They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [157]
Gently they lowered the chair’s back. Then they raised the footrest until Countess Roza lay almost horizontally, her chin still supported by the bonnet’s wide ribbon.
Slowly they started back.
Once again they passed under the great flower-laden trees where the birds were all singing their joy in this resplendent return of spring. Behind them the same procession reformed, but it was now a funeral cortège.
Further back, just a few paces away, the whole stud followed, all of them, close to each other, their heads lowered as if in sorrow for the dead mistress who had loved them so much. It was as if they too wished to honour her last journey.
At the bridge over the millstream they were held back by the stable lads. Then one of them neighed. They remained there a long time.
PART FIVE
Chapter One
WHEN THE BALKAN WAR finally came to an end, leopold berchtold, foreign minister of the dual monarchy, summoned a delegation of both houses of parliament to meet him on november 19th, 1913. the delegation included members of both the government and the opposition parties in proportion to their strength in the house.
In the previous year Berchtold had sent for a similar delegation so as to give the representatives of the Hungarian Parliament a resumé of the Ballplatz’s view of the state of foreign affairs. This had not been easy the year before; in the autumn of 1913 it was even more difficult.
A year and a half had passed since Berchtold had first taken charge of the Viennese Foreign Office, and in this time all his efforts at diplomacy had ended in failure. When the Balkan War had started Berchtold had been so confident of a Turkish victory that he had then declared that, no matter what happened at the front, the status quo in the Balkans would remain unchanged. He had spoken recklessly, and too soon, for almost at once the rebels in the Turkish provinces had chased the Ottoman armies from the field, and so there had been no question, after such dizzying triumphs, of ordering the victorious insurgents to withdraw behind their former frontiers. Berchtold had then found himself in the unenviable position of having to go cap in hand to the London Conference, defend his now untenable former convictions and somehow save what he could from the débacle he had failed to foresee. His task had been to evict Nikita from Scutari and prevent the Serbs from obtaining such influence in Albania that they would acquire the use of an Adriatic port. His aims therefore had been entirely negative.
All this had formed the theme of Berchtold’s address the previous year; and, because then the situation in the Balkans was still far from being settled, and also because the Dual Monarchy’s relations with Russia had been particularly strained, he had managed to set forth his exposé without encountering undue criticism.
A year later the situation was very different. At the end of August the Bucharest peace treaty had been signed and so what had previously remained uncertain now had somehow to be explained away. As far as Austria-Hungary was concerned the profit-and-loss account showed a deficit, and Berchtold had the pitiful task of trying to make the best of it.
The truth was that the Dual Monarchy had everywhere been the loser, and furthermore the Balkan states had acted as if she did not exist. In May an agreement between Bulgaria and Romania had handed Silistria to the latter in return for Romania’s neutrality during the hostilities; and it seemed