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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.
Hence at the two ends of his route, where the road did its maddest tricks, Florie was best loved and known: if for no other reason, because he had so much time on account of all the "getting his breath," staying over night, feeding, and changing horses. He too liked best to dwell in that up-and-down world. For he had a girl in Drauburg, and one in Lavamünd; one at St.
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!"
Love and acclamation died away, and his calling with all its joys was crushed with him. And that was because, far below in the plain across the Drau, the railroad was built. For another year Florie Hausbaum proudly and loftily carted his wine into the Carinthian land. Far below him, beyond the stream, they were working on the long iron serpent; but he did not even look at it.
An angry shout in the machine, a horrified wail rising from a hundred voices, and with a mighty leap the automobile crashed over the toppled obstacle, jumped, dragged, and tore itself along for ten full paces more, despite brakes and cut-out, and not until then did it come to a stop. The occupants, wealthy young people, leaped out. There lay Florie Hausbaum by the roadside.
But Florie Hausbaum's youth saw nothing of the future German death-struggle there in the wooded valley of the Drau. Every one was still singing the dear old songs, and Florian sang them best of all. He learned nothing, he never drudged, he merely sang, as forgetful of toil as the cricket of the south.
And so, too, he finds it atop the Rue Lepic in the now sham Mill of Galette, a capon of its former self, where Germaine and Florie and Mireille, veteran battle-axes of the Rue Victor Massé, pose as modest little workgirls of the Batignolles.
One of the poles on the side cracked, and the smaller cask toppled over and fell from the cart with a heavy bum-bum-bum-bum. Florie had tried to throw his weight against it, but the cask gave his head a severe slanting blow before dropping full weight into the road. A stave had sprung, and the pressure made the deep-red fluid gurgle out in a flood. The white dust of the road, became ruddy.
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.
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.
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