Florian (11 page)

The chattering of the girls ceased. The officers in subdued whispers expressed appreciation, admiration, astonishment.

“Unbelievable!”

“Sapristi!”

“This animal hasn't an equal on earth!”

“If you told anyone about this you would be called a liar.”

“Quite right. You've got to see it to believe it.”

“Why, why,” the princess exclaimed, pointing down, “this man does have a whip . . . your Excellency!”

The equerry reassured her. “He uses that only to give the horse signals . . . only for that.”

Ennsbauer had approached the stanchions, patted Florian's neck, then touched his upper lip with his palm. A quick inspection of the harness, of the body belts, and then he accepted the whip Anton held ready for him, waiting until Anton disappeared.

Anton joined the other stablemen standing outside the wooden enclosure and peeped across the high rim. His heart pounded.

Florian stood motionless. He was inwardly aquiver. His heart beat a violent tattoo, but he had himself under control. He concentrated and gradually submerged everything but his curiosity and his instinctive willingness to respond to the master. His beautiful dark eyes shone. His ears showed listening expectancy. His whole body listened, waited.

He had an impulse to neigh but thought better of it. He would have liked to snort but his instinct commanded him not to disturb the fluid seconds of waiting. His nostrils opened wide, exposed their rosy interiors, contracted and opened again.

Then the whip touched his left forefoot. Very softly. Like a falling leaf. Florian promptly lifted his leg. Involuntarily he also lifted his right hindleg. He did that slowly. Ceremoniously. He made no attempt whatever to walk forward, did not cause the slightest strain on the belts that fettered him to the posts. He set his hooves down on the exact spot he had raised them from.

Before the whip could graze the other leg, Florian had duplicated the performance. He stepped—not to take himself anywhere but merely to make the gestures. Festive, pathetic, declamatory gestures.

The light touch of the whip, the touch as a breath, comparable to the fluttering wing of a passing butterfly, had been enough for Florian. His nerves and his instincts had guessed what his blood carried as latent knowledge. All his ancestors and their training slumbering in his breast, in his brain, awoke at the flick of the whip. Age-old tradition, spanning many centuries, struggled forth in Florian as something akin to genius, making it easy for him to fulfill his destiny, a destiny his forebears had again and again fulfilled down the ages.

Within him to a great degree that happened which happens in its purest form in all selected species of thoroughbred animals. Racehorses, the offspring of victors, inherit the craving for the race. And hounds, still unschooled, come into the field for the first time and prove after the first shot and the first pheasant has dropped, that they know all that is expected of them, instinctively, with but few last-minute instructions.

“Ennsbauer,” the equerry called down.

Ennsbauer softly said:
“Pssst.”

Florian stood still.

“Your Excellency?”

“How often has this stallion been between the stanchions?”

“Never before.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Why, your Excellency,” Elizabeth burst in, almost wild with enthusiasm, “just remember other horses, after such a short time, are still on the longe!”

Ennsbauer offered no reply, but lowered the whip and once again Florian swung into his syncopated striding. While in action the whip touched the inner side of his fore- and hindlegs. Florian understood. Ever slower, ever more ceremoniously he lifted his legs. The play of his muscles and of each individual joint was visible from shoulder to croup. He was an animate statue. In each of his movements was silent music.

The young ladies began to applaud and the officers followed suit. The thin ripple of applause floated down into the arena.

“He
piaffes
like a thoroughly trained School horse.”

“What does that mean—to
piaffe
?” the princess asked curiously.

“What you see there,” Elizabeth explained. “That striding is called
piaffing
.”

“I'd like to know what young ladies of today really learn at school,” Neustift whispered to his wife and chuckled.

Florian accompanied his exercises with a rhythmic waving of his head.

“He has an incredible sense of rhythm,” Elizabeth commented.

The equerry agreed with her. “It is really hard to believe how musical some horses are.”

“This one in particular!” cried Elizabeth.

And Neustift added: “He loves his work, our Florian.”

Again Ennsbauer made the sound,
“Pssst,”
thinking: “Enough for today.” He was highly gratified. “That went rather well. Only I can't stand so many spectators.”

He saluted the ladies and officers in the balcony with a brief bow.

The equerry leaned over the balustrade and shouted down: “You were right, my dear Ennsbauer.” And when the riding master eyed him questioningly, he added: “In Lipizza, don't you remember?”

Ennsbauer bowed once more. In silence.

As they left, the equerry told the others: “I wanted the stallion for the carriage of his Majesty, but . . .”

The riding master motioned Anton to free Florian from the posts and lead him back to his stall.

Florian snorted and neighed metallically, musically, full of the indestructible joy of life.

In the dark corridor Florian answered Anton's caresses by pushing nose and forehead against his shoulder, a gesture denoting satisfaction. Florian knew he had achieved a triumph.

When they crossed the street under the archway and stepped into the light of the outer court, Anton saw that Florian's eyes were full of laughter.

Anton, too, laughed soundlessly.

The Josephsplatz lay empty. The carriages had disappeared. Only Gabriele Menzinger's coupé still stood there.

Ennsbauer stepped from the doorway and peered around, outwardly indifferent. Nobody about to spy on them. Only in the street along the far side of the square did the life of the capital pulsate; there flocks of passersby were on the move, but none took any notice of the solitary vehicle. Ennsbauer slipped into the carriage and hid in a corner.

“Bravo,” Gabriele gurred. “It was thrilling!”

“What do you know about it?” he mumbled. Then he slipped an arm about her waist and said: “I'd dare to ride the
Hohe Schule
on Florian today.”

