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68
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Gem Trader
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mare
and my father was not dead at all. But I dared ask no questions until
on the way home she said to me in a calm voice: "A great responsibility
has fallen on you; you are the eldest of my children."
And I gasped: "Then it is true!" It was the speech of a child, but I date my manhood from that instant.
The
other death was the tragedy of Crown Prince Rudolph of
Austria-Hungary, which happened at about the same time. Forty-seven
years have gone since the afternoon when the wild shouts of
newsvendors sent me flying to the window. Something terrible had taken
place, I knew, for in the light-hearted and easy-going Vienna of those
days special editions of newspapers were almost unknown. Time enough to
learn how the world wagged when you visited your Stemmt Kafehaus in
the evening—your usual café where you were a known and respected
patron. There Hans or Fritz the head waiter would come and shake hands
with a friendly smile, ask respectfully after the gnädige Frau, your
wife, take your order and pass it on to an underling, while he himself
went to fetch an armful of your favourite newspapers.
I
rushed down to get a sheet. Groups of excited people were reading out
the news in the street. What a sorrowful and fateful day it was for us
Viennese!
However,
it opened up a new field of trade for the family, and now that my
mother was a widow and the sole bread-winner it was important that she
should develop her clientèle.
One day we had a visitor, a business caller, a German. He told me that he had left school at the age of ten and
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