He has written comparatively little—besides his short stories, a few novels, dramas, idyls, occasionally touched, as in “The Stonebreakers,” with a natural, easy, tentative realism. He died in the latter part of 1906.
THE STONEBREAKERS
BY FERDINAND VON SAAR
Translated by A. M. Reiner.
Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.
One of the most remarkable feats of civil engineering is the railway across the Semmering, a part of the Noric Alps, forming the borderline between the Duchy of Austria and the green plains of Styria. In these days the impression left upon the mind is not so overpowering, but years ago, when the road was new, travelers must have felt the astonishment and awe of men who see for the first time before their very eyes things believed by them to be impossible.
Along the tracks, winding about yawning abysses or deep walls of solid rock, the trains thunder over the dizzy heights of the viaducts, or with shrill whistle disappear into the night of seemingly endless tunnels. Long before Mont Cenis was bored through, or the Isthmus of Suez finished, trains of the Semmering issued from the tunnel and reached level ground, leaving their dangers behind, hurrying onward over the smiling meadows; surprise and awe soon changed to pride in the progress of the times, and the traveling son of the century, leaning back in his seat with half-closed eyes, must often have dreamed of the further marvels to be accomplished in time to come. But few, indeed, ever gave a thought to the thousands who, in the sweat of their brow and exposed to every kind of danger, had blasted the rocks, rolled the boulders, bridged the deep gorges, and, in fact, created that much-admired road that now carries us so easily from the restless, dust-swept metropolis to the shores of the blue Adriatic.
And now I am going to tell you a short story about two of these poor people, belonging to a class that from time immemorial has been faithfully doing its part in the great work of universal civilization. Alas! They have not yet reaped many of the benefits of this progress. But it is not my intention here to paint in vivid colors the unhappy fate of those pariahs of society who build our cathedrals and palaces, our universities and museums; nor do I wish to enlarge on the part which this so-called fifth class may have to play in the course of events—that I will leave to the sociologists. I wish to show you only a simple picture, drawn from the life of the masses whose meagre existence, with its terrible struggle for daily bread, goes on unknown and unnoticed, and finally passes away in some obscure corner without leaving a trace. I only wish to show you that in a small way the world’s great tragedies repeat themselves everywhere.
The railway across the Semmering was finished. The cyclopean noise of the labor, the thunder of the blasting shots had died out, and the countless and restless crowds that had gathered here, coming from distant Bohemia, from the lowlands of Moravia and Hungary, from the stony Karst and sunny Friuli, had moved on toward the south to continue their labors there. The wild animals that had been driven back into the deep woods were returning, and, as if out of curiosity, ventured upon the road which, still unused, was resting here like a forgotten trace of human energy in the quiet peace of the mountain. Only here and there, separated by a two hours’ walk, perhaps, stood one of those large log cabins which the nomads of labor had once inhabited in swarms, and then in many cases torn down again on the eve of departure. In these parts were still living a number of laborers who had either been left behind or had arrived later, in order to put the finishing touches to the railway; for there were still tracks to be laid, the space between the rails to be filled out with crushed stone, telegraph poles to be erected, and the masonry work on the small houses built for the watchmen to be completed, although the graceful swallows, that perched all day in long rows on the electric wires, had begun to build their nests under the eaves.
On the threshold of one of these log cabins—it stood at some distance back from the tracks, supported against a steep, rocky wall—sat a woman. She was barefooted, had a coarse, dark kerchief over her head, and the face underneath looked worn and showed that sallow complexion which constant work in the hot sun gives to a naturally pale face. Her brow was deeply lined, and around the mouth lay such a sad, forlorn expression that it made the woman appear much older than her years, and served to accentuate the immaturity of her form. The sun no longer stood high in the sky; most of the mountain-tops and slopes were already in deep shadow. But on the meadow in front of the house, and in the tree-tops along the wooded slope at its side, there still sparkled the bright sunshine, in which swarms of butterflies, bees, and dragon-flies played, dancing over the gay flowers.