Free Florian by Felix Salten

heart was still with Anton, and he was wracked by longing for Bosco’s diverting antics. But he permitted Wessely to lead him by the halter-cord, and submitted to the cold steely bit between his teeth.
    The streets were still barely awake.
    Stony streets between stony rows of houses were a novelty to Florian. Intently he looked from side to side, his nostrils telling him of the existence of many strange horses in this strange stony world; the innumerable other smells he caught he did not recognize.
    A milk-wagon clattered by over the cobblestones. Two scrawny sorrels clop-clopped unrhythmically, pulling it.
    Relatives! Florian had an impulse to greet them with a loud neigh. But they looked too shabby. Their eyes were hidden behind black leather blinders. Plodding along so mechanically, they seemed of a different race to their noble kinsman.
    Florian snorted and began to curvet.
    Slowly, puffing and panting, two heavy Pinzgauers passed dragging a mountainous load of brick. They stepped deliberately and heavily, putting one foot down before the other. Sparks shot from under their shoes.
    Florian flicked his ears and settled down to a leisurely gait.
    At a light smooth trot, cabs rolled by. It was pleasant to hear the even hoofbeats come closer, thunder by and die away in the distance. Fiacres!
    Here and there trees and bushes rustled and nodded in small grassy areas. But to Florian’s mild surprise and dismay nobody noticed them or visited them. When they crossed the Ring, he was tremendously bewildered by the spectacle of long red carriages, strung together in twos and threes, which ran by without horses to pull them, all by themselves!
    They wended their way through a narrow street which, farther on, nestled close to a wide open square; and came into the shadow of a squat archway, making through a door into a small court. The scent of horses, fresh and pungent, the smell of straw, hay, oats, pinched their nostrils. They were at their goal.
    Florian had all the time expected to find Anton awaiting him there, expected Bosco to rush at him with a hymn of joy. Neither Anton nor Bosco was there.
    Led into his stall, combed down and brushed by Wessely, Florian ate scarcely a mouthful of oats, took a few hasty sips of water from the brown marble trough, turned away from the crib, pressed his head against the grating which closed him in, looked and listened to every side, wiggled his ears at every footfall he heard.
    Anton . . . Bosco . . . Where are you? The open spaces . . . the free and easy play . . . the couch of warm grass . . . the caressing, warming sun . . . where is all that? Where? But above and before all else; Anton and the little dog!
    Gone, overnight!

Chapter Eleven
    I N THE SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL they are working the young stallions. The Emperor’s equerry, that Excellency who came to Lipizza to make his selections, watches the proceedings. With him are Captain von Neustift and his wife, Elizabeth.
    The riding master, Ennsbauer, takes one horse after another on the longe.
    But Florian is not present.
    â€œWhat do you say about Florian, your Excellency?” Elizabeth presses the question.
    The equerry brushes his hand nervously over his short gray mustache. “We’ll see . . . Perhaps he’ll come around. . . .”
    â€œPerhaps!” Elizabeth cries, almost offended.
    â€œYes. Perhaps.”
    This agitates the countess. “Something must have happened to Florian. I cannot understand it.”
    â€œIt’s quite a puzzle to me, too,” his Excellency replies. “Obviously something has happened to him. But what?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Nobody knows.”
    Neustift joins in the conversation. “My wife wanted very much to have Florian . . . very much. It was almost an obsession with her. I was ready to pay any price for him . . .”
    â€œToo bad,” says the