It had been the General, had it not, who had sent instructions to this wretch Redl to kill himself? And thrusting a suicide pistol at the wretch-that had not been exactly a very religious act, had it? Not exactly the act of a good Catholic? Nor an act observing the chain of command, since the General had not troubled to obtain permission from His Majesty or the Heir Apparent-or had he? Nor a prudent act either! By having the wretch blow his brains out, one eliminated along with his skull all possibility of useful interrogation, didn't one? But perhaps it was an act consistent with the act of raising such a wretch to a position of responsibility? And leaving such considerations aside-how did the General feel now about his saber-rattling vis-a-vis Serbia and all the Slavs? How much did the General crave a war with Russia now-now that one of his key officers had peddled military secrets to the Tsar? Would the General have the kindness of an answer?
The General, rigidly at attention, went through the litany of his defense. He had tried to contain the scandal by eliminating its source, Redl. Since it had to be done very fast, there'd been no time to inform the Palace. As to a war with the East, Russia had not gained any really crucial information.
The Crown Prince waved away such feeble arguments. The General saluted, retreated. The same day he renewed his offer of resignation to the Emperor who refused it once more.
Less rude than the Crown Prince but equally disturbed was the Chief of Staff of the German Army, General von Moltke, with whom Redl had sometimes conferred in person. Here General Conrad must reassure his ally that Redl had no access to German secrets; that the damage in Austria was limited and remediable; that in fact he, Conrad, had already ordered the devising of new codes, new mobilization plans, and new supply and transport procedures-all of which would make the information now in Russian hands useless.
Berlin's response was a mixture of unease and courtesy. More complex still was another man's attitude-the most important man of all-Franz Joseph. His adjutant reported that on the night after the news broke, the old gentleman could not sleep. But after he rose, as was his custom, at 4 A.M., he strode to his desk and said calmly to his adjutant, Count Paar, "So this is the new era? And that kind of creature comes out of it? In our old days something like that would not even have been conceivable."
The redl monstrosity made the upright splendor of Franz Joseph's "old days" seem so distant. Yet only forty-eight hours before R dl's unmasking, the ancient Emperor himself had animated an occasion that made those "old days" young again in Vienna. At the age of eighty-three, the monarch, bareheaded under the morning sun, had walked for two hours at the center of the Corpus Christi procession.
This spectacle was the Church's counterpoint to the workers' May Day, as consummately Viennese in its pagentry and many centuries older. On May 22, 1913, the procession had flowed again like a river cascading with costumes and colors. All the bells in all the city's towers tolled as it started at St. Stephen's Square, swirled past the fountains, gargoyles, log gias of the Inner Precinct, poured on under the eyes of thousands of saints (for all apartment dwellers placed their holy pictures on their window sills) until it reached St. Michael's Square where it stopped for an open-air Mass before flowing back to St. Stephen's Cathedral.
At the head billowed the massed senior clergy in long giltembroidered vestments, bishops and prelates holding aloft ancient gonfalons of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Faith; then came the Lord Mayor of Vienna with his Great Chain of Office; then the Dean of the University and the faculty in their richly hued gowns with their swords in silvered sheaths; then officers of the great orders, first and foremost among them the Knights of the Golden Fleece, their collars wrought of firestone and steel; then the white-gold canopy under which the Cardinal strode in undulations of his scarlet cape, holding the monstrance that was shrouded in incense and heralded by the acolytes' tinkling of sanctus bells and flanked by medieval guards with halberd and cuirass; then, all by himself, surrounded by awed, empty space, walked His Majesty, Franz Joseph I, white-fringed head bare to the sky, a white general's uniform snug on his slightly stooped, still slender frame, green-plumed hat under his left arm, his right holding a candle; he was followed by his First Lord Chamberlain and then by the high members of his Court, the Crown Prince, the Archdukes according to seniority, followed by the Archduchesses down to the most junior, followed in turn by the Crown Prince's wife, followed by the imperial and ducal equerries and ladies-in-waiting-all in full-dress robes, epaulettes, sashes, and decorations…
Though it began early in the morning, the procession did not escape the strong May sun. Newspaper accounts emphasized "the Emperor's youthful step"-how well he'd taken the strain. Would he have taken it so well had he known that he was marching toward Redl?
The Vienna Derby of 1913 was run on Sunday, June 8, but since it came within two weeks of the Redl revelation, it turned out to be a waste of good weather. Bright was the sun, but not the mood. The Crown Prince smoldered in Konopiste. The Imperial Box at the Freudenau track remained empty. But few missed his frown, and anyway, it would have been the frown of someone almost fifty: The Derby, being a very sporty affair, belonged to the new generation. For Vienna's young bloods it was an annual watershed of fashion: One wore derbies only until the Derby-afterward, summer boaters. The Derby also made a fetching stage for young officers; for their white glace gloves, their casual cigarettes, the ladies on their arms.
This year, instead of shining in their uniforms, many seemed to cringe. There was much less flaunting by lieutenants of the guard, less flirting, and hardly any dining afterward, in the Sacher Garten of the Prater. Colonel Redl had dishonored the tunic they wore.
That sunny day on the race track lit up yet further dimensions of damage. It wasn't just the Imperial and Royal Army that had been soiled. It was a whole class of comers; a class that was about to earn by merit what earlier could only be inherited by birth; a class that advertised its advent through occasions like the Derby and whose most brilliant representatives included Alfred Redl-until now.
Weaned on cabbage soup as the ninth son of a lowly railway clerk, the Colonel had been well on his way to a field marshal's baton. A rising star of comely ascent, he'd been described by the Army's character report mentioned earlier as "very companionable with excellent manners and frequenting only elegant society…" Yes, the horses of June ran for the Redls of the realm. The Derby was the one social ritual in Austria where the very talented, very ambitious, very presentable arrives could mingle and chat with those who had arrived many generations ago. Now such mingling had proved calamitous. Redl, the only commoner among the Counts and Barons of the General Staff, had turned out to be its only traitor.
An unmistakable contrast: Corpus Christi and the Derby. The Corpus Christi procession, two days before Redl's suicide, had displayed Old Austria's continued virtuosity in dramatizing its own myth. But the Derby, after Redl, disclosed a loss of image and of nerve among the dynamic young. Now the new generation could not enact "honor" or "dash" with the elan expected of them in Vienna. The case had shown up the hollowness of Redl's parvenu mask as well as the hollowness of General Conrad's attempt to cover horror with yet another masking. The art of illusion itself had been compromised-the future of its practice in the twentieth century. A Viennese essence was in jeopardy.