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The vast kitchen on the ground floor terminates in a large space, heavily vaulted and lighted by oil lamps, where rougher tables are set and spread, and where you may see the well-to-do wine-carter eating his supper after his journey across the Campagna, in company with some of his city acquaintances of a similar class.
In sunny Marburg the wine flows down all the hills in streams to this very day. But at that time, more than forty years ago, there were three times as many vineyards, extending clear beyond Maria-Rast and Zellnitz, and Florian Hausbaum became a wine-carter and made trips into Carinthia.
It went this way: "A vi'let from the roadside, a kiss for the night: The Styrian wine-carter is my delight."
Then he had run for aid, and with him everybody that had been waiting for wine and Florie, and two score people had seen how the faithful Florian, in spite of unconsciousness and pain, had with his own body guarded the wine and prevented its escape. That was a Styrian wine-carter! Hausbaum was told the whole story while everything was still reeling about him and head and ribs ached.
And now it burst forth, the great speech of the old wine-carter; the mightiest one in the life of the Styrian, Florian Hausbaum: "You wind-belchers! You road-stinkers, who sent for you? D' you bring any money into the land? Naw! D' you ever get out even once in Grafenstein, in Völkermarkt, in Lippitzbach? Or at Eis, at Lavamünd, at Drauburg or Hohenmauten or Mahrenberg? Naw!
The place was dim, smoky, and old, but it was not really dirty, for in his primitive way the Roman wine-carter is fastidious. It is not long since he used to bring his own solid silver spoon and fork with him, and he will generally rinse a glass out two or three times before he will drink out of it.
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.
The cart exerted enormous pressure and took the horses off their feet; at this moment the Styrian wine-carter started into wakefulness, and while the wagon was thundering downhill with more and more terrifying speed, he loosened the drag and threw it under the hind wheel, and at this abrupt braking the wagon leaped mightily into the air, like a startled rhinoceros.