the
valley of the Drau. His eyes laughed; nothing else in the world laughed
so, except his road, when the snow had melted away and the first trip
began. Then the little puddles in the road, formed by the melting snow
and rippled by the wind, looked at the sky out of a thousand bright
blue eyes, and there was a wink and a smirk in them all the way from
Drauburg to Klagenfurt.

He loved this road with all the power of his heart, which otherwise,
i.e., for the girls, was far too gay. Besides, the girls changed, but
the road remained. There was but the one, and it was unique.

His life obeyed the laws which God has given for Nature and wine. In
the winter he lay quietly at Marburg, or made little wooden carts. But
when February was past and the wine was seasoned, so that the new
vintage was at last ready for transport, and when the snow trickled off
the roads, then began his regal course, his bridal entry into
Carinthia, his jubilant, earliest march of triumph.

He always wore a flower in his hat, and his nags each got one, too. But
when in the early days of March he drove along the road, only just
freed of snow, he would take a whole supply of violets with him,
for in his blessed, sunny land these sometimes bloomed by the end
of February in special sunny nooks. God of love, what eyes the
forest-villagers along the Drau made at them, and still more the
Carinthians, who often do not receive their violets from heaven before
May! They scarcely would have primulas, while even Florie's horses were
wearing violets on their collars, because he had kept them fresh
between his casks.

To all the girls he brought the breath of the Styrian spring with him,
and thus Florie Hausbaum fairly came to personify the spring-time over
the whole length of the Carinthian Road, and as such he was cheered and
loved like a young emperor.

He was happy.

The yellow-hammers perched near the road and sang, the larks rose high,
the sun danced in bretzel-shaped figures in the mirroring puddles, the
sparrows fought in exuberant glee over what Florie's horses had dropped
for them, the relaying liverymen grinned, the inn-keepers stood planted
before their doors waiting for him, and shouted Hooray, and beside him
shook and gurgled the fragrant, mighty wine-casks.

But far before him longing girl-faces were waiting behind the windows
near the long road. Love, love awaited him from one end of the road to
the other. Whether it was the jubilee of his b