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Babylonian captivity; 2,463 since Romulus founded Rome; 1,757 since the beginning of the
Roman Empire with Julius Caesar; 1,678 since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; 1,641 since the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus Vespasian; 1,582 since the institution of the 40-days’ fast
and since the holy fathers made baptism mandatory for all Christians; 1,122 years since the birth of the Ottoman Empire; 919 years since the coronation of Charlemagne; 612 since the conquest of
Jerusalem under Godfrey of Bouillon; 468 since German supplanted Latin in the official documents of the chancelleries; 340 since the invention of the arquebus; 258 since the fall of Constantinople
into the hands of the Infidel; 278 since the invention of the printing press by the genius of Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz and 241 since the invention of paper in Basel by Anthony and Michael
Galliciones; 220 since the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus of Genoa; 182 years since the first Turkish siege of Vienna and 28 years since the second and last one; 129 since the
correction of the Gregorian calendar; 54 years since the invention of the upright clock; 61 years since the birth of Clement XI, our Pontiff; 33 since the birth of His Caesarean Majesty Joseph the
First; 6 years since his ascension to the throne; well yes, in this most glorious Annus Domini in which we found ourselves, Cloridia and I owned an armchair – well, two actually.
    They had not been a gift from some compassionate soul: we had purchased them with the proceeds of our small family business and we were enjoying them in our lodgings inside the Augustinian
convent, where we were still living while we waited for an extra storey to be added to our house in the suburb of the Josephina.
    This day, the first Thursday after Easter, fell almost two months after our arrival in the Caesarean capital and our life now showed no traces of the famine that had afflicted us in Rome.
    This was all thanks to my job as a chimney-sweep in Vienna – or, to be more precise, as “Master Chimney-sweep by Licence of the Court”, hofbefreiter Rauchfangkehrermeister, as
it is known round here, where even the humblest ranks will not forgo the gratification of a high-sounding title. That which in Italy was considered, as I have already said, one of the vilest and
most degrading of trades, was regarded here, in the Archduchy of Austria above and below the Enns, as an art, and one that was held in high esteem. Back there we were seen as harbingers of ill,
whereas here people competed in the streets to touch our uniforms because (it was said) we brought good luck.
    That was not all: the job of master chimney-sweep brought with it not only a social position of great respect but also an enviable income. I could even say that I know no other job that is more
highly esteemed or more thoroughly despised depending on the country where it is practised.
    There were no ragged chimney-sweeps here, wandering from town to town, begging for a bit of work and some warm soup. No exploited children torn from needy families; no
fam, füm,
frecc
, or “hunger, smoke, cold”, the three black
condottieri
that give their names to the wretched trade in the poor Alpine valleys of northern Italy.
    One had but to leave those valleys behind and enter the imperial city to find everything turned on its head: in Vienna there were no roaming chimney-sweeps but only well-established ones, with
all the formalities of regulation, confraternity memberships, fixed charges, (12
pfennig
, or
baiocchi
, for a regular cleaning), official pecking orders (master, assistant and
apprentice) and convenient home-cum-workshops, which often – as in my case – came complete with courtyard and vineyard.
    And, to my great surprise, the Viennese chimney-sweeps were
all
Italian.
    The first ones had arrived two centuries earlier, together with the master builders who had brought with them the Italian genius for architecture and building