as Tanz Salon beim Schaf, and so downward to the dens of
Lerchenfeld--grew furious in music, and hysterical in waltz. It was
something fearful. It made your eyes twinkle, and your head dizzy, to
see that eternal whirling of so many human teetotums. They seemed to see
nothing, to feel nothing, to know nothing; there was no animation in
their looks; no speculation in their eyes; nothing but a dead stare, as
if the dancers were under a spell, only to be released when the music was
at an end. Generally speaking, I think the ball-rooms of continental
cities are the curses and abominations of the Sunday. My landlord, who
was no moralist, but played faro, draughts, and billiards on the Sunday
evening, would not hear of his daughter attending a public ballroom.
There is a curious anomaly in connection with places of public
entertainment which strikes a stranger at once, and which is equally true
of Berlin as of Vienna; it is this: that, while private houses are closed
at nine and ten o'clock, according to the season of the year,
coffee-houses, taverns, dancing and concert-rooms, are open till
midnight. Up to the former hours you may gain admission to your own
house by feeing the porter to the extent of twopence; but, later than
this, it is dangerous to try the experiment.

To return to out-of-door amusements. A visit to Schoenbrun was business
for a whole afternoon; for we must perforce each time unravel the
windings to the pure spring in the maze, with vague and mysterious ideas
of some time or other falling upon the grave of the Duc de Reichstadt,
there secretly buried, according to popular tradition. On rare occasions
we spent the whole of Sunday in some more distant palatial domain, or
suburban retreat. In Klosterneuburgh, with its good wine: in the Bruhl,
with its rugged steeps, its military memorials, and ruined castles; at
the village of Bertholdsdorf, with its Turkish traditions; among the viny
slopes of the Leopoldiberg, or the more distant and wilder tract of
mingled rock and forest which encircle the Vale of Helen. Above all,
there was Laxenberg,--an imperial pleasure-palace and garden, and a whole
fairy-land in itself, peopled by the spirits of ancient knights and
courtly dames. Some one of the Hapsburgs had built, many years ago, a
knightly castle on a lake, and in it were stored dim suits of armour of
Maximilian; a cabinet of Wallenstein; grim portraits of kings and
warriors; swords, halbards, jewelled d