Free The Hound of Florence by Felix Salten Page A

once!”
    Slowly Lucas left the church.
    The Archduke was breathing heavily. He thrust out his lower lip.
    â€œHow rudely the fellow stared!”
    â€œYes, he certainly had strange eyes,” was the Cardinal’s calm rejoinder.
    â€œSo you noticed them too?” observed the Archduke, shaking his head thoughtfully. “Those eyes . . . I can’t think what they reminded me of. . . .”
    On the following evening it happened that a farewell banquet was being given in honor of the Archduke, who was leaving for Florence the next day. It was a merry crowd that assembled round the board, eating and drinking their fill of the good fare spread before them. The dog tried to find a place to lie down, squeezing between the chairs and sitting down in front of the sideboard. But he could not find a suitable spot. At last he stretched himself on the floor at the far end of the table where the young Italian noblemen were seated.
    Presently one of the latter rose and tried to get behind the other chairs to toast a friend who was sitting close to the Archduke. He was already slightly the worse for drink, and stumbled over the dog, who sprang to his feet in terror and tried quickly to get out of the way. But as he moved the young nobleman gave him such a vicious kick that the wretched animal, howling with pain, collapsed on the floor. Whereupon the young man set about venting his fury on the dog in good earnest.
    â€œJust you wait, you confounded brute,” he roared, “I’ll teach you to trip me up!”
    The dog’s howl of pain and distress suddenly changed to a fierce growl of rage. Still smarting from the kick, he sprang furiously at the man, and with his forepaws on his shoulders, with one bound forced him against the wall. In a trice, the hubbub in the banqueting hall was silenced. Two or three of the revellers had jumped to their feet, and the only sound that broke the stillness was the low savage growl of the dog and the angry groan of the astonished and terrified man who, with the dog’s jaws at his throat, was standing, white as death, with his back to the wall as though he were being crucified.
    The dog was barking loudly in his victim’s face. It sounded like a howl of hatred and reproach, and Pointner, behind his master’s chair, quickly whispered to him what had happened. The young nobleman had just succeeded in drawing his dagger from its sheath when the Archduke brought his fist down heavily on the table.
    â€œYou dare touch a hair of my dog’s coat!” he roared. “How dare you kick my dog, you drunken sot! Put up your dagger, I say!”
    Immediately the dog released his enemy, dropped on all fours, and stood perfectly still. The tongue hanging out of his mouth alone betrayed his state of exhaustion. He was still growling with indignation.
    The young nobleman, ashamed and sobered, his clothes all disarranged, came away from the wall.
    â€œâ€™Pon my soul, Messer Giovanni,” came the Cardinal’s calm voice, addressing him from the other end of the room, “you are certainly drunk, and you are an ill-­mannered lout! Leave the hall at once, sir!”
    Messer Giovanni crept noiselessly from the hall and the dog followed him as far as the door.
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    The dark woodland through which they had been laboriously climbing hour after hour had depressed the Archduke’s spirits. But, sitting inside the slowly advancing coach he had suddenly become aware that the road was growing flat again, that it was beginning to grow lighter, that a vast expanse of bright blue sky was gradually becoming visible, and that the screen of boughs and twigs through which the sun was shining was steadily growing thinner. And as the cavalcade suddenly emerged from the trees into open fields, he began to breathe more freely. Suddenly he leaned out and called a halt.
    The cuirassiers, eager to follow the gently sloping road into the