icult. A spy would follow them at a distance. The
police department kept a crowd of those spies, and as the scoundrels wore
no particular uniform, it was impossible to know them; as a natural
consequence, there was a general distrust of all strangers. If a girl
entered a house, the spy who had followed her, waited for her, stopped
her as she came out, and subjected her to an interrogatory. If the poor
creature looked uneasy, if she hesitated in answering in such a way as to
satisfy the spy, the fellow would take her to prison; in all cases
beginning by plundering her of whatever money or jewellery she carried
about her person, and the restitution of which could never be obtained.
Vienna was, in that respect a true den of privileged thieves. It happened
to me one day in Leopoldstadt that in the midst of some tumult a girl
slipped in my hand a gold watch to secure it from the clutches of a
police-spy who was pressing upon her to take her up. I did not know the
poor girl, whom I was fortunate enough to see again one month afterwards.
She was pretty, and she had been compelled to more than one sacrifice in
order to obtain her liberty. I was glad to be able to hand her watch back
to her, and although she was well worthy of a man's attention I did not
ask her for anything to reward my faithfulness. The only way in which
girls could walk unmolested in the streets was to go about with their
head bent down with beads in hand, for in that case the disgusting brood
of spies dared not arrest them, because they might be on their way to
church, and Maria Teresa would certainly have sent to the gallows the spy
guilty of such a mistake.

Those low villains rendered a stay in Vienna very unpleasant to
foreigners, and it was a matter of the greatest difficulty to gratify the
slightest natural want without running the risk of being annoyed. One day
as I was standing close to the wall in a narrow street, I was much
astonished at hearing myself rudely addressed by a scoundrel with a round
wig, who told me that, if I did not go somewhere else to finish what I
had begun, he would have me arrested!

"And why, if you please?"

"Because, on your left, there is a woman who can see you."

I lifted up my head, and I saw on the fourth story, a woman who, with the
telescope she had applied to her eye, could have told whether I was a Jew
or a Christian. I obeyed, laughing heartily, and related the adventure
everywhere; but no one was astonished, be