Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Just over a week ago, on St Stephen’s Day, 26th December, I heard him complain: “The season could not be more contrary to my convalescence,” immediately adding with a touch of vanity: “But even the most robust are feeling it.” What an optimist Abbot Melani was! He talked of his death, but he did not really believe in it. What he stubbornly called convalescence was actually agony.

  After four days, on 30th December, he insisted on getting out of bed, saying that he felt suffocated, so that we had to humour him by putting him on a chair. Even that was not enough: he wanted to walk a few paces across the room, supported by me and Domenico. But as soon as he tried to move, he exclaimed, “Alas, I can’t make it”, and we had to make him sit down at once. He had fainted and we put him straight back to bed. Cloridia rushed to our summons, and bathed him with the water of the Queen of Hungary, sent to him most considerately every year by Gondi, the Grand Duke’s secretary, and it soon brought him round. But just a quarter of an hour later the illness seized hold of him again.

  “Don’t abandon me,” he said, and then lost consciousness and remained like that, without speaking or moving, for almost four days, to the amazement of the doctors, who had never seen such a resilient heart in a man of eighty-eight. The day before yesterday, Wednesday 4th January, two hours after midnight, he opened his eyes and looked at me. I was seated by his bed. I had never abandoned him, as he had done with me three years earlier; I took his cold bony hands in mine. He murmured: “Stay with me.” Then, with a long sigh of weariness, he went.

  As I cross the church of the Barefoot Augustinians, I feel as if Atto is still by my side: like that other time, that freezing 20th April three years ago, in another church, also – by a twist of fate – of the Barefoot Augustinians. The occasion was the exequies of His Caesarean Majesty Joseph the Victorious. Nothing in the world could have stopped me being there: the only other funeral I have ever attended. I cannot follow Abbot Melani’s bier without feeling lashed by the icy north wind of memories.

  In the Loggia of the Cavaliers the Emperor, having received the benediction of the Bishop of Vienna, had been transferred to a new sarcophagus, draped in black and gold velvet, and sealed forever with golden nails. The coffin was adorned with gold all over: the locks, the keys, the handles and the initials I.I., Joseph I, engraved in the middle. The Barefoot Carmelite Sisters of St Joseph had covered the bier with the cloth they always preserve for the burials of the Caesars. At the foot they had placed the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary; at the head the Caesarian insignia with the Golden Fleece; and in the middle the dagger and short sword with their imperial eagle hilts. The urn with the heart and tongue of the deceased had been transported, in the absolute silence imposed by the ceremony, to the Loretan Chapel of the church of the Barefoot Augustinians, and placed there among the other eight urns containing the hearts of his predecessors, starting with the young Ferdinand IV who had begun the tradition out of devotion to the Madonna of Loreto. Immediately afterwards, the shrine containing the brain, eyes and bowels had been taken in a six-horse carriage escorted by a procession of candles to the Cathedral of St Stephen and placed there in the archducal crypt: twenty-two other collections of grey matter and internal organs, those of the previous Habsburgs of Austria, would silently receive it.

  During the ceremony, black night had stolen in, and with it had come the much-feared farewell. We returned to the Loggia de’ Cavalieri, where the Queen Mother and the other members of the imperial family had arrived in the meantime – all except the widow Queen, whose great grief had detained her in the palace with her youngest daughter. Followed by the whole court and the Papal Nuncio, the bier was then transported along the low corridor of the palace to the church of the Barefoot Augustinians and placed there on a black litter, around which, in the hour between 20 and 21, every funeral rite had been solemnly celebrated. The Augustinians then handed things over to the Capuchins for the interment.

  And now it was the moment of the people. The faithful subjects had come from all around into the church of the Capuchins, and at 21 hours, announced by the powerful tolling of the bells of all the churches in the Archduchy of Austria and illuminated by thousands and thousands of torches protected by glass lanterns and fixed to every bell tower to vanquish the mournful darkness, the Emperor’s lifeless body made its entrance between two dozen white torches, their flames flickering in the furious wind, carried by the scions of the nobility. It was awaited by the city guard, with their banners held upside down, while from the dark belly of the drums the rhythmic rumble of death reverberated all around.

