The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The situation harmonized beautifully with the social reality. The picture was rapidly changing: the alleys were becoming narrower and were kept less clean, scraps of paper flashed here and there on the sand and at the edges of the flowerbeds. Then, too, we began to meet people, all of them on foot, first the vendors of the famous Viennese sausages, then the public. Some trudged along with children. The local public was obviously not afraid of dampness, but only feared losing a moment of precious time.

When a poor man marries, the night’s too short for him; still shorter is the hour of rest for such hardworking and parsimonious people as the southern Germans, in whom, however, the need for pleasure is almost as great as in the French.

There was no movement in the opposite direction—we were overtaking everyone. Obviously, the goal of all their striving lay ahead; it was there where we, too, were hurrying and from where some sort of sounds began to reach us, growing louder moment by moment. Strange sounds, like the buzzing of a bee between a window and curtain. But now through the treetops flashed the high pediment of a large wooden building; the carriage bore left again and suddenly came to a stop. We were at the intersection of two paths. Before us opened a rather large lawn, on the other side of which stood a large wooden house in the Swiss style, and before it, on the grass, stretched long tables, and at them sat a multitude of different people. Before each guest stood his mug of beer, and on the open gallery four musicians were playing and a Hungarian couple were whirling in a dance. Here was where the musical sounds had come from, which in the distance had resembled the buzzing of a bee between a window and curtain. That buzzing could be heard now as well, with the difference that now one could hear in the sounds something that kept catching at some nerve and spilling out all around with moaning, with ringing, with defiance.

“They’re dancing a czardas: I advise you to pay attention to them,” said the princess. “You won’t often come across it: no one is able to perform the czardas like the Hungarians. Coachman, drive up closer.”

The coachman edged closer, but the horses had barely gone two steps when he stopped them again.

We had advanced, of course, but were still too far away to be able to have the possibility of scrutinizing the dancers, and therefore the princess again told the coachman to move closer. It seemed, however, that he did not hear this repetition, but then, when the princess told him the same thing a third time, the coachman not only touched up the reins, but loudly cracked his whip and all at once brought our carriage out into the middle of the lawn.

Now we could see everything in detail and were ourselves seen by everyone. Several persons among those sitting at the tables turned at the crack of the whip, but at once turned back to the dancers, and only one fat waiter was left looking at us from the steps of the lower terrace, but as if he were waiting for some fitting moment, when a suitable exchange of mutual relations should take place between us.

I tried in the most conscientious way to follow the advice of my lady and wanted to watch the czardas without taking my eyes from it, but a chance occasion drew my attention to something else.

We had barely stopped, when the coachman half turned slightly towards the carriage and said:

“Kaiser!”

“Wo ist der Kaiser?”^*

Instead of an answer, the driver directed the extended little finger of his glove to the left, towards the opposite end of the lawn, where, at an intersection identical to the one we had just left, there could now be seen two horse heads of a light bay, goldish color.

Only those two fine heads could be seen, in composite bridles studded with turquoise, while the carriage itself remained at the same distance at which our coachman had first wanted to keep us.

“That,” I thought to myself, “is indeed very tactful, but then he won’t see anything very well from there, nor will he allow us to admire him. And that’s vexing.”

Only there was no need to be vexed: at that same moment, looking towards where the horses stood, I saw without any difficulty a tall, slightly stooping, but gallant man in a blue Austrian jacket and simple military cap.

This was his apostolic majesty, the senior member of the house of Habsburg, the reigning emperor Franz Joseph. He was quite alone and walked straight to the tables set up on the lawn, where the cobblers of Vienna were sitting. The emperor came up and sat on the end of a bench at the first table, next to a tall worker in a light gray blouse, and the fat waiter in that same second placed a black felt circle on the table before him and set down on it an expertly drawn mug of beer.