Those summer mornings often fell on a Sunday; as a matter of principle, it never rained. The city had laid on extra trams. Many people went out for the naïve purpose of providing a send-off. In a curious way the very lofty, very distant and very rich trilling of larks combined with the hurrying strides of hundreds of people. They went along in shade, the sun just grazing the second floor of the buildings and the crowns of the tallest trees. A damp chill emanated from the ground and the walls, but above us the summer air was already palpable, so that we felt spring and summer simultaneously, two seasons coincidentally instead of sequentially. The dew was still shining and already evaporating, and the lilac came over the garden walls with the fresh vehemence of a scented wind. The sky was a taut, bright blue. It struck seven from the church tower.
Just then a gate opened, and an open carriage slowly rolled out, high-stepping white horses with lowered heads, an impassive coachman on a terribly high box in the yellow-grey livery, the reins so loose in his hand that they dangled over the horses’ backs, and we couldn’t understand why they trotted so briskly, since they obviously had leave to go at their own pace. The whip was disregarded, an instrument not even of exhortation, much less chastisement. I began to sense that the coachman had other powers at his command than his fists, and other means than reins and whip. His hands, I should say, were two dazzling white spots in the midst of the shady green of the avenue. The large and elegant wheels of the coach, whose frail spokes resembled whirring conductor’s batons, a children’s game and an illustration in a book, these wheels completed a few mild turns on the gravel, which remained silent, as if it had been fine milled sand. Then the coach came to a stop. None of the horses moved so much as a foot. An ear may have twitched, but even that will have struck the coachman as unseemly. (Not that he moved to remonstrate.) But the distant shadow of a distant shadow moved across his face, convincing me that his ire wasn’t from him but from the atmosphere above him. All was still. Midges danced in the treetops, and the sun grew gradually warmer.
Uniformed policemen, who until now had been on duty, suddenly and silently disappeared. It was among the coolly calculated orders of the old Emperor that no armed official was to be seen in his vicinity. The plainclothes police wore grey caps instead of the usual green, so as to avoid detection. Committee members in top hats with yellow and black ribbons maintained order, and kept the affection of the people within decorous bounds. The crowd too didn’t dare move a foot. Sometimes we heard its muffled muttering, it was like choral praise. Still, there was a feeling of privilege and intimacy. Because it was the Emperor’s habit to leave for the summer without pomp, and early in the morning, in that hour when the Emperor is at his most human, the one in which he has just quit bed and bath and dressing-room. Hence the low-key livery of the coachman, no more than the coachman of a rich man might have worn. Hence the open carriage, with no seat at the rear. Hence no one on the box but the coachman himself, while the carriage was standing by. It wasn’t the Spanish ceremony of the Habsburgs, the ceremony of the Spanish midday sun. It was the minor Austrian ceremony of an early morning in Schönbrunn.
But just because this was so, his lustre was the more readily discernible, and it seemed to be personal to the Emperor and not from the laws that hedged him about. The light was modest, which made it visible rather than dazzling. We could, so to speak, see to the heart of the lustre. An Emperor in the morning, going on his summer holiday, in an open carriage, without retainers: an Emperor tout privé. A human majesty. He was leaving behind the business of government and going on holiday. Every cobbler could imagine it was himself giving the Emperor permission to go away. And because subjects bow most deeply when they imagine they are giving their master something, this morning found his people at their most submissive. And because the Emperor was not separated from them by any ceremonial, they themselves made up their own ceremonial in the privacy of their hearts, in which everyone placed themselves and the Emperor. They hadn’t been invited to Court. So each one invited the Emperor to Court instead.
From time to time we felt how a shy, distant rumour arose, without the courage to make itself public, but just entertaining the possibility of an “airing”. Suddenly it seemed the Emperor had already left the palace, we seemed to feel how he received the declamation of a poem from an infant, and in the same way as the first intimation of a still distant storm is a wind, so the first thing one sensed of the approaching Emperor was the grace that wafts ahead of majesties. Shaken by it, a couple of the committee gentlemen went into a little tizz, and from their excitement, as on a thermometer, we read the temperature, the state of things that were going on within.
At long last, the heads of those standing at the front were uncovered, and those standing further back felt suddenly restless. What was this? Disrespect? By no means! Only their awe had become a little curious, and was eagerly looking about for an object. Now they scraped with their feet, even the disciplined horses pinned back their ears, and then the most unbelievable thing happened: the coachman himself pursed his lips like a child sucking a sweet, and so gave the horses to understand that they were not allowed to behave like the people.
And then it was really the Emperor. There he was, old and stooped, tired after the poem declamations and already a little rattled, so early in the morning, by the display of loyalty on the part of his people, perhaps also a little journey-proud, in that condition that the newspaper reports were pleased to refer to as “the youthful freshness of our monarch”, and with that slow old man’s step that was called “supple”, almost tippling along and with gently jingling spurs, an old and slightly dusty black officer’s cap on his head, as might have been worn at the time of Radetzky, no higher than four fingers’ width. The young lieutenants scorned this design of cap. The Emperor was the only one in the army who kept so rigidly to the rules. Because he was an Emperor.
An old cloak, lined with a dull red, enwrapped him. The sabre dragged a little at his side. His diligently waxed and polished cavalry boots shone like dark mirrors, and we saw his narrow black trousers with the wide red general’s stripe, unpressed trousers, that in the old way were of a tubular roundness. The Emperor kept raising his hand in salute. He nodded and smiled. He had the look in his eye of someone who seems to see nothing in particular and everyone in general. His eye described a semicircle like the sun, scattering beams of grace to all who were there.
At his side walked his adjutant, almost his age but not so tired, always half a step behind His Majesty, more impatient and probably very nervous, impelled by the deep desire that the Emperor might already be seated in his carriage and the loyalty of his subjects have come to a natural end. And as though the Emperor weren’t heading towards his carriage, but were perfectly capable of losing himself somewhere in the throng, were it not for the adjutant, he continued to make tiny inaudible comments in the ear of the Emperor, who after every whisper on the part of the adjutant, seemed to turn his head very slightly away. Finally they had both reached the carriage. The Emperor sat and issued greetings in a smiling semicircle. The adjutant walked round the back of the carriage and sat down. But even before doing so, he made a movement as though to sit not at the side of the Emperor but facing him, and we could clearly see the Emperor move something away to encourage the man to sit at his side. At that moment a servant appeared with a blanket, which was slowly lowered over the legs of both old men. The servant turned sharply, and leaped up onto the box, alongside the coachman. He was the Emperor’s personal valet. He too was almost as old as the Emperor, but as lissom as a youth; service had kept him supple, just as ruling had caused his master to age.