  Atto and I were also awaiting the deceased, almost suffocated amid the immense crowd. I could barely make out the procession; right behind the bier walked the Queen Mother, impassive and impenetrable, surrounded by three gentlemen of the chamber and illuminated by the torches of seven noble scions: Her Majesty Eleanor Magdalen Theresa had just been named Regent. Abbot Melani, as I would learn later, with the help of Camilla and of Vinzenz Rossi, had succeeded in getting the forged letter of Prince Eugene into her hands, to put a stop somehow to the Prince’s desire for war and prevent him from becoming equally powerful under the future emperor Charles. Atto knew very well that Eugene would continue the war against France even without his allies England and Holland. There was no knowing whether that letter would finally be of any use or not.

  Behind the Queen Mother came Joseph’s sisters and elder daughter, also escorted by a cluster of torches, buffeted mercilessly by the raging wind.

  The court musicians intoned the Libera me Domine and Joseph was at last escorted to his final resting place: the crypt of the Capuchins. In that very year the Emperor had prophetically enlarged it, doubling its capacity. Now it would receive him in the large central sarcophagus, the golden key to which would be preserved forever in the imperial treasure chamber along with all the other tomb keys of the Habsburgs of Austria. And so ended the barely thirty-three years of the earthly adventure of His Caesarean Majesty Joseph the Victorious, first of his name.

  Vienna

  DECEMBER 1720

  After Abbot Melani’s death I left Paris, as did Domenico.

  The War of the Spanish Succession is over. It has left behind it thirteen years of famine, devastation and death. In 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, in 1714 the Peace of Rastatt and that of Baden.

  Everything has gone as Atto foretold: the English merchants have grabbed the most appetising booty. England has snatched Gibraltar and the monopoly of slaves from Spain, and the North American colonies from France.

  But it is not only the instigators but also the accomplices of these new times who have been rewarded.

  Emperor Charles VI, brother and successor of Joseph, has been awarded the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Mantua, Naples and Sardinia. In Spain, on 11th September 1714, the Franco-Spanish troops of Philip of Anjou, now King Philip V of Bourbon, entered Barcelona and put a bloody end to the independence of the city Charles had abandoned in his haste to ascend the longed-for imperial throne.

  The Savoys have been raised from the rank of double-dealing dukes, as Atto described them, to that of kings, and have been awarded Sicily: all thanks to Eugene. And so the Italian peninsula is caught in the Savoyard vice: to the north Piedmont, to the south Sicily. The perfect prelude for the other project of the dervish’s friends: that one day Italy will have a king.

  In 1713 Landau was besieged once again, but this time by the French, as it had remained under the Empire since 1704, when Joseph reconquered it for the second time. Yet again the garrison commander, Prince Karl Alexander von Wüttemberg, had to coin money using his own gold and silver dining service. A repetition, though in reverse: this time the French won. It was Prince Eugene’s fault: if he had not gone on with the war to the bitter end, the Empire would have kept Landau.

  Atto’s prophecy about Eugene has come true: Charles VI made him (and makes him) do what he wants. Delivering the forged letter to the Queen Mother has proven totally useless.

  Bu
t on the horizon, clouds are gathering for the Caesarean dynasty: as the dervish foretold, the House of Habsburg will soon peter out and Germany will have its own king. Charles VI has no male children, just two girls. And the heir to the imperial throne can only be male. To tell the truth, Charles’s firstborn was a son, born four years ago, in 1716, but he died just a few months later: exactly what happened to Joseph’s little son. What a coincidence.

  Charles VI’s heirs should be Joseph’s daughters. But obviously he does not relish the idea. This was made clear in 1713 when, even though he still had no progeny after five years of marriage, he issued the Pragmatic Sanction: on his death his own children, if any – not Joseph’s – would ascend the throne. Therefore it will be his elder daughter, Maria-Theresa, born three years ago, who will inherit. An arbitrary act, in every sense. The other countries in Europe refuse to accept it, and so for years Charles has been pleading with them, one by one, imploring them to recognise the Pragmatic Sanction. In exchange he makes endless promises, even the surrender of territory. Anything to prevent a daughter of his hated brother from sitting on the throne.

