he
would see the monster whizzing upward. As with a shout of joy it
stormed the ascent, so that it seemed to fly out into the air at the
top, before it was engulfed by the next hollow. And mockingly, already
at an incredible distance, the "too-oot, too-oot" would come back to
him, its bawling tones seeming to ooze away.

The low curs! Their love for this road was like that of the sportsman
for the shy pigeons: love to shoot them. They joyously sought out this
hundred-hilled stretch, and they exulted when they rolled over these
great humps on the second or even the third speed. It was a delight to
make a mock of the old road. Landscape? Beauty? It was ahead, never
anywhere but ahead, ahead.

Florian Hausbaum had thought he must die of wrath and woe when these
road-gobblers appeared, and yet the opposite happened: he had a new
lease of life. At last he had something that once more linked him to
this earth; and if it was a hatred, it led him back to men! Now they
all understood him, now he could once more get first hearing in all the
taverns; he could tell of dangers he had escaped, so that half a
village would hastily collect to hear him repeat the tale; he might
curse and threat without being ridiculed, think up tricks to play, and
wage malicious battles, and once again the bar-rooms resounded with the
old cry, long silenced, "Hooray, Florie, good for you! A reg'lar devil,
that Hausbaum. Eyah, that's the old Styrian wine-carter for you!"

He found assent, approval, confirmation, wherever he went, and his
superb white hair silenced all contradiction. Venerable and mighty was
the hatred of Florian Hausbaum in all the land, and the eyes of the old
carter again began to sparkle, his cheeks to look red, and his heart
swelled, making the old man look magnificent. He had something to live
for!

On a Sunday in spring he was standing at one end of Voelkermarkt, in
the midst of the men-folk who had come from church and were now puffing
at their holiday pipes in God's delicious, mild air. There came a red
motor through the place, quite slowly. A gentle and just citizen was
riding in it, who himself hated the brutality of the speed-maniacs, and
had accustomed himself to drive through towns with the mildness of a
milk-wagon.

Old Hausbaum was still raging at the last "filthy brute," who had shot
through the scattering holiday crowd like a barbarian on his scythed
chariot in the battles of old. His pent-up rage was now vented u