HELTAI’S SAILORS.
And that horrible face under a cap worn on one side of the head is everywhere in a country that putrifies. It appears in the light of the burning houses, it enters at night into lonely manors, into cottages, it rushes in under the portals of palaces, goes through the rooms, searches, spies, and there is no escape from it. Whoever it pursues, it will catch.... Then it wipes its bloody hands on silk or linen, and when its heavy step has passed, death grins in the dark, pillaged room behind it.
Once upon a time the word “sailor” brought to our minds the image of the great, free expanse of oceans and shores. Now we hold our breath at its sound, and shudder in horror.
That face with the sailor’s cap worn rakishly on one side, that face with the deep, loot-seeking eyes.... There it was in Moscow when thousands of Imperial officers were slaughtered between the walls of the Kremlin. It was in Petrograd in the hour of starkest horror, in Odessa, in Altona; and in Helsingfors it bathed itself in the blood of Finns. It is now in Berlin, in the Imperial castle on which the red flag floats. And it was lurking in the courtyard of Schönbrunn Castle when the Emperor Charles was driven from his home.
I can see the large staircase of Schönbrunn by which the Emperor, the Empress and their little fair children left their home, walking down alone, expelled. In olden days a hundred footmen jumped at a sign of their hand; courtiers bowed to the ground before them. Now, wherever they looked, there was not one faithful eye for them; whoever they might call, he would not come.
When Francis Joseph was dying on his little iron camp-bed, in a room at Schönbrunn, the heir to the crown and the Archduchess Zita wrung their hands in their despair. “Good God, not yet, not yet”.... Then the door of the old ruler’s room was opened: it had become a mortuary, and they two walked slowly down the great gallery. The Court bowed low before them. And they walked weeping, holding each other’s hands. Since then they have been always walking, through many mistakes, disappointments, and tears, and now they have reached the bottom of the staircase.
The little Crown Prince, as he had been taught, saluted all the time with his baby hands. “They won’t acknowledge it to-day, mother,” he said sadly. The red-cockaded peoples’ guards who occupied the place turned aside.
The King, in civilian clothes, with bowed head, stepped out into the open. The sound of his steps died away in the big, empty house, and the darkness of the evening swallowed up the garden, under whose straight-cut hedges, peopled with statues of gods and goddesses, the Hapsburgs had passed so many lovely summers.