"This may be," replied the first one. "But look at him and say, whether it isn't just as if old Luigi Candiano had risen from his grave, only being rejuvenated. I've known him well enough; we've been elected to the senate on the same day."
He took the papers from the table and examined them carefully. "You may be right," he finally said. "The age wouldn't be match up. He's too old to be one of Luigi's sons. If he had fathered him before his marriage - we would be able to ignore it."
He threw the papers back on the table, gave the secretary a sign, and stepped back to the window's niche with the others, quietly continuing the interrupted conversation. Nobody could read from Andrea's eyes what a burden had, in this moment, fallen off his soul. The secretary started again. "You understand foreign languages?" he asked.
"I speak French and a little German, Your Grace."
"German? Where have you learned this?"
"A German painter in Brescia has been a good friend of mine."
"Have you ever been to Triest?"
"For two months, Your Grace, doing business for my employer, the advocate."
The secretary got up and walked over to the three men by the window. After a while, he returned to the table and said: "You'll be given the passport of an Austrian subject, who was born in Triest. With this, you'll go to the house of the Austrian ambassador and ask for his protection, because the republic was threatening to deport you. You'll say that you had left Triest at a young age and had gone to Brescia. Whatever answer you may receive, with some cleverness, this visit will be all you need to get acquainted with the ambassador's secretary. It is your task to continue this relationship and to observe the secret contacts of the court of Vienna with the aristocracy of Venice as much as you can. If you should discover the slightest thing which would arouse your suspicion, you have to report it immediately."
"Does the high tribunal wish me to abandon my present position with the notary Fanfani?"