  But Charles’s hatred is weakening the Empire. The German princes are chafing: the moment is coming when Germany will secede (as Palatine predicted) and will have its own sovereign, no longer in Catholic Vienna.

  In short, as Atto feared, this war has marked the end of the world, but has not replaced it with a new one; no, the agony of humanity has simply begun. Now it is an oligarchy that coldly decides the destinies of lands thousands of miles away: the colonies of the New World and the Italian territories were reorganized from Utrecht. Political alliances are no longer the fulcrum of international diplomacy, but just token operations: they are decided by the financial backers of the crowns. And those, like the Most Christian King or Joseph the Victorious, who will not let themselves be manipulated, are rendered impotent, along with their descendants. Dynastic rights or military conquests no longer count for anything; only just money, or rather finance matters. Wasn’t it during the war of succession that coins began to be replaced by paper?

  From the friends we still have in Paris, I have heard that life has got harder there; even harder than in Rome, and that is saying something.

  Five years ago, in 1715, the Sun King died: of gangrene, exactly as Palatine had foretold. And he died almost without heirs. Between 1711 and 1712 all his legitimate children and grandchildren died (this, too, was predicted by the dervish), except a child aged two, Louis, saved by his nurses, who locked themselves up with him in a wing of the palace, preventing the doctors not only from touching him, but even from seeing him. They were convinced that the other members of the royal family had not died from their sicknesses but from their treatments . . .

  Atto Melani had been right: “With a king like the Grand Dauphin, France would finally emerge from its downward spiral of arrogance and destruction; England and Holland want the opposite to happen. The country must continue to degenerate, the court must be hated by the people. It annoys them that the Most Christian King has adult sons and grandsons; the ideal would be if there were no heir, or if he were a baby, which amounts to the same thing.”

  The days when the Most Christian King, aged just four, ascended the throne are over. In those days, to defend the country from the interference of other powers there were the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, and the Prime Minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Now there is no longer a queen, nor a prime minister.

  “Louis XIV has taken everything into his own hands,” said Atto. “After his death a regency would leave the country at the mercy of the first scheming meddler, who might just happen to be sent by England or Holland to set off a mine under France’s backside.”

  Exactly. The death of the Most Christian King is exactly what Palatine’s friends were waiting for: just a few months later their man dropped in from Holland. It was the Englishman John Law, with his theory of finance, which led France to an economic collapse unprecedented in centuries and centuries of history.

  This year the swindler’s treatise was published: Money and Trade Considered. There was a French translation, but I never managed to find it. I do not know English but my son does; Atto knew that England would be the real winner of the war and, although reluctantly, he arranged for him to be taught the merchants’ language, alongside Italian, Latin, Greek, German and French.

  And so, finally, thanks to my little boy’s reading (actually he is now a handsome lad) I can see in plain black and white the heresy with which Law delivered the death blow to France: according to him the best incentive for the country’s productive growth is . . . loans and property in banknotes! Not the good old coins of old, which were worth their weight in gold. In short, he was a friend of the usurers.

  With this cheap huckster’s fib he managed to persuade the Regent Philip II of Orléans to let him found the General Bank in 1716. The war of succession has brought France so low that the Regent hoped to have found the solution to his debts in this man Law. From 1718, under the new name of the Royal Bank, the institute issued gigantic quantities of notes, which it distributed to the French with promises fit for nincompoops, demanding in exchange all the gold, silver and lands they owned. If their goods were worth a hundred, Law would give them a note with the words: “This is worth five hundred”, with the promise they could have their property back whenever they wanted it. The subjects of the Kingdom of France all rushed to entrust their property to him, in exchange for scraps of paper stained with ink.

  It is incredible how ingenuous these French are: they feel superior to everyone else and are always ready to glorify themselves, but then they go flocking after the first charlatan that comes along.

