by Felix Salten
Florian raises his head.
Neustift stares into the mirror-clear eyes which suddenly become dewy.
Neustift rises. “Dear Florian,” he whispers, “old friend . . .”
Florian snorts and his lips quiver with his escaping breath. And then Neustift realizes that Florian’s lower lip is not closed, that it has become limp and sags a little.
“Poor fellow,” he says, “you’ve grown old, too.”
He strokes the forehead, the neck, the back.
“I was there, in Lipizza, when you were born.” He caresses him tenderly. “That was a different world, an entirely different world. And yet it seems to me as if it weren’t so long ago, after all . . . as if it had been the day before yesterday, or two or three weeks ago. . . .”
He smiles. “What have I gone through since then . . . and you, old Florian.” He continues to smile, “Old Florian . . . how strange! Yes, my dear Florian, what we men call time has something strange about it.” He pats Florian’s shoulder. “Something droll and cruel.”
Florian enjoys the patting hand, holds his head bent. His ears play, drinking in what is being said to him. But it is the consolation they really drink in, the sympathy. For as he sniffs at Neustift he remembers, not clearly, yet unerringly, that this is a man from the strangely vanished past for which he is forever longing. In misty pictures the past rises before him. Neustift embraces Florian, takes his lowered head in his encircling arms. Florian nestles contentedly against his breast.
“We two,” Neustift says in his ear, “what have we been? Once upon a time. Once! Now we are through, we two. Nobody needs us any longer. And we mean nothing. We are through, you and I. . . .”
How he would have loved to hear a word, one single word from Florian. He is so close to him, feels so bound to him through their like fate. The bond between him and Florian he has known with no other creature for years. But the secret door which divides man and beast never opens, no matter how longingly they beat against it.
Neustift’s hand glides softly over the sensitive nostrils while he says: “Only the last thing is still waiting for us, the very last . . . for you and for me. . . .”
Florian, however, is incapable of sentimentalities. Gently he disengages himself from the man’s embrace and stands for another few moments beside him, as if in deep thought.
Then he slowly moves away. Slowly he strides across the meadow, is distant, and is a pale luminous shadow in the falling mantle of the night.
Felix Salten was an author and critic in Vienna, Austria. He was the author of plays, short stories, novels, travel books, and essay collections. His most famous work is Bambi.
ALADDIN
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Also by Felix Salten
Bambi
Bambi ’s Children
Renni the Rescuer
A Forest World
The Hound of Florence
The City Jungle
Fifteen Rabbits
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This Aladdin paperback edition June 2015
Text copyright © 1933 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag; copyright renewed © 1961 by Anna Katharina Wyler-Salten
English language translation copyright © 1934 by Bobbs-Merrill; copyright renewed © 1962 by Anna Katharina Wyler-Salten, Erich Posselt, and Michael Kraike
Originally published in German in 1933 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag as Florian Das Pferd des Kaisers
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Richard Cowdrey
Jacket designed by Karin Paprocki
Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Richard Cowdrey
Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.
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Cover design by Karin Paprocki
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
The text of this book was set in Yana.
Library of Congress Control Number 2014953798
ISBN 978-1-4424-8758-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8757-4 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8759-8 (eBook)