Of course that sort of gesture furthered the aims of ill will by a show of good manners. At the same time it produced a sort of lull. Freud could-almost-return to normal business. He devoted himself to the famous Wolf Man case. Here Freud traced a phobia of wolves to the patient's glimpse, at a very young age, of his parents copulating a tergo. In truth, one aspect of the paper was yet another chapter of the anti-Jung argument. Jung held that such primal scenes were usually a neurotic fantasy. Freud maintained they were real. But in the Wolf Man paper he softened the collision between dogmas by admitting that the difference might not be "a matter of very great importance."
The war with Jung was on, but at this point it did not require any very ugly waging. Freud looked forward to his summer cure at Carlsbad in a mood much brighter than that of the two chiefs of staff who had taken the waters there some weeks earlier.
Vienna perked up during the last weeks of spring. At one of Princess Metternich's famed "mixed dinners," industrialists heard from courtiers proof of Franz Joseph's complete recovery: Once more His Majesty was taking walks in the Schonbrunn Palace gardens with his one and only Frau Schratt. This unofficial but adorable bulletin lifted the stock market to the level from which it had dropped at the onset of the All-Highest illness.
The weather was genial. It had the good taste to rain only at night. The sun seemed to have melted away most angry demonstrations along the Ringstrasse. Those controversies still left in town showed a luscious Viennese sheen. At the Cafe Central, Havanas were puffed, mochas were sipped, chocolate eclairs were being forked as the disputants faced the issues: Was Gustav Mahler's adaptation of Hugo Wolf's Der Corregidor really as calamitous as some reviews complained? Or did its problem reside not in the music but in the flawed presentation? And was the culprit of that flaw an opera management known for its anti-Mahler bias after the great maestro had passed? And for how long would that same straitlaced management keep Richard Strauss's voluptuous Salome out of its repertoire? And, still speaking of the Court Opera, did diva Selma Kurz deserve ten curtain calls for her Lucia di Lam- mermoor? Shifting to ballet, what about Pavlova's Directoire dress-wasn't that a bit out of key when she danced the gavotte, no matter how dazzling her entrechats? And had Frank Wedekind enhanced his own play Samson by not only directing it but also taking on the role of Og, King of the Philistines? Or was it time for that rather weathered eroticist to let go of the greasepaint?
Outside Austria thornier themes drew grimmer contestants. In Great Britain, it was Irish against English as well as English women against English men. Suffragettes threatened to kidnap members of the royal family who would then be ransomed for the right to vote. The King could no longer take his morning ride through Hyde Park. Shouting ladies kept waylaying his horse. In France, the Socialist victory at the May elections showed popular resentment of the three-year conscription term while at the same time hardening President Poincare's insistence on it; the conflict produced daily melees between people and police. Russian strikes stopped factory wheels from Moscow to Tiflis. The Duma at St. Petersburg had become so rowdy that even the nicely cravated Alexander Kerensky of the usually well-behaved Labor Party had to be escorted from the chamber for causing a disruption.
But it was Serbia-Russia's protege, Austria's bane-that shook with the most severe domestic turmoil. In Serbia the opposition between the two most powerful political camps sharpened toward a showdown. Prime Minister Pasic led one side; his Radical Party stood for measured nationalism. As nationalist, Pasic proclaimed Serbia's right to defend her interests (and pocketed, some said, commissions from the French firm Schneider-Creuzot, which was producing arms for Serbia's defense). But as a man of measure, Pasic feared that excessive action against Austria would risk a crisis before Serbia was ready. He suspected that zealots, mostly officers, would use war to usurp the government.
Pasic's chief opponent was the chief zealot: Colonel Apis, officially head of Army Intelligence, secretly leader of the Black Hand. Apis would accept nothing less than the most drastic fulfillment of the Serb cause, above all the breaking of Habsburg chains that bound Slav brethren in Austrian Bosnia.
In the spring of 1914, Belgrade simmered with the incompatibility between Pasic and Apis. The Prime Minister dismissed Apis's main supporter in the cabinet, Minister of War Milos Bozanovic. Apis's side retaliated through the periodical Pijemont. "A gang of men without conscience," it said about Pasic's party in May 1914, "… this government cannot be tolerated for a moment or rebellion will break out in our country." Apis had no public connection to the paper publishing the attack. Yet Belgrade recognized him as the target of the counterattack when the Minister of the Interior banned Pije- mont. Gendarmes summoned from the countryside patrolled Belgrade's streets: Serbia's other armed force had been alerted against an army coup.
Vienna took note of Serb frictions but not of their deeper implications. Just at the end of May, the Chief of Austrian Intelligence-the one man in Vienna most likely to know Belgrade behind the scenes-retired abruptly. Apis's Habsburg counterpart, Colonel "Ostrymiecz" von Urbanski, was pensioned off. (The War Ministry did not deny rumors that he had been caught selling to a film producer memorabilia of his late associate Colonel Redl, the famous and now posthumously cinemagenic traitor.) The loss of its director disoriented Austria's information gathering service. Yet even at its best it would not have sniffed out an event in Belgrade of which not even the Serbian Prime Minister had an inkling.
Underground, in the cellar of a shabby house, three young men went through a ceremony whose consequences would explode over millions of square miles of the world above.
On the night of May 27, 1914, Gavrilo Princip and his two disciples walked down seven steps on Krakjice Natalije Street into a small room in the basement. They were met by a figure robed and hooded in black.
"Who among you three speaks for the others?"
"I do," said Princip, the youngest and smallest.
"Do you know one important reason why you are going to execute this mission?"
"Because the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is the oppressor of our people."
"Do you know when you are going to execute this mission?"
"When the oppressor comes to Sarajevo."
"When will that be?"
"On June 28. That is another important reason-that day. He dares to come there on St. Vitus Day."
"And what is a third important reason?"
Princip hesitated. He knew that on St. Vitus Day, June 28 of the year 1389, a Serb hero had penetrated the lines of the conquering Turkish army to stab its generalissimo Sultan Murad to death, thereby establishing the date for the Serbian national holiday. He knew that the appearance of a Habsburg prince on South Slav soil on just that day was a sneer at Serb pride and a second important reason for vengeance. But Princip could not think of still another important reason.
"There are many reasons," he said.
"We do not expect you to know that other special reason," the black hood said. "Very few people know it. Colonel Apis knows it. The Archduke has a special weapon. He will use it if we let him come to power. He will use the lie of moderation to steal our people's sympathy. Then he will oppress us doubly. You did not know that?"