Florian (19 page)

When the horses were granted a respite, to walk around the Lusthaus on their homeward way, the two Lipizzans danced as nimbly as if they had just quitted their stable.

Bosco, however, suffered slight attacks of vertigo due to the swift pace, and now recuperated by yawning continually.

There was one exciting moment. In the narrow Rotenturmstrasse an automobile coughed, snorted and wheezed toward them. Gruber heard it from afar and took the horses in hand. It was just as well that he did. For, as the automobile approached and sounded its claxon, Capitano lost his head. He rose on his hindlegs, like the horses of Prince Eugen's monument, and would have plunged into the first show-window had not Gruber expertly shortened the reins and checked him with his iron grip. Capitano made a second attempt to rise, and failing again, surged forward and tried to run away. That, too, failed.

In the meantime the clattering automobile passed, leaving only a smelly cloud of smoke in its wake.

Had Capitano in his momentary lack of composure been the stronger, the shaft would have rammed the back of a hack and perhaps injured its passengers. Luckily Florian had remained calm, and had become still calmer when Capitano made his second break, attempting to compel his mate back into the obedient trot. That had made matters much easier for Gruber.

Once more Gruber's mouth formed the thin horizontal line in his bronzed face. He lowered his forehead as if to ram something, but he did not raise the whip; he had no intention of punishing Capitano. He registered satisfaction over the fact that Florian had not forgotten the paper lesson and was apparently resolved not to be terrified by anything, or, what amounted to the same thing, to let any terror get the better of him. A single stroke of the whip had done this to a blooded animal unaccustomed to punishment!

Capitano went unrebuked. Automobiles were something of a novelty, were fearsome and unpleasantly noisy. Capitano had been maddened by the shrieking and groaning monster rather than terrified by it. On this score Gruber heartily agreed with him. He refused to beat a Lipizzan because of one of those infernal machines. Nevertheless, Capitano had to get rid of his nervousness in the proximity of these running teakettles. So the next time they went out they encountered one automobile after the other; Gruber had seen to that. And Capitano soon got over his revulsion.

The equerry showed up, once, as the phaeton stood ready.

“I want to see personally whether we are prepared.”

Anton was shunted to the rear of the carriage. Doubtfully he took his place. He didn't dare take Bosco along, even though the little dog already wagged longingly around the wheels. Gruber, however, to whom the difference between himself and this Count Bertingen wasn't so great, plucked the little dog from the ground the instant before the equerry had sent the horses off, and handed him up to Anton.

They went along the Ringstrasse into the Prater. This time there was no thrilling race down the main thoroughfare, although Florian and Capitano made a mild attempt to fall into the stimulating tempo.

On their return Bertingen, as he climbed down, gave the dog a marked look, and a none too friendly one to Anton. But he withheld any comment. To Gruber, who stood waiting, he said: “Well, my dear Gruber, I think we are ready.”

“Tomorrow these two will serve his Majesty,” Gruber replied, as if he had long ago made up his mind to that.

Afterward he asked Anton very casually: “How does his Excellency drive?”

Anton shrugged his shoulders. “The horses do everything by themselves.”

Gruber chose not to show his pleasure.

E
ARLY NEXT MORNING THE OPEN landau with the gilded spokes stopped at the inner staircase at Schönbrunn. Capitano and Florian drew it. Gruber, in a dun-colored coat, each tip of his bicorne over an ear, held the reins.

The horses' pawing echoed down from the vault. Their ears moved convulsively, they were waiting impatiently for the signal that would set them going.

Franz Joseph, accompanied by his chief adjutant and his
chasseur,
appeared. He was ill-humored and did not glance at the new pair. The adjutant wore a long face. He saw nothing at all. As soon as his Emperor sat in the carriage, the morose-looking
chasseur
climbed to the driver's box, and the horses trotted quickly through the corridor and turned a sharp corner to the courtyard.

As soon as their nodding heads came into view, a sentry shouted:
“Gewehr heraus!”
three times, for the Emperor was entitled to a triple salute. Three times the shout rose like the crack of a whip, dissolving in echoes through the wide square. The last one had hardly died away when the command rang out and the drums beat the general march. The two officers saluted, their sabers flashing three times in the sun; and the front-line soldiers slid their hands down behind their gun belts in presenting arms. The flag dipped. It was a military ceremony, solemn and impressive.

Once again Konrad Gruber compressed his lips, his mouth a thin line. He knew exactly what to do, not under orders but by his own tact. The carriage rolled slowly along the middle of the courtyard toward the wide-open gate.

At the sound of the drums Florian executed his Spanish stride, moved his ears in expectation of music, and rocked his beautifully molded white body from his hocks, taking tiny steps. Capitano tried to imitate him. Their necks bowed low one moment and proudly aloft the next, the two horses turned the departure from Schönbrunn into a triumphant spectacle. In passing, Franz Joseph ran his eyes over the company of soldiers and leaned back against the cushions as the carriage reached the street outside.

Konrad Gruber knew what he wanted to do.

The Emperor had not noticed Florian, nor seen Capitano. Gruber was hurt and resolved to compel the Emperor's attention. Gradually he raised the pace, did it so smoothly that his passengers did not notice. Obliquely cleaving the Volksgarten, and open only to the Emperor, was a paved short-cut from the street. Konrad Gruber covered it faster than he had ever done with other horses. Upon reaching the Rudolfsheimer Hauptstrasse which led to the Mariahilferstrasse, the horses began to race. They tore along with the gliding smoothness of birds in flight.

The Emperor could not help noticing this extreme pace. He noticed it by the way men tearing off their hats to the royal coach, or just standing agape, disappeared like leaves blown away by a storm. Franz Joseph smiled. He could not adapt himself to the new motorcars, but he loved sweeping along like this straight through the ranks of human beings to whom he was close and yet beyond reach, who longed to see him and who saw but his passing silhouette.

