even more
instructive, than the sophisticated judgment of some literary matador,
who is crippled in body and soul and swollen up, spider-like, with the
blood of authors whom he has sucked dry. As from a huge open volume of
Plutarch, which has escaped from the covers of the printed page, I read
the biographies of these obscure beings in their merry or secretly
troubled faces, in their elastic or weary step, in the attitude shown by
members of the same family toward one another, in detached, half
involuntary remarks. And, indeed, one can not understand famous men
unless one has sympathized with the obscure! From the quarrels of
drunken pushcart-men to the discords of the sons of the gods there runs
an invisible, yet unbroken, thread, just as the young servant-girl, who,
half against her will, follows her insistent lover away from the crowd
of dancers, may be an embryo Juliet, Dido, or Medea.

Two years ago, as usual, I had mingled as a pedestrian with the
pleasure-seeking visitors of the kermis. The chief difficulties of the
trip had been overcome, and I found myself at the end of the Augarten
with the longed-for Brigittenau lying directly before me. Only one more
difficulty remained to be overcome. A narrow causeway running between
impenetrable hedges forms the only connection between the two pleasure
resorts, the joint boundary of which is indicated by a wooden trellised
gate in the centre. On ordinary days and for ordinary pedestrians this
connecting passage affords more than ample space. But on kermis-day its
width, even if quadrupled, would still be too narrow for the endless
crowd which, in surging forward impetuously, is jostled by those bound
in the opposite direction and manages to get along only by reason of the
general good nature displayed by the merry-makers.

I was drifting with the current and found myself in the centre of the
causeway upon classical ground, although I was constantly obliged to
stand still, turn aside, and wait. Thus I had abundant time for
observing what was going on at the sides of the road. In order that the
pleasure-seeking multitude might not lack a foretaste of the happiness
in store for them, several musicians had taken up their positions on the
left-hand slope of the raised causeway. Probably fearing the intense
competition, these musicians intended to garner at the propylaea the
first fruits of the liberality which had here not yet spent itself.
There were a girl harpist with repu