Before me spread the whole bright landscape of life, scarcely bounded by the rim of a far, far distant horizon. I lived in the cheerful, carefree company of young aristocrats whose company, second only to that of artists, I loved best under the old Empire. With them I shared a sceptical frivolity, a melancholy curiosity, a wicked insouciance, and the pride of the doomed, all signs of the disintegration which at that time we still did not see coming. Above the ebullient glasses from which we drank, invisible Death was already crossing his bony hands. We swore without malice and blasphemed without thought. Alone and old, distant and at the same time turning to stone, but still close to us all and omnipresent in the great and brilliant pattern of the Empire, lived and ruled the old Emperor, Franz Joseph. Perhaps in the hidden depths of our souls there slumbered that awareness which is called foreboding, the awareness above all that the old Emperor was dying, day by day with every day that he lived, and with him the Monarchy—not so much our Fatherland as our Empire; something greater, broader, more all-embracing than a Fatherland. Our wit and our frivolity came from hearts that were heavy with the feeling that we were dedicated to death, from a foolish pleasure in everything which asserted life: from pleasure in balls, new wine, girls, food, long walks, eccentricities of every sort, senseless escapades, self-destructive irony, unfettered criticism: pleasure in the Prater, in the giant Ferris wheel, in Punch and Judy shows, masquerades, ballets, light-hearted lovemaking in quiet boxes at the Court Opera, in manoeuvres, which we mostly missed, and pleasure even in those illnesses which love more than once bestowed upon us.

It is understandable that the unexpected arrival of my cousin was welcome to me. None of my light-hearted friends possessed a cousin, a watchchain or a waistcoat of this sort, nor such close connection with the original soil of legendary Slovenian Sipolje, home of the Hero of Solferino, no forgotten figure then, but a legend still.

In the evening I called for my cousin. His brilliant satin coat made a profound impression on all my friends. He stammered incomprehensible German, laughed a great deal, showing his strong white teeth, allowed everything to be paid for him, promised to find new waistcoats and watchchains from Slovenia for my friends, and was glad to take deposits in advance for these purchases. They all envied my waistcoat and chain, and they would all have liked best to buy my cousin from me, lock, stock, barrel, blood relationship, Sipolje and all.

My cousin promised to come back in the autumn. We all escorted him to the station. I bought him a second-class ticket. He took it, went to the ticket-office, managed to change it to third-class and waved to us as he went. All our hearts were broken as the train rolled out of the station; for we loved nostalgia just as unthinkingly as we loved pleasure.

[V]

FOR A DAY or two cheerful company still talked of my cousin Joseph Branco. Then we forgot him again. That is to say we temporarily set him aside, because the current follies of our lives needed to be discussed and justified.

I next heard from Joseph Branco in the late summer, towards the twentieth of August. His letter was written in Slovenian, and I translated it for my friends that same evening. He described the celebrations for the Emperor’s birthday in Sipolje, marked by the annual celebration of the Veterans’ Association. He himself was too young a reservist to belong to the Association, but marched with them just the same to the Waldwiese, to that meadow in the woods where every year, on the eighteenth of August, they gave a festival for the inhabitants. He had to come because none of the old soldiers was strong enough to carry the big bassdrum. There were five horns and three clarinets, but what is a marching band without a big drum?

‘Remarkable people, these Slovenes,’ said young Festetics. ‘The Hungarians rob them of their most elementary material rights; they defend themselves, even rebel occasionally—or give the appearance of rebelling—yet they celebrate the Emperor’s birthday.’

‘Under this Monarchy’, replied Count Chojnicki, who was the eldest of us, ‘nothing is remarkable. Without our administrative idiots’—he liked strong expressions—‘there would indeed, even outwardly, be nothing at all remarkable. By which I mean that what passes for remarkable in Austro-Hungary is merely the obvious. I should also like to add that only in this crazy Europe of nation states and nationalisms does the obvious seem remarkable. Admittedly it is the Slovenes, the Poles and Galicians from Ruthenia, the kaftan-clad Jews from Boryslaw, the horse traders from the Bacska, the Moslems from Sarajevo, the chestnut roasters from Mostar who sing our national anthem, ‘Gott erhalte’. But the German students from Brünn and Eger, the dentists, barbers’ assistants, pharmacists and art photographers from Linz, Graz and Knittelfeld, the goitred creatures from the Alpine valleys, they all sing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. Austria will perish at the hands of the Nibelungen fantasy, gentlemen! Austria’s essence is not to be central, but peripheral.