N
EUSTIFT HAD BEEN ON ADJUTANT'S duty for weeks. Today he had been chosen to accompany the Emperor on his ride from Schönbrunn, where Franz Joseph was residing, to the Imperial Palace.

From the summer castle to the Imperial Palace was not a great distance. On the few occasions, however, that Neustift had ridden with the Emperor, the way had seemed interminable. Sitting at the left hand of the monarch he had to be careful to keep his figure in the background as much as possible and yet keep his eyes peeled. Regicide, however far-fetched, was an omnipresent possibility. This called for quickness of mind, called for greater tenseness than any other service in the immediate orbit of the Emperor.

Personal contact, for Neustift as for everyone else, dissolved all the current Franz Joseph legends and heroic schoolbook tales, and made him conscious of the man Franz Joseph, Emperor though he was.

His exalted status Franz Joseph never forgot, and it remained indelibly stamped on the consciousness of everyone surrounding him. Rarely, indeed, only at exceptional and fleeting moments, did others perceive in the august person of this Emperor the human being. Always he was a solitary, majestic, towering figure. Unworldly, he was at the same time wise; shrewd, and yet narrow; almost pedantically conscientious, and withal irresistibly masterful. Possessing the dry sardonic wit of the Hapsburgs, he was nevertheless close-lipped, almost bashfully reticent. But there were times when he could be crushingly direct and candid. This princely man could hide his emotions, unless it be that jealousy occasionally shone through the veneer. His outbursts of rage were dreaded as death or the clutching hand of fate is dreaded. And more than others, the members of the Imperial family quailed before him. He was supreme and sovereign, with power over life and death, over imprisonment, exile and liberty, for the archduke as for the peasant; and he was accountable to no one.

In his personal service he consumed an enormous amount of human material drawn from the ranks of the diplomats and the military. Without ado he discarded anyone who threatened to become popular, banished whosoever challenged his carefully guarded popularity. In spite of this arrant faithlessness he yet preserved lifelong fealty toward certain individuals.

His character cannot be portrayed in a few words. It is wrong to say: “He was good”; wrong to claim: “He was wicked”; wrong to insist: “He was untrustworthy, irascible, vindictive”—just as it is erroneous to think: “He was without suspicion, open and condescending.” Whoever makes such claims is equally right and wrong. That he was unapproachable is all that could be claimed truthfully and incontrovertibly. Unapproachable, and a true gentleman, he was the embodiment of meticulousness in the performance of duty; exact, reliable and punctual in his work and in his associations. His style of living was Spartan in its simplicity, although he loved the finest, the most cultivated in luxury.

Neustift, of course, did not dare address the Emperor. On their few previous drives together Franz Joseph had maintained a stony silence. Today he came out of his study in high spirits, and had his valet brings him a cigar. Ketterer, the first valet, on handing him the cigar ventured to remark: “Your Majesty should not smoke in the open carriage.”

The Emperor laughed: “And why not?”

Ketterer held firm. “Your Majesty has already smoked one cigar today. . . .”

“Well,” replied the Emperor good-humoredly, “perhaps you are right,” and returned the cigar.

With a deep obeisance Ketterer said: “I am right, your Majesty.”

Still laughing, the aged monarch walked down the stairs and stepped into his carriage. His
chasseur
spread a blanket over the Emperor's and his adjutant's knees, and hopped up on the box.

When the heads of the two white Lipizzans came into view on the terrace, the foot guard leaped to attention.

Three times came the barked: “Present arms!”

Drums beat the general march. The company presented arms. The commanding officer saluted with his saber and the flag was lowered while the light elegant carriage, its gilded spokes glinting, rolled through the portal.

The Emperor saluted and as usual scanned each soldier in passing; another sign of high good humor.

“Too bad,” he murmured. “I should have liked to smoke.” And smiling wearily, he said: “He is an old tyrant, this Ketterer. . . .”

Neustift sat erect, immobile. An answer was neither desired nor possible; he smiled uncompromisingly.

The carriage, already signaled from Schönbrunn and easily identified by the white plume on the
chasseur's
hat and by the livery of the State coachman, rolled along the center of the broad avenue. In perfect step the two white horses trotted along, nodding their proud heads. They did not slacken their pace for street-crossings or anything else. Every vehicle on the road ahead of them had been waved aside. Traffic laws did not exist for the Imperial carriage.

Again the Emperor spoke, the while he repeatedly raised his right hand in gracious acknowledgment of the bowing throngs.

“Bertingen was telling me yesterday about a stallion Ennsbauer is breaking in . . . marvelous things. . . .”

Bertingen was the equerry, General Count Bertingen.

“Wait a minute. . . . What was the name of the beast—?”

“At Your Majesty's service . . . perhaps Florian?” Neustift suggested in a low voice.

“Yes, that's it. Florian,” Franz Joseph said, brightening. “Queer name for a horse from Lipizza, Florian. . . . But how do you know?”

Neustift hastened to explain: “Son of Berengar out of Sibyl—”

“Never mind that,” the Emperor interrupted. “But how did you guess Bertingen was talking about this . . . this comical Florian?”

“Your Majesty, there is no horse like—”

The Emperor cut in again. “According to Bertingen it is something unheard of. . . . Unless Bertingen exaggerates. . . .”

Emboldened, Neustift said: “With your Majesty's permission, his Excellency Count Bertingen did not exaggerate. Florian is the handsomest and most gifted horse in decades.”

“Really?” Franz Joseph turned his still handsome old face to his informant. A face that was a silver sheen. The white mustache and the white sideburns framed the reddish brown cheeks and the steely blue eyes. At this moment Neustift loved his Emperor fiercely. “Really? You grow quite excited. . . .”