My Austrian Love: The History of the Adventures of an English Composer in Vienna Written in the Trenches by Himself
9781465650078
400 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Exactly in the middle of the railway bridge by which the Salzach is spanned Bavarian territory ceases and Austria begins. I knew that; but I was much less impressed by this probably interesting fact (for, why on earth would one have taken so much care to inform me, if it were not interesting?) than by the singular beauty of the spot. I had just a glimpse of the two isolated hills between which the river flows, of the lovely valley thus formed, and of the lofty fortress that rises above the towers and spires of the city. In the next minute the train stopped and cries of "Salzburg, all change!" or its German equivalent, resounded. At once my neighbour, an irascible Frenchman, who from Munich had shared the carriage with me, flew up in a rage, gesticulating, full of noise. "It is not true," he cried, "I don't have to change!" I muttered something like "Custom Regulations," but he went on vociferating: "It is not true! I was told in Paris that the handbags and the other small things would be examined in the carriage, and the heavy luggage in Vienna. I refuse to get out." He was right. I had been told the same thing in Munich, but, as an Englishman, I was wont to hold my peace. So I alighted. In the same minute an official approached our carriage and invited the Frenchman to do as he was bid. The official was not very polite, it must be said in justice to the Parisian, but the latter clamoured at once, shaking his fists: "It was disgusting, and he was going to do as it pleased him!" Whereupon the man with the red cap introduced himself in a gruff voice as an Imperial and Royal Official and menaced his antagonist with immediate arrest. I tried to dissuade both from quarrelling, but the Frenchman was deaf to all reason. When at last a police officer came, the nervous little man left the carriage with an explosion of wrath and stormed to the door leading into the station building. What further happened to him, I do not know, nor will the reader ever learn it. For this Frenchman had evidently been created only to set free a certain corner seat in my railway carriage. For various reasons, a few of which will appear in this story, I will probably never return to Austria. But, gentle reader,you may visit this beautiful country. Well, if you chance to travel in a first-class corridor carriage numbered P.3.33, and in the section marked C, greet the corner seats next to the window from me. Not because I sat in one of these corner seats when my story opened, nor because the other was occupied by the irascible little Frenchman, who has already stepped out of my story, but for the sake of the traveller who succeeded him and who was no less a person than the heroine of this book. And now I will try and tell you all about it, or better, about her, supposing that the noise of the shells does not disturb me too much. For you must know that I am writing in the trenches. After all, I am used to the continuous concert, and I am not fifty yards distant from a man who is working on a chemistry treatise.
