at there was not an Austrian in the
place. None of those who could have been seen there formerly could
afford it now. The best cuisine in Vienna was now only at the service
of the foreigner.

Hotels, like restaurants, are speculative institutions. But it is
difficult to find a room on any terms. Vienna has increased in
population and not decreased. She also is crowded with homeless people
and refugees. Here are many whose houses are in detached parts of old
Austria, now in other States, and they will not go back, or cannot, or
are afraid. There are also the Russians once more in great numbers.
At the Stadt-theatre, the Moscow Theatre of Art was giving nightly from
its repertoire, and it was instructive to see that great theatre packed
with Russians, from the stalls to the standing-room at the back of the
gallery, all listening intently to "The Three Sisters" of Chekhof; many
demonstrations at the end of the performance, too, and making the
building resound with Russian cheers and plaudits.

At Vienna you naturally spend some evenings at the theatre and the
opera. It is famous for its stage. There, however, you do realize how
Vienna has fallen. The theatres are all full, but not full of the sort
of people who demand excellence. Perhaps it would be unfair to judge
the opera by a performance of "Parsifal," that heavily over-dressed
story of sentimental religiosity and pedestrian symbolism, but it was
done in the most slatternly perfunctory style. The theatre was
crowded. But it was a strangely mixed crowd. In lonely grandeur in
one of the boxes were three Englishmen in evening dress. In the fifth
row of the stalls was a servant-girl who kept asking her neighbours the
time in the midst of Parsifal's mystical moments. It was her night
out, but she had to be home by ten. She looked at the play with her
mouth, and lolled to and fro. Occasionally some people down below set
about clapping, but were silenced by hisses from the people up above,
who hissed down all claps: the theme was too holy. However, in the
entr'acts, how the beer flowed in the buffet. It was not too holy to
drink beer.

"The profiteers have all the seats in the theatres," say the cultivated
Austrians. "They don't understand opera and serious drama, but it has
the name, and they could not afford to go before, so they go now. It
is only the people in the gallery who know what is good."

"The people in the gallery always know that," said