oon-companions, the
relieved "At last!" of the inn-keepers, or the smothered sigh of the
pretty girls--it was all a part of the same joy.

And these girls were so modest. First because they were Carinthians
(where you don't always have to marry right away), and then because
Florie had always been away all winter, so that nothing but woeful
legend and delightful little stories about him were current. So
recollection was at work in the yearning girlish hearts, and it made
him twice as cheerful, as golden, as laughing, as slender and handsome,
as he was.

But in March he would come along singing and with a violet in his hat,
and as full of intoxicating power as his casks, and would make them all
happy, inn-keepers and girls; there was a quatrain about him which all
the lads along the Carinthian Road used to sing when they wanted to
tease the love-sick girls. It went this way:

"A vi'let from the roadside, a kiss for the night:
The Styrian wine-carter is my delight."

He knew what he meant to them all; he knew the feeling of happiness
that radiated from him, and often when he creaked along the road in his
wagon until far into the quiet, hissing night of the _Foehn_, and the
gleam of a lighted window replied to the swaying light of his lantern
on the horse-collar, he himself would send that same little ditty out
into the yearning, burning spring night with his strong, clear voice,
making the sleepless girls that heard it bite their pillows with
delight.

Such a night it was that brought him a small misfortune and a great
triumph. On that confounded Voelkermarkt Hump his cart had got onto the
slope, while he was still filled with the echoes of the sweetness for
the sake of which he had outstayed his time in Lippitzbach. There he
had been received as the outstretched arms of the trees welcome the
roaring _Foehn_, or the waiting spring earth a warm rain. Now as he
drove on, happiness was still bounding within him, a sea of dreams, but
late, late was the hour. So he drove through the entire night, and at
the gray dawn he had reached the height opposite the Voelkermarkt
Hollow. This time he was carting a delicious wine, which seldom grew in
Styria. Farmer Pfriemer in Marburg had become a sworn rival of the
Hungarians, and had begun to export a dark red wine, called Vinaria, so
that the Carinthians might henceforth get a red wine from Styria, too.
The first vintage had turned out sweet and heavy, and n