Veritas (Atto Melani) by Monaldi Rita & Sorti Francesco

Author:Monaldi, Rita & Sorti, Francesco [Monaldi, Rita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857905703
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2013-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

“What a noble creature the student is, has been sufficiently well proven. But the nobler he is, the more he is exposed to disadvantages, misfortunes and dangers!”

Simonis and I were attending the students’ ceremony for the recommencement of university lessons. My assistant’s knock at the door had brusquely torn me from my admiring contemplation of the life and feats of the valiant Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, my compatriot.

We arrived right in the middle of the inaugural speech, delivered by Jan Janitzki Opalinski, who was standing on a ramshackle table in what appeared to be a damp cellar:

“In youth the student must put up with great disappointment and hard blows from dull rod masters who thrash these tender young plants instead of treating them with sympathy and benevolence, and so impede their full blossoming. As Horace says, and even more eloquently the scholar Dornavio Anitympanistas, they treat students in the manner of an executioner and so repress the free workings of the spirit.”

Applause broke out.

“It is commonly said – we heard it said by our own rector at the ceremony today – that there are six mortal dangers for students: drunkenness, anger and idleness; and then constant lechery and the pursuit of prostitutes, which is said to be fatal to the soul, to weaken the understanding and memory, to dim one’s sight and to cause shaking in the limbs; and finally post-meridian slumber, which is said to be fatal to good temper. False, it’s all false! And whoever says such things has no love for us, nor any understanding of our delicate nature.”

The cellar was crowded with students right up to the ceiling. They were nearly all Bettelstudenten, poor students. Some of them still bore on their chests the much-coveted university badge which allowed them to beg in order to support themselves in their studies. In one corner, a rickety table with miserly slices of black bread and a scanty collection of chipped glasses gave an idea of their straitened circumstances. The only thing that flowed in abundance was youthful merriment.

“Opalinksi is there making the speech. But how are we going to find the others in this mob?” I asked Simonis disconsolately.

“We’ll just have to try. Along with poor Hristo, Jan Janitzki Opalinski is one of the most erudite students I know. It’s no accident that he’s Polish – Poland is a beacon of Christian civilisation facing Half-Asia. Jan is perhaps the best orator in the whole Alma Mater Rudolphina – when he talks the students all listen entranced,” answered my assistant. “When Janitzki finishes, you can talk to him. We’ll ask him about the other two. He should at least know where Koloman is, they’re great friends.”

“What are truly insidious and fatal to students’ health” continued the Polish student, as we elbowed our way through the crowd – “are other factors, wrongly considered virtues. First of these are the long vigils of study and meditation, which consume every humour of the body, desiccate the limbs and organs and, according to Hippocrates, leave food and drink raw in the stomach.

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