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The head waiter there is an old Viennese friend of mine and looks after me beautifully. I've never been there with a lady before, and he's sure to ask me afterwards, in his fatherly way, if we're engaged." The lunch was a success in every way. There was just enough orchestral effort to immerse the conversation without drowning it, and Youghal was an attentive and inspired host.
Arthur Schnitzler, shedding for the nonce his accustomed Viennese charm and nonchalance, has written a comedy about a very grave subject, and has not uttered a single word that can be construed as disrespectful to either religion, Jewish or Roman Catholic. He is a genre painter almost to the point of perfection.
He did not hear Rufus speak to him, or the band which was blaring out a Viennese waltz, an old thing, whistled and danced half to death long since, but which, having perhaps a spark of immortal youth left among the embers, had not lost its power to make the pulses quicken. Indeed it even played a humble part in this great moment in Robert's life.
It was at a ball, at the English embassy, after her return from Pau, that, while smiling and happy, she overheard between two Viennese, strangers to her, this short dialogue, every word of which was like a knife in her heart: "What a charming fellow that Menko is!" "Yes; is his wife ugly or a humpback? or is he jealous as Othello? She is never seen." "His wife! Is he married?"
The next morning, as he nervously paced the platform of the Ischl railway station, he encountered his old friend Alfred Brünfeld, the jovial Viennese pianist. "Hullo!" "Hullo!" "Not going back to Vienna?" "Yes I'm tired of the country." "But, man, you are pale and tired. Have you been studying up here after your doctor bade you rest?" The concern in Brünfeld's voice touched Davos.
Instead of the waltz, grief, low worries, dulness, an eclipse of her, had been the beautiful creature's portion. It established mighty claims to a young husband's indulgence. She hummed a few bars of his favourite old Viennese waltz, with 'Chillon! invitingly and reproachfully. His loathing of Lord Fleetwood had to withstand an envious jump at the legs in his vison of her partner on the morrow.
Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it.
"Ah," said he, setting down the jug and limping round the table, "let us hear as how you've been getting on, sonny." They drew their chairs about the great hearth, in which the idiotic little Viennese plaster animals sported in movement eternally arrested, and talked of the years that had passed. Paul explained once more his loss of Jane and his fruitless efforts to find her.
This Austrian nobleman boldly attacked the reactionary policy of Metternich in his Saunterings of a Viennese Poet ; with biting irony he pictures the fate of the Greek patriot Hypsilantes, broken in health by the "hospitality" of Austrian prison-fortresses, or describes the all-powerful minister-of-state enjoying his social triumphs in the palace ball-room, while Austria stands outside the gate vainly pleading for liberty.
He admitted this in relating his adventures, and maintained that smuggling and police service had many points of similarity, since the great art of smuggling was to know how to evade, while that of a spy was to know how to seek. He inspired such terror in the Viennese that he was equal to a whole army-corps in keeping them in subjection.
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