nfurt for
a couple of weeks, and for the first time this man, hitherto so
open-hearted, so totally without reserve, developed a secret emotional
life: hate of the railroad, and love for his deserted highway.

In reality it was love for his fleeting youth, the unquenchable thirst
of yearning desire for the past, memory! But because the road had been
the scene of his eternally faded greatness, therefore he attached all
this love to it.

The years dropped out of sight in gnawing conflicts with his steadily
thickening blood, and youth was where the violets of Marburg were, and
the songs, and the new wine: with new generations.

For three or four years, indeed, Florie still lived on the echoes of
his victorious days, and was still widely and warmly welcomed. But more
and more strange faces came into the village, and new generations grew
up that had not understood him in his glory of old. Girls of eighteen
and twenty began to develop out of the children of that day, and these
looked upon carter Hausbaum as a relic "of the time before the railroad
came," as a venerable ancestor.

Rarer and rarer grew those admirers who would pound on the tavern
table, saying, "Ah, old Florie, that was a devil of a lad for you!" So
he himself began to play the narrator, and fiercely defended his own
legend. But the more he had to tell, the older he appeared to the
petticoated sex.

At first he was willingly listened to; then he was regarded as played
out. Now he no longer talked with the old sorrowful ease, but with
passionate bawling and irritation. He boastfully forced his stories
upon people, and lost respect all the more.

Only the road, the old road remained his last sweetheart and remained
quiet and faithful; both had become despised and useless, but they had
clung to each other. Only, when he now drove over it--alas, how that
too had changed. Formerly he brought along the new wine with the new
spring.

Now he creaked along with the fire-wood for the winter.

His employer had begun a large business in wood; that made Hausbaum's
carting period come in the fall. And so his little wagon again groaned
over the deserted road, uphill, downhill, without his meeting a human
soul. No driver but he was to be seen; he was like the ghost of the old
road. The autumn tempest lodged in the canyon of the Drau, rebounded
from all sides and whirled up, bidding him pull his old felt hat, on
which he had long since given up putting any flowers, far