But the old carter remained standing there with widespread feet, and his white hair blew about wildly in the spring breeze. He knew that signal; it came from a great machine that tore through the country every day, as if the point were to rescue and prevent a misfortune, instead of conjuring up one. And this machine was hated throughout the whole Carinthian land.
"Here I stand," shouted the old man in a frenzy, "and here I'll stay and not let a single auto out o' the village!"
He had just had a pleasant experience, and thought every machine would stop for him like the last one. But the monster was already at hand, and as for stopping, it could not even if the driver had wished to. An angry shout in the machine, a horrified wail rising from a hundred voices, and with a mighty leap the automobile crashed over the toppled obstacle, jumped, dragged, and tore itself along for ten full paces more, despite brakes and cut-out, and not until then did it come to a stop. The occupants, wealthy young people, leaped out. There lay Florie Hausbaum by the roadside.
The automobile had fatally injured him and hurled him to one side. Now every one ran for aid, and the giddy young people cursed the fact that their machine was so well known; they feared that assistance here would be dangerous. But not a soul said a cross word to them. So they knelt beside the injured white-bearded victim, wiped the blood from his face, and opened his vest,
As the physician was working over him, Florian Hausbaum awoke once more in this life.
He looked about him, and drew breaths of pain and affliction. But the wonderful spring air of that day penetrated even his crushed lungs like a mild wine in a parched throat. Intoxicating was this air, as of yore; weak and peaceful, victorious and beloved he was, as of yore: when he had saved the precious red wine.
Then, in his wandering mind, all his evil days vanished, and all hatred. Age was forgotten, and at this moment, when his soul began to flutter its wings like a new butterfly, all the foregoing was blotted out; there was no longer any suffering, nor dying. Timeless! There was nothing but spring air, lovely, hopeful spring air. And truly, the evil days of old age, of mockery, and of the railroad, of autumn tempests on the road, of a pulse that slackened in the veins--nothing of this could stand its ground. It was all a mere dream.
For he felt as weak and as happy as on the day when he had almost sacrificed his glorious youth for a cask of wine. And look, here were the moist, dark-red spots in the sunlit dust of the road, and the ruby red on his Sunday shirt flamed even more intensely.
So an unexampled happiness reeled through the Styrian wine-carter's mind, because his life's greatest day and his deed of heroism were still upon him. He sobbed in pain and joy, "Leave me and catch the precious wine. It must not run out. People, the sacred wine!"
And with the happiness of intoxication he sank into the roseate dream of eternity.