  In January this year, the Regent even granted Law the post of General Controller of Finances, the job held by Superintendent Fouquet and then by Minister Colbert!

  It did not last long. In March Palatine’s friends delivered the final blow: they circulated doubts about Law’s credibility, and all of a sudden the French went rushing to the Royal Bank to ask for the gold, silver and lands that they had pawned for his banknotes. The Regent first halved the value of the banknotes, then stopped all payments. “We no longer have anything,” the bank candidly responded to the French subjects. The bank was closed, John Law fled to Venice and the French were left stony broke.

  Atto had foreseen it, the dervish had predicted: the typhoon of financial ruin and popular outcry struck France, and then passed on to the rest of Europe, already prostrated by the war of succession.

  Money, for centuries and centuries has always had the same value, but now that there is just paper and no more gold or silver, it is worth less every day. I am among the privileged few who can sleep easily: I still have the vineyard in the Josephina.

  And so I went back to Vienna. But the city is no longer what it was. On the bell tower of St Stephen’s is the magnificent bell that Joseph had had cast from the Turkish cannons, which the people soon nicknamed Pummerin. It did not ring for the Emperor’s thirty-three years, as had been planned: death came first. And so they hung Pummerin in October, and inaugurated it in January 1712 to celebrate the arrival of the new Emperor, Charles VI. A few months later, in December, divine wrath fell upon the usurper: the plague broke out, and raged for the whole of 1713, carrying off eight thousand innocent victims. And here was another echo from the past, another circle closing in on itself: the secretum pestis that thirty years earlier had saved Vienna from the contagion deliberately procured by the besieging Turks could do nothing against the scourge of God this time.

  I have heard of the bad end of Countess Marianna Pálffy, Joseph’s young lover, whom Abbot Melani had vainly tried to approach. As soon as Joseph had died, the Queen Mother, the ministers and the whole court lashed out at her, even forcing her to give back the presents received from her deceased lover. Fallen into disgrace, banned from the court, she was forced into a lowly marriage, to the despair of her father, the poor Count Johann Pálffy ab Erdöd, one of the most faithful and valia
nt commanders of the Caesarean house.

  From the day of Joseph’s death the sun no longer rose blood-red: it was truly an omen, famous throughout the city, and was still being talked of today. The almanac of the English fortune-teller, after correctly prophesying Joseph’s death, now sells widely throughout Vienna. It truly is a golden age for the English.

  The Italians, on the other hand, so well-loved by the Habsburgs up to the time of Joseph, are no longer popular. The French are arriving, summoned by the man who was their bitterest enemy in Spain: Charles VI. Italian itself, cultivated by Joseph, is being gradually supplanted by French as the court language. As soon as he arrived in Vienna, Charles sacked all the palace staff who had served his deceased brother. The first to fall were the court musicians favoured by Joseph. He replaced them with others, including very few Italians. Obviously Camilla’s services were no longer required, nor have her oratorios been performed since.

  Overwhelmed by her memories, Cloridia’s sister asked and was allowed to change convent. She is now at St Lawrence, seeking peace. The good musicians often go to visit her, but she does not wish to see anyone, except my wife.

  Despite everything, Vienna, the capital and Caesarean residence, is still the best place to live in these times. In no other city can one live so well if one wishes to be secluded from the world.

  I am finally living in the house with the vineyard in the Josephina that the Abbot one day gave me, which fostered so many dreams and hopes in my and in my family’s hearts.

  The girls are now in Vienna as well; Examiniert und Approbiert, they have obtained their midwives’ licences and are both mothers. Cloridia has a wine shop selling Heuriger or new wine, with the help of our son and our two sons-in-law, bright young Romans very happy to leave the capital of usury in search of a life worthy of the name. Hands are needed to cultivate the vineyard, and, of course, hoeing in the sun – for my boy too – is healthier than breathing soot. And in winter we can stay inside in the warmth instead of freezing on the rooftops. Even though chimney-sweeps are well paid in Vienna, one cannot put a price on one’s health. And in any case, they no longer need anyone to clean the chimneys at Neugebäu: the new emperor does not want to restore it.