Rulers of kings: A novelAtherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn
General
Rulers of kings: A novel
Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn
Statesmen -- Fiction
The enthusiasm and curiosity she excited among the masses were
sufficient to satisfy the most patriotic and feminine heart. Every day
from four to five she drove abroad, taking invariably the same route;
crossing the suspension-bridge and driving out the wide Andrássy _ut_
into the Stefenia _ut_ of the park. All Pest seemed to tumble into the
streets and the footways of the bridge as she passed, and frequently
there was cheering. Beloved as her father was in Vienna, his people
showed him no further attention in public than a perfunctory salute;
and although in Hungary the masses cheered him during his brief visits,
it was much in the same manner as the American is enthusiastic over
any spectacle that varies the monotony of business. But that the
people of Budapest were not only genuinely delighted with this flower
of the Hapsburgs, but pleased and flattered that she chose to live
among them, was evident both by their spontaneous enthusiasm and its
reflection in the press. In all but the Radical newspapers there was a
daily chronicle of her doings, and gallant comment; the opposition had
nothing to say in her disfavor, and was evidently unsuspicious of her
motive in deserting Vienna for Budapest.
One morning, persuaded by Alexandra, she entered a shop for the first
time in her life. It was a shop in the Vácri utcza, and she spent a
delighted half-hour to the greater delight of the sordid soul that
kept it. When she left it she was mobbed into her carriage by a throng
that impeded the traffic. She passed through the ordeal with such a
lack of condescension in her good-nature that even the women cheered
her, and there were murmurs of “Rudolf!” among their “_Élyens!_” When
driving past the waiting crowds in the street, instead of favoring her
admirers with the usual fixed smile and stately bow of bored royalty,
she inclined her head slowly, including many in one salutation, and
sometimes smiling in a manner that seemed both spontaneous and personal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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