We went. Doblana was at the opera blowing his hard part in the
_Mastersingers_, which would keep him till nearly midnight, and we had
two hours and a half before us. The streets were already empty, for
Vienna is a town that goes to sleep very early, thanks to a twopenny
fine imposed on each inhabitant who comes home after ten o'clock. The
sky was clear and the moon looked like a round silver cake from which
somebody had helped himself to a tiny slice of the crust. No stars were
visible, but as we had gained the boulevard, the electric lamps growing
smaller and smaller in the distance appeared like starry dust.
We entered the municipal park. It was quite empty, and the right frame
for romantic amours. For I knew by now into what our companionship
little by little had grown. My heart was throbbing, hers probably too,
and we felt that the park was an accomplice of the sentiments which
were leading us along our walk.
There are many cosy corners in that park. And each one of these corners
is adorned with a statue. Before that of Schubert we halted. Why, I do
not know, for it is not remarkable in any way. Yet we looked at it as
if it had been the goal of our pilgrimage. We were as if transported.
We were silent and gazed at Schubert as if he were something new and
delightful, as if he were a new invention of the heart, enrapturing,
transporting, fit to throw us into a sweet ecstasy. And yet he was
only a fat gentleman in white marble, sitting in a chair and holding a
conventional sheet of music paper in his hand.
Suddenly Mitzi began to sing softly:
"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here..." and then the
love that for months had been lying longingly at her door, and had
voicelessly cherished her, the love, my love, broke forth. I caught
her by the neck and bending my face down to her's I touched her lips,
whispering:
"I love you, Mitzi, I love you."
Her eyes were closed and she kissed me back. Mine was a marvellous
happiness, for I felt that I was her's, vanquished, beaten by her
charm. My love was not a conquest, but a capitulation--and yet I was
happy.
And now, pity me, compassionate reader, for ... do you know how long my
happiness was to last? Fate, cruel, inexorable fate, had allowed me one
minute, one single minute. Then a devilish laughter, coming from some
hidden corner in the shrubs, awoke me.
Of the old guilds of Vienna one still exists. It is the Company of
the Bootmakers. Originally established to afford aid to necessitous
members of their trade, the Company by payment of large sums obtained
various monopolies. In London there are bootsellers, dealers in boots,
which are manufactured in big factories. In Vienna there are still
bootmakers. Their Company having from entrance fees, fines, and so
on, acquired some money which was employed in the purchase of land,
became known, because of the rise in the value of property, to have
amassed enormous wealth. The bootmakers are still divided into masters,
companions, and apprentices; and so rich is the guild that to be an
apprentice bootmaker is sometimes more advantageous than to be a master
in another trade. So is the fact explained that you may see walking
about in Vienna "bootmakers' lads" aged thirty or forty, very proud of
their green aprons.
These "lads" provide one of the many typical figures of Vienna. They
are the naughty boys of that city. There is no mischief they will leave
undone, if they see a possibility of its performance. There is no
cheeky remark they will leave unsaid. They are wasps, and every day a
new exploit, or a new _bon mot_ of a bootmakers' lad is told in Vienna.
It was such a lad who came laughing at us out of the shrubbery. I could
have thrown myself upon him and given him the thrashing he deserved.
But I stopped when I saw him in the moonlight.
He was a little man of about twenty-five. He was lame. He had black
hair, a black moustache, and a pointed tuft of black beard on his chin,
and with his mocking expression he reminded me of the Frenchman who at
Salzburg had made room for ... Mitzi, of the conductor who had united
me to ... Mitzi, and of the cabby who had brought me again to ...
Mitzi.