Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
My head was hot, though my feet and hands were cold; and I felt equal to cursing down any cabman within the four-mile radius. That second volley finished him. He turned to his reins again and was borne away defeated; the red eyes of his lamps peering back at me like an angry ferret's. Up in the lighted room shadows of men and women crossed the blinds, and still the "Wiener Blut" went forward.
Go to the Volksgarten-Café Restaurant any summer night after seven, pay sixty heller, and see the crowds gathered to hear the military band concerts; or seek the halls in winter and join the audiences who come to wallow in the florid polyphonies of the Wiener Tonkünstler Orchester. Sundays and holiday nights go to Grinsing and Nussdorf and watch the people at play.
The jingle of bells might have warned me; but the horse's hoofs came noiselessly on the half-frozen snow, which lay just deep enough to hide where the pavement ended and the road began; and, moreover, I was listening to the violins behind the first-floor windows of the house opposite. They were playing the "Wiener Blut."
I recollect visiting a working cabinet-maker’s on one Sunday morning, whose men slept on the premises, and found the workshop a perfect model of cleanliness and order: every tool in its place, and the whole swept and polished up; and was once invited, under the impression that, as an Englishman, I ought to know something of newspaper presses, to inspect those of the Imperial Printing Office, with the last number of the Wiener Zeitung in type; and this was on a Sunday morning—a time especially chosen on account of the absence of the workmen.
Franke, who has a cousin on the stage said something of the same sort to Hella and me; but we thought, Franke's cousin is only in the Wiener Theatre, and that might be true there; but it may be quite different in the Burg Theatre and in the Opera and even in the People's Theatre.
At the entrance of Down Street he turned aside again, and began to lead me a zigzag dance through the quiet thoroughfare: and I followed, still to the tune of the "Wiener Blut." But now, at the corner of Charles Street, I blundered against another policeman, who flashed his lantern in my face, stared after Gervase, and asked me what my game was.
In one corner of the window an object more gaudy but not more useful attracts the eye. It is the popular doll figure commonly known in Germany as the "Wiener Gigerl" or "Vienna fop." It is doubtful whether any person could appear in the public places of Vienna in such a costume without being stoned or otherwise painfully put to a shameful death.
And still overhead the "Wiener Blut" went forward. The man paused in the bright portico, his patent-leather boots twinkling under the lamp's rays on that comfortable carpet. I waited, expecting him to whistle for a hansom. But he turned, gave an order to the butler, and stepping briskly down into the street, made off eastwards. The door closed behind him. He was the man I most hated in the world.
I can hardly write about it, for my hand shakes so with laughing when I think of it. And then, while Hella and Lajos were singing songs together, Jeno told me that every student in the Neustadt has an inamorata, a real one. Mostly in Vienna, but some in Wiener Neustadt though that is dangerous because of being caught. All the officers know about it, but no one must be found out.
The Count's temper, however, was singularly changeable on this day, for he did not seem to resent Dumnoff's meditated attack upon the package, as he would certainly have done under ordinary circumstances. "If you are so very curious to know what it is, I will tell you," he said. "You know the Wiener Gigerl?" "Of course," answered both men together. "Well, that is it, in that parcel."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking