Masters of the Short Story - Volume II by Masters of the Short Story - Volume II

Author:Masters of the Short Story - Volume II [Volume, Masters of the Short Story - II]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Published: 2015-03-09T04:00:00+00:00

This short story was taken for our groundbreaking complete works of Gissing:

LOTTA SCHMIDT by Anthony Trollope

AS all the world knows, the old fortifications of Vienna have been pulled down, — the fortifications which used to surround the centre or kernel of the city; and the vast spaces thus thrown open and forming a broad ring in the middle of the town have not as yet been completely filled up with those new buildings and gardens which are to be there, and which, when there, will join the outside city and the inside city together, so as to make them into one homogeneous whole. The work, however, is going on, and if the war which has come does not swallow everything appertaining to Austria into its maw, the ugly remnants of destruction will be soon carted away, and the old glacis will be made bright with broad pavements and gilded railings, and well-built lofty mansions and gardens beautiful with shrubs — and beautiful with turf also, if Austrian patience can make turf to grow beneath Austrian sky. But if the war that has now begun to rage is allowed to have its way, as most men think that it will, it does not require any wonderful prophet to foretell that Vienna will remain ugly, and that the dust of the brickbats will not be made altogether to disappear for another half century.

No sound of coming war had as yet been heard in Vienna in the days, not yet twelve months since, to which this story refers. On an evening of September, when there was still something left of daylight at eight o’clock, two girls were walking together in the Burgplatz, or large open space which lies between the city palace of the Emperor and the gate which passes thence from the old town out to the new town. Here at present stand two bronze equestrian statues, one of the Archduke Charles, and the other of Prince Eugene. And they were standing there also, both of them, when these two girls were walking round them; but that of the Prince had not as yet been uncovered for the public. There was coming a great gala day in the city. Emperors and empresses, archdukes and grand-dukes, with their archduchesses and grand-duchesses, and princes and ministers, were to be there, and the new statue of Prince Eugene was to be submitted to the art critics of the world. There was very much thought at Vienna of the statue in those days. Well; since that the statue has been submitted to the art critics, and henceforward it will be thought of as little as any other huge bronze figure of a prince on horseback. A very ponderous prince is poised in an impossible position, on an enormous dray horse. But yet the thing is grand, and Vienna is so far a finer city in that it possesses the new equestrian statue of Prince Eugene.

“There will be such a crowd, Lotta,” said the elder of the two girls, “that I will not attempt it.

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