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The Viennese does not deliberately exploit his night life to prove to all the world that he is a gay dog and will not go home until morning though it kill him as the German does. Neither does he maintain it for the sake of the coin to be extracted from the pockets of the tourist, as do the Parisians. With him his night life is a thing he has created and which he supports for his own enjoyment.
It is an old-fashioned comedy laid in the Vienna of 1815 two love-stories, lightly and quaintly told, across which, through the chatter of a little Viennese salon, we dimly see Napoleon return from Elba and hear the thunder of Waterloo.
These sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.
By the cheese, she had captured her amazed professor, and then she carried him off bodily for coffee in the Arcade. He talked little, but it didn't matter, for she talked much and well. Nor could a provincial Saxon scholar be quite indifferent at finding himself known to an intelligent and much travelled Viennese.
That this was not "Viennese tradition" only, but had come to be the universal practice, I had already learnt at Dresden where Weber himself had conducted his work. When I had a chance to conduct Der Freyschutz at Dresden eighteen years after Weber's death I ventured to set aside the slovenly manner of execution which had prevailed under Reissiger, my senior colleague.
There was one of a little Viennese actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor of a rash young American girl, detained for days.... Ryder had always known these stories. They were part of the gossip and thrill of Cairo. But he had never till now realized how exquisitely possible was their occurrence.
He followed her to theatre, to convents, church, and seemed like her shadow. Sontag in German means Sunday; so the Viennese wits, then as now as wicked and satirical as those of Paris, nicknamed the nobleman Earl Montag, as Monday always follows Sunday. It was during this Vienna engagement that Weber wrote the opera of "Euryanthe," and designed the principal part for Sontag.
This is Viennese life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke.
At the Kaiserin Elisabeth. I'll just write it" "Never mind; we'll tell him where to take it. See here," added the consul in a serviceable Viennese German of his own construction. "Take this to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, quick;" and as the man looked up in a dull surprise, "Do you hear? The Kaiserin Elisabeth!"
I have given this description a front place because it is the worst thing I can say of Vienna, and in no other part of the city did I ever see its like. During a stay of twelve months, I lost no opportunity of enjoying all that the Viennese enjoyed, or of witnessing whatever was part of the national customs in festival, holiday, or religious ceremonial.
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