Antisemitism -- Fiction; Jews -- Austria -- Fiction; Middle class -- Fiction; Vienna (Austria) -- Fiction
"Yes, yes, but I think you will agree with me that being ragged for
being a baron is a very different matter than being ragged for being
a 'Jew,' although the latter--you'll forgive me of course--may at
times denote the better aristocracy. Well, you needn't look at me
so pitifully," he added with abrupt rudeness. "I am not always so
sensitive. I have other moods in which nothing can affect me in any
way nor any person either. Then I feel simply this--what do you all
know--what do you know about me...." He stopped, proudly, with a
scornful look that seemed to pierce through the foliage of the arbour
into the darkness. He then turned his head, looked round and said
simply to George in quite a new tone: "Just look, we shall soon be the
only ones left."
"It is getting quite cold, too," said George.
"I think we might still stroll a bit through the Prater."
"Charmed."
They got up and went. A fine grey cloud hung over a meadow which they
passed.
"The fraud of summer doesn't last after nightfall. It'll soon all be
over," said Heinrich in a tone of unmitigated melancholy, while he
added, as though to console himself: "Well, one will be able to work."
They came into the Wurstelprater. The sound of music rang out from the
restaurants, and some of the exuberant gaiety communicated itself to
George. He felt suddenly swung out of the dismalness of an inn garden
at autumn time and a somewhat painful conversation into a new world. A
tout, in front of a merry-go-round, from which a gigantic hurdy-gurdy
sent into the open air the pot-pourri cut of the "Troubadour" with all
the effect of some fantastic organ, invited people to take a journey
to London, Atzgersdorf and Australia. George remembered again the
excursion in the spring with the Ehrenberg party. It was on this
narrow seat inside the room that Frau Oberberger had sat with Demeter
Stanzides, the lion of the evening, by her side, and had probably
told him one of her incredible stories: that her mother had been the
mistress of a Russian Grand Prince; that she herself had spent a night
with an admirer in the Hallstadt cemetery, of course without anything
happening; or that her husband, the celebrated traveller, had made
conquests of seventeen women in one week in one harem at Smyrna. It
was in this carriage upholstered in red velvet, with Hofrat Wilt as
her _vis-à-vis_, that Else had lounged with lady-like grace, just as
though she were in a carriage on Derby Day, while she yet managed to
show by her manner and demeanour that, if it came to the point, she
herself could be quite as childish as other persons of happier and less
complex temperaments. Anna Rosner with the reins nonchalantly in her
hand, looking dignified, but with a somewhat sly face, rode a white
Arab; Sissy rocked about on a black horse that not only turned round in
a circle with the other animals and carriages, but swung up and down
as well. The boldest eyes imaginable flashed and laughed beneath the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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