noured
with dinner in her apartment. So we drive to her rooms on the
Franzenring overlooking the Volksgarten.

The Viennese dinner hour is eleven, and this is why the tourist,
fingering his guide book, looks in vain for the diners. Sacher's, the
Imperial, the Bristol and the Spatenbraeu are deserted in the early
evenings. Even after the Opera these restaurants present little of the
life found in the Paris, Berlin or London restaurants. The Viennese is
not a public diner; and here again we find an explanation for the
tourist's impressions. When the Viennese goes to dinner, he does so
privately. Bianca's dinner that night was typical. There were twelve at
table. There was music by a semi-professional pianist. The service was
perfect--it was more like a dinner in a _cabinet particulier_ at a
Parisian cafe than one in a private apartment. But here we catch the
spirit of Vienna, the transforming of what the other cities do publicly
into the intimacies of the home.

At one o'clock, the meal finished, the intimate theatre claimed us.
There the glorious Bianca met her lovers, her little following. At these
theatres every one knows every one else. It is the social lure as well
as the theatrical appeal that brings the people there. Bianca chats with
the actors, flirts with the admiring Lotharios and drinks champagne. At
her side sit the greatest artists and dramatists of the day, princes and
other celebrities. At one of these performances I saw her bewitching two
men--one a composer, the other a writer--whose names lead the artistic
activities of Southern Europe. But Bianca is prodigal with her charms,
and before the final curtain was dropped she had shed her fascinations
on every patron in the theatre. And I, whose thirty kronen had passed
her by the satin-pantalooned and lace-bosomed doorkeeper, was quite
forgot. But such is Viennese etiquette. An escort may pay the _fiacre_
charge and the entrance fee, but such a meagre, vulgar claim does not
suffice to obtain a lady's entire attention for the evening. Such
selfishness is not understood by the Viennese.

The real business of the evening came later. The coffee drinking, the
theatre and the dining had been so many preliminaries for that form of
amusement which forms the basis of all Viennese night life--dancing. The
Viennese dance more than any people in the world. During _Faschingzeit_
there are at least fifty large public balls every night. These balls
become gay at one o'c