to see him," Belli said. "He was a great poet."

"A great dialect poet."

"Dialect, dialect, dialect. What in God's name is the difference between a language and a dialect? I'll tell you. A language waves flags and is blown up by politicians. A dialect keeps to things, things, things, street smells and street noises, life."

"Well, now your way is clear. You must replace Porta. No, don't burst out again. As the great poet of dialect. Yes, I know, comparing Milanese and Roman is like comparing French and Spanish, but I mean what you mean – things, appetites, feelings, odours, people, not the big bannered abstractions."

"I've thought of this," Belli said. "Thought of it especially since the great man offered me the great position. Belli on the side of the State, gelder of thought and speech in the service of stability. Belli at nightfall, saving his reason through scurrility. All literature is subversive, somebody said. Voltaire? A repressive office will force me into a metier of subversion. I acknowledge myself to be a split man."

"We're all split. Meat is disgusting, some Englishman said, but it's also delicious. The act of love is bestial but also ecstatic."

"Stability saved through scurrility. Subversion the prop of social order."

"It's the literature that counts. You embrace a kind of martyrdom to write what you have to write. Have you considered what you have to write?"

"Stuff for tavern recitation with the doors closed. Totally unpublishable."

"But what?"

"Time, time, I must be given time. I'm not ready."

The furnishings of the study expressed the contradictions in the man – a plain deal kitchen table, a tavern chair and a chair of French provenance, very fine, an old prie-dieu with stuffed satin well knee-worn, a lectern with an open Jerome, a Jacobin etching showing a generic pope as a feeder of children to a greybeard cannibal God, Lotto's Annunciation (a bad copy) with its cat running scared from Gabriel. On the table was John Keats's cat sonnet, with a literal translation by Gulielmi.

"That boy there," Gulielmi said, "spoke to me of a great long poem about Rome – changing Rome and the unchanging Roman. My heart ached with pity when he told me. I knew it was not for him."

"Changing Rome, indeed. Rome doesn't change, Rome must not be viewed temporally. No work for an outsider. But he's on the right lines in another way. I'm sorry I sneered at this cat sonnet of his."

"Whatever you do, Belli, for God's sake don't take that poem as typical. He's not that kind of poet at all. He's a poet of nature, romance, fairyland, heartache, the classical world as seen in a rainy English garden. That cat sonnet's a mere joke."

"Joke or not, he's on the right lines there. The sonnet form can be dragged low, must be dragged low. The time has come to reject its Petrarchal coronation. You see, God is in cabbage patches and beer-stains on a tavern table. Do you follow me?"