He was silent. His face grew milder and finally turned gay.

The Gürtel was passed in no time, in no time Mariahilferstrasse had been reached. The Emperor bowed from the carriage. Would the little girl again be there? Yes, there she stood at the streetcar stop, waiting for her tram. And for the Emperor. A ten-year-old schoolgirl. Slim and of aristocratic bearing. Fresh and pretty. With clever gentle eyes. Each time she made a curtsy and laughed. And the Emperor each time smiled back at her. He could not say what it was, but somehow this child reminded him of his wife, of Elizabeth as a young girl; and that moved him.

“Have Gruber stop,” he said this time.

The general-adjutant called to the
chasseur
who whispered in Gruber's ear. The horses slowed down and came to a halt, standing like posts rammed into the earth. There had been scarcely any jolt.

Upon the Emperor's gesture the little girl approached, without shyness, quite naturally, like one accustomed to daily association with the Emperor. Her simplicity held no artifice. It was dictated by childish trust.

The adjutant had opened the collapsible step. Unhesitatingly the girl climbed into the carriage and sat down opposite the Emperor.

“Proceed.”

The horses flew over the pavement on invisible wings.

“What's your name?”

“Gretl Saxl.”

She answered firmly and blushed deeply to the heart-shaped line of her black hair at the forehead. Her chest heaved and her heart palpitated, but her young mouth and her clear eyes laughed.

Franz Joseph laughed, too. “Gretl Saxl . . . what a merry name.”

“Oh, yes,” she said without removing her eyes from him. And all the while an inner voice, which she alone could hear, kept on telling her: “The Emperor! The Emperor! The Emperor!” She found it difficult to keep down her elation.

“You are going to school?”

“Yes.”

“Where is your school?”

“In the Fourth District.” She gave the address.

Franz Joseph lifted his hand, the adjutant transmitted the information to the
chasseur.
Gruber did not stir when he heard these instructions, didn't even indulge in a smile, but merely pressed his chin back against his chest. He had ousted the Emperor's ill humor; in that he had succeeded.

“Do you like to study?”

The girl grew serious. “Not always,” she confessed.

When Franz Joseph laughed at this, she, too, tried to smile. But by now she was highly self-conscious.

“What lessons do you like best?”

She had an answer ready: “Biblical history and German.”

“That's nice. Biblical history. Beautiful. You are a good girl?”

The child shook her head and kept silent.

The old man was astonished: “No?”

His gaze fixed her eyes. Again she blushed. Slowly the blood crept into her cheeks, up to her forehead; an open, and at the same time, bashful confession. Reluctantly she said: “Not always.”

“But,” replied the Emperor, “children ought to be always good.”

Her eyes contradicted him. “Oh, that's entirely too difficult,” she said impetuously.

It was the Emperor's turn to smile again. “Difficult? Why so?” He was altogether too remote from childhood; he not only pictured childhood as a fairyland, but all human beings as “good.” Only “good” people existed for this unworldly old prince. Those few that were disturbing, were dangerous and had to be done away with. To be good, was his people's duty. . . . So he imagined. There had been sporadic occurrences before which even he had had to bow, without comprehending them or being in accord with them. Parliaments and national demands and political upheavals and majority struggles and such things, which he called rubbish. In his opinion they prevented peaceful rule just as dust or rubbish clogged and hindered the operation of a machine. It was entirely a question of being “good”; that was self-evident and accepted. Difficult? Why so?

Eye to eye, the little girl insisted: “One can't always be good.”

He was amused by this schoolchild. “Why, Gretl Saxl, if you promise me that you will always be good . . . me, you understand? . . . then it will be possible, won't it?”

“Maybe. . . .” Her answer contained doubt.

Their eyes, the shining light blue eyes of the Emperor and the dark ones of the child, smiled into each other. “So, promise me.”

She couldn't resist the kindly old man. “Yes, I promise, I'll always be good. But . . .” Now came the loophole. “But I don't know whether I can keep my promise.”

“Why, Gretl!”

She heard him, heard his implied accusation. . . . “It is impossible to be always good,” she complained, and retreated into the desperate question: “Are grown-up people always good?”

The mild glance that met her consoled her. What did this child know about this old man who was so lonely, so naïve despite a vast fund of experience with human sins, frailties, vices? “Listen, my child, you have promised me that you will always be good. You won't forget your good intention, will you?”

“Oh, never. . . . Never!” she stammered. “I will always think of it . . . and always try.”

“Well, then, everything is all right.”

“Thank God.” Straight from her pure heart came the words.

She remembered, just as the horses stopped, that one said “your Majesty,” to the Emperor. Yet by the dictum of some strange inhibition it seemed wrong to her and she didn't dare to. And so, suddenly timid, she murmured:
“Küss' die Hand. . . .
”

Gretl Saxl skipped from the Emperor's landau. She turned quickly to curtsy, to wave her hand; but her eyes met nothing else than the fluttering white plume on the
chasseur's
hat and the glittering sheen of the gilded spokes.

Leaning far back, Franz Joseph sat in silent meditation beside his adjutant. He did not regret the whim that had swept into the little girl's life an ineradicable mark of the Imperial presence, a memento of his grace. On the contrary, his whole being was suffused by a warmth bordering on gratitude; he would have been conscious of this, had he thought about it even for a moment. He had been refreshed by the free and artless manner of the child. He would doubtless have found it unbearable to have everybody approach him thus, meet his eyes so imperturbably, so disarmingly. As a rare occurrence, however, as a brief and exceptional incident, this child had been diverting and stimulating.