The Days of the King Read Online Free PDF Page A

three ordinary servants, he wore spectacles of plain glass, without lenses, so as not to be recognized, he passed everywhere and always as Karl Hettingen, borrowing the name from the family's Swiss castle in Weinburg, once he chanced to find himself in the vicinity of some old friends from the Habsburg army, and was forced to hide behind a spread newspaper, he spent three days in a squalid inn waiting for a boat that had been blocked by military transports, he unexpectedly leapt onto the jetty at Turnu-Severin, in spite of having a ticket to Odessa, and, all in all, countless things in his peregrination happened differently than in the dentist's; the dentist sent no letters, he enjoyed the company of a tomcat, his false name was created by substituting one bird species for another, he did not disguise himself, and he did not glimpse any familiar face. Nevertheless, in the spirit of the times, their journeys were as alike as two drops of different wines. They had followed the same route, they were both Germans, they both had false passports, they both traveled second class, and they both sometimes thought, out of the blue, of the little lead soldier enclosed in a small box covered in maroon velvet.
    After they stepped onto Wallachian soil, however, the one on May 8, 1866 (after the Julian calendar), the other seven weeks later, on June 25, nothing was similar. Joseph Strauss did not seek a telegraph office to announce his arrival in his new homeland, he was not treated to a coach drawn by eight horses, he did not cross the Jiu River on a floating pontoon (at dawn, in dreadful weather), he was not greeted in Craiova by a motley crowd and a triumphal arch woven from willow branches, he was not guarded by two files of foot soldiers, and he did not spend the night in a cool manor (making small talk with Zinca, a woman who had lived through much, with her son Nicolae, a Liberal and triumvir, various ministers, and the head of government, the erstwhile Bey of Samos). Joseph entered Bucuresci from the south, through a malodorous slum, in a not at all handsome coupé, in no case coming from the direction of Titu (in a carriage adorned with garlands, drawn by twelve white horses, escorted by a detachment of lancers and followed by a ceremonial procession), he did not wash or attire himself in festive garb in order to receive the keys to the city (outside Băneasa Forest), he did not listen to a speech by the mayor (which went something like this:
Sovereign of Romania! I have given thee the crown of Stephen the Great and of Michael the Brave, thy forbears this day hence! Restore the land to its ancient splendor! Make this beautiful land the progressive sentinel of modern freedoms, the unvanquished boulevard of western civilization!
) and he did not reply in French, stirring first murmurs, then applause, and finally a torrential downpour (after three months of drought). He did not proceed from one end to the other of that long, broad avenue, the capital's only paved street (called Podul Mogoşoaiei), amazed at the potholes, the miasmas, and the buildings, he did not strive to remain upright and composed amid so many jolts, flowers, flags, carpets hung out of windows, cheers (or shouts) from the mob, cannon salvoes and chiming bells, white doves fluttering to the heavens, startled crows flapping, and sheets of paper (calligraphically inscribed with poems) floating like dry leaves in the middle of spring, he did not salute the honorary guard of alpine hunters, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, he did not ask (in front of a one-story house with two soldiers at the door), "
Qu est-ce qu' il y a dans cette maison?
" and, not having understood the reply, he did not persist, saying, "
Où est le palais?
" He was not greeted on the top of a hill by His Beatitude Metropolitan Nifon (with a gilded cross in his right hand and a silvered Gospel in his left, a synod of priests at his back, garbed in rich vestments); he did not attend mass at