It happened one day that the regional commissioner for Lwow, which used to be called Lemberg, undertook a tour of inspection and for some reason had to stop in Lopatyny. Count Morstin’s house was pointed out to him and he at once made for it. To his astonishment he caught sight of the bust of the Emperor Franz Josef in front of the house, in the midst of a little shrubbery. He looked at it for a long while and finally decided to enter the house and ask the Count himself about the significance of this memorial. But he was even more astonished, not to say startled, at the sight of Count Morstin coming towards him in the uniform of a Rittmeister of Dragoons. The regional commissioner was himself a “Little Pole”; which means he came from what was formerly Galicia. He had himself served in the Austrian Army. Count Morstin appeared to him like a ghost from a chapter of history long forgotten by the regional commissioner.
He restrained himself and at first asked no questions. As they sat down to table, however, he began cautiously to enquire about the Emperor’s memorial.
“Ah, yes,” said the Count, as if no new world had been born, “His late Majesty of blessed memory spent eight days in this house. A very gifted peasant lad made the bust. It has always stood here and will do so as long as I live.”
The commissioner stifled the decision which he had just taken and said with a smile, as it were quite casually, “You still wear the old uniform?”
“Yes,” said Morstin, “I am too old to have a new one made. In civilian clothes, do you know, I don’t feel altogether at ease since circumstances became so altered. I’m afraid I might be confused with a lot of other people. Your good health,” continued the Count, raising his glass and toasting his guest.
The regional commissioner sat on for a while, and then left the Count and the village of Lopatyny to continue his tour of inspection. When he returned to his Residence he issued orders that the bust should be removed from before Count Morstin’s house.
These orders finally reached the mayor (termed Wojt) of the village of Lopatyny and therefore, inevitably, were brought to the attention of Count Morstin.
For the first time, therefore, the Count now found himself in open conflict with the new power, of whose existence he had previously hardly taken cognizance. He realized that he was too weak to oppose it. He recalled the scene at night in the American bar in Zurich. Alas, there was no point any more in shutting one’s eyes to these new bankers and wearers of crowns, to the new ladies and gentlemen who ruled the world. One must bury the old world, but one must give it a decent burial.
So Count Morstin summoned ten of the oldest in habitants of the village of Lopatyny to his house — among them the clever and yet innocent Jew, Solomon Piniowsky. There also attended the Greek Catholic priest, the Roman Catholic priest and the Rabbi.
When they were all assembled Count Morstin began the following speech,
“My dear fellow-citizens, you have all known the old Monarchy, your old fatherland. It has been dead for years, and I have come to realize that there is no point in not seeing that it is dead. Perhaps it will rise again, but old people like us will hardly live to see it. We have received orders to remove, as soon as possible, the bust of the dead Emperor, of blessed memory, Franz Josef the First.
“We have no intention of removing it, my friends!
“If the old days are to be dead we will deal with them as one does deal with the dead: we will bury them.
“Consequently I ask you, my dear friends, to help me bury the dead Emperor, that is to say his bust, with all the ceremony and respect that are due to an Emperor, in three days’ time, in the cemetery.”
VI
The Ukranian joiner, Nikita Koldin, made a magnificent sarcophagus of oak. Three dead Emperors could have found accommodation in it.
The Polish blacksmith, Jarowslaw Wojciechowski, forged a mighty double eagle in brass which was firmly nailed to the coffin’s lid.
The Jewish Torah scribe, Nuchin Kapturak, inscribed with a goose quill upon a small roll of parchment the blessing which believing Jews must pronounce at the sight of a crowned head, cased it in hammered tin and laid it in the coffin.
Early in the morning — it was a hot summer day, countless invisible larks were trilling away in the heavens and countless invisible crickets were replying from the meadows — the inhabitants of Lopatyny gathered at the memorial to Franz Josef the First. Count Morstin and the mayor laid the bust to rest in its magnificent great sarcophagus. At this moment the bells of the church on the hill began to toll. All three pastors placed themselves at the head of the procession. Four strong old peasants bore the coffin on their shoulders. Behind them, his drawn saber in his hand, his dragoon helmet draped in field gray, went Count Franz Xaver Morstin, the closest person in the village to the dead Emperor, quite lonely and alone, as becomes a mourner. Behind him, wearing a little round black cap upon his silver hair, came the Jew, Solomon Piniowsky, carrying in his left hand his round velvet hat and raised in his right the black and yellow flag with the double eagle. And behind him the whole village, men and women.
The church bells tolled, the larks trilled and the crickets sang unceasingly.
The grave was prepared. The coffin was lowered with the flag draped over it, and for the last time Franz Xaver Morstin raised his saber in salute to his Emperor.
The crowd began to sob as though the Emperor Franz Josef and with him the old Monarchy and their own old home had only then been buried. The three pastors prayed.
So the old Emperor was laid to rest a second time, in the village of Lopatyny, in what had once been Galicia.
A few weeks later the news of this episode reached the papers. They published a few witticisms about it, under the heading, “Notes from all over.”
VII
Count Morstin, however, left the country. He now lives on the Riviera, an old man and worn out, spending his evenings playing chess and skat with ancient Russian generals. He spends an hour or two every day writing his memoirs. They will probably possess no significant literary value, for Count Morstin has no experience as a literary man, and no ambition as a writer. Since, however, he is a man of singular grace and style he delivers himself of a few memorable phrases, such as the following for example, which I reproduce with his permission: “It has been my experience that the clever are capable of stupidity, that the wise can be foolish, that true prophets can lie and that those who love truth can deny it. No human virtue can endure in this world, save only one: true piety. Belief can cause us no disappointment since it promises us nothing in this world. The true believer does not fail us, for he seeks no recompense on earth. If one uses the same yardstick for peoples, it implies that they seek in vain for national virtues, so-called, and that these are even more questionable than human virtues. For this reason I hate nationalism and nation states. My old home, the Monarchy, alone, was a great mansion with many doors and many chambers, for every condition of men. This mansion has been divided, split up, splintered. I have nothing more to seek for, there. I am used to living in a home, not in cabins.”
So, proudly and sadly, writes the old Count. Peaceful, self-possessed, he waits on death. Probably he longs for it. For he has laid down in his will that he is to be buried in the village of Lopatyny; not, indeed, in the family vault, but alongside the grave of the Emperor Franz Josef, beside the bust of the Emperor.