Veritas (Atto Melani) Read Online Free PDF Page B

It is certainly opportune that I should at this point explain where
we are going.”
    “About time,” I thought, while Cloridia, suddenly reanimated, mustered her remaining strength to sit up and prepare herself for what the notary was about to say.
    “In short, I should attempt to distract your good lady from the tedium of the journey by pointing out to her the forms, qualities and appearances of this imperial city,” the notary
began in a pompous tone, clearly very proud of his home town. “Outside the city walls, and all around it, is a broad level area of unpaved earth, clear of all vegetation, which makes it
possible, in the event of an enemy attack, to get a clear view of the besiegers. To the east of the residential area lies the river Danube, which with generous and serpentine sinuosity flows from
north to south, and from west to east, forming within its curves numerous little islands, marshes and bogs. Further east, beyond this damp, lagoon-like area, begins the great plain that stretches
uninterruptedly as far as the Kingdom of Poland and the empire of the Czar of Russia. Southwards lies another flat area, leading towards Carinthia, the region bordering on Italy, whence you
yourselves came. Westwards and northwards, however, the city is surrounded by woody hills, culminating in the Kahlenberg – the
Monte Calvo
or Bald Mountain as you Italians call it
– the extreme point of the Alps, which rears up above the Danube, bastion of the West facing the great eastern plain of Pannonia.”
    Despite the notary’s affable eloquence, Cloridia’s face continued to darken and I myself was conjecturing with some trepidation as to the substance of the donation. If only this odd
notary would come out and tell us just what it consisted of!
    “I know what you’re thinking,” he said in that moment, suspending the orographic lesson on Vienna and turning to me: “You will be wondering about the precise nature of
your benefactor’s donation, and what prestige it bears. Well now, as you can read yourselves in the
Hofbefreyung
,” he specified, setting one of the documents before me with
great care, “Abbot Melani has procured for you – in the suburb of the Josephina, near St Michael, where we are now heading – a post as hofbefreyter Meister.”
    “What does that mean?” Cloridia and I asked in unison.
    “Obvious: in hofbefreit, hof means ‘court’ and befreit ‘freed’. You have been made free to become meister, or master, by licence of the court, or by imperial
decree, however you want to put it.”
    We looked at him quizzically.
    “It’s because you are not a Viennese citizen,” the notary explained. “And so, given the urgent, the extremely urgent, need that the Emperor has of your services, your
benefactor has generously begged and obtained from the court, on your behalf, the Gewerbeberechtigung,” he concluded, without realising that he still had not clarified the main point.
    “And that is?” pressed Cloridia with incredulous hope at the notary’s unexpected words.
    “The right to exercise the profession, of course! And to be welcomed into the confraternity,” explained the notary impatiently, looking at us as if we were two savages – and
ungrateful ones, to boot.
    As I was to learn with time, the Viennese take any unfamiliarity with their language for a lack of civility and grey matter.
    At the notary’s sharp reaction my already enfeebled spouse fell completely silent, afraid of irritating him and so creating yet more untimely complications for Atto’s long-awaited
and inscrutable donation, now so close at hand.
    What had I become Meister or master of? What was the profession that the Emperor was benevolently allowing me to exercise despite not being a Viennese citizen? And, above all, what services did
the benevolent Sovereign require of me with such urgency?
    “You will have to lead a virtuous and blameless life, carry out your duties properly and serve as a model and