Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

After all, what had induced Conte Capriani to spend his summer in Austria? His wife and his children were unutterably bored in their exile, and he -- he was consumed with secret chagrin. He had intended to astound the earth whereon he had once run barefoot, but nothing had fulfilled his expectations, absolutely nothing. The Austrian climate did not agree with him, decidedly not. Instead of the intoxicating consciousness of triumph wherein he had hoped to revel, he was tormented, from morning until night, by a sensation of rasping humiliation. His arrogance sickened, shrivelled up; even his possessions suddenly seemed to him insignificant. His wealth was, to be sure, more easily convertible into cash, more available than that of the Austrian aristocrats. But what availed his airy, fleeting millions compared with these well-nigh indestructible possessions, rooted for centuries in native soil?

Many, many years before, on a muddy road the sides of which were spotted with patches of dirty snow fast melting in the early spring, little Alfred Stein had run behind a high old-fashioned green coach hung on spiral springs, and had tried to steal a ride on the hind axle. The bearded coachman -- a stout, patriarchal coachman with a broad fur collar -- looked back, saw him, and snapped his whip at him, so sharply that the boy, frightened, let go the axle, and fell off into a puddle. A chubby child, at the carriage window, leaned far out to see him, and laughed, without any malice, loud and heartily, as all healthy children laugh at anything comical. But rage seized young Alfred, and when he could do it unobserved, he clenched his fist, and shook it at the carriage.