"Parsifal!" That sacred opera which has never been performed outside of this little hamlet. I was to see it at last!

I was prepared to be delighted with everything, and the childishness of the little maid who took charge of our hats before we went in to the opera charmed me. My hat was heavy and hot, and I particularly disliked it, owing to the weight of the seagull which composed one entire side of it, and always pulled it crooked on my head. The little maid took the hat in both her arms, laid her round red cheek against the soft feathers of the gull, kissed its glass bead eyes, and smilingly said in German:

"This is the finest hat that has been left in my charge to-day!"

Verily, the opera of "Parsifal" began auspiciously. Quite puffed up with vainglorious pride over the little maiden's admiration of one of my modest possessions, while Bee's and Mrs. Jimmie's ravishing masterpieces had received not even a look, we met Jimmie bustling up with programmes and opera-glasses, and went toward the main entrance. We showed our tickets, and were sent to the side door. We went to the side door, and were sent to the back door. At the back door, to our indignation, we were sent up-stairs. In vain Jimmie expostulated, and said that these seats were well in the middle of the house on the ground floor. The doorkeepers were inexorable. On the second floor, they sent us to the third, and on the third they would have sent us to the roof if there had been any way of getting up there. As it was, they permitted us to stop at the top gallery, and, to our unmitigated horror, the usher said that our seats were there. Jimmie was furious, but I, not knowing how much he had paid for them, endeavoured to soothe him by pointing out that all true musicians sat in the gallery, because music rises and blends in the rising.

"We are sure to get the best effect up here, Jimmie, and those front rows, especially, if our seats happen to be in the middle, won't be at all bad. Don't let's fuss any more about it, but come along like an angel."

I will admit, however, that even my ardour was dampened when we discovered that our seats were absolutely in the back and top row, so that we leaned against the wall of the building, and were not even furnished with chairs, but sat on a hard bench without relief of any description.

And the price Jimmie hurled at us that he had paid for those tickets! I am ashamed to tell it.

Now Jimmie hates German opera in the most picturesque fashion. He hates in every form, colour, and key, and in all my life I was never so sorry for any one as I was for Jimmie that day at Bayreuth. The heat was stifling, his rage choked him and effectually prevented his going to sleep, as otherwise he might have done in peace and quiet. He sat there in such a steam and fury that it was truly pitiable. He went out once to get a breath of air, and they turned the lights out before he could get back, so that he stumbled over people, and one man kicked him. With that Jimmie stepped on the German's other foot, and they swore at each other in two languages and got hissed by the people around them. When he finally got back to us, we found it expedient not to make any remarks at all, and I was glad it was too dark for him to see our faces.

Yet, in spite of Jimmie and the heat and the ache in our backs and the hard unyielding bench, that afternoon at "Parsifal" is one of the experiences of a lifetime.

People tell us now that we were there on an "Off day." By that they mean that no singers with great names took part. How like Americans to think of that! Germans go to the opera for the music. Americans go to hear and see the operatic stars.

Happily unvexed by my ignorance, I heard a perfect "Parsifal" without knowing that, from an American point of view, I ought not to have been so delighted. The orchestra was conducted by Siegfried Wagner, and Madame Wagner sat in full view from even our eyrie.

And then—the opera! Perfection in every detail! I believed then that not even the Passion Play could hold my spirit, so in leash with its symbolism, its deep devotion, and its enthralling charms.

The day on which I saw "Parsifal" at Bayreuth was a day to be marked with a white stone.



CHAPTER V

THE PASSION PLAY

Jimmie came into the sitting-room this morning (for, by travelling with the Jimmies, Bee and I can be very grand, and share the luxury of a third room with them), but I suspected him from the moment I saw his face. It was too innocent to be natural.

"What you got, Jimmie?" I said. Jimmie's manner of life invites abbreviated conversation.

"Only the letter from the Burgomeister of Oberammergau, assigning our lodgings," he replied, carelessly. He yawned and put the letter in his pocket.

"Oh, Jimmie!" we all cried out. "Have they—"

"Have they what?" asked Jimmie, opening his eyes.

"Don't be an idiot," I said, savagely. "You know I have hardly been able to sleep, wondering if we'd have to go to ordinary lodgings or if they would assign us to some of the leading actors in the play. Tell us! Let me see the letter!"

"Now wait a minute," said Jimmie, and then I knew that he was going to be exasperating.

"Don't you let him fool you," said Bee, who always doubts everybody's good intentions and discounts their bad ones, which worthy plan of life permits her to count up at the end of the year only half as many mental bruises as I, let me pause to remark. "You know that not one in ten thousand has influence enough to obtain lodgings with the chief actors, and who are we, I should like to know, except in our own estimation?"

"Well," said Jimmie, meekly, "in the estimation of the Burgomeister of Oberammergau, my wife is an American princess, travelling incognito as plain Mrs. Jimmie, to avoid being mobbed by entertainers. He promises in solemn German, which I had Franz translate, not to betray her disguise."

"That makes a prince of you, Jimmie," I said, sternly. "A pretty looking prince you are."

"Not at all," said Jimmie modestly. "I felt that I could not do the princely act very long either as to looks or fees, so I said that the princess had made a morganatic marriage, and that I was it."

"Jimmie!" said his wife, blushing scarlet. "How could you? Why, a morganatic marriage isn't respectable. It's left-handed."

"My love! You are thinking of a broomstick marriage. Trust me. We are still legally married, and if I should try to sneak out of my obligations to you by this performance, I should still be liable in the eyes of the law for your debts. Let that console you."

"But—" said Mrs. Jimmie, still blushing, "by this plan they won't let us be together, will they?"

"They wouldn't anyway, as I discovered from their first letter. We are all to be lodged separately, and from the tone of that first letter, in which they addressed me as their prince, I hit on the morganatic marriage as more economical in letting him down easy, without telling him I had lied or having to pay for my lie," said Jimmie, with timid appeal in his innocent blue eyes.

"But where do I come in, Jimmie?" I said, impatiently.

"You come in with Judas Iscariot. Where you belong!" said Jimmie, severely.

Bee howled. Mrs. Jimmie looked startled.

"Nonsense!" I said, indignantly. "That is going a little too far. I won't be put there. I believe you asked 'em on purpose, just so that you could crow over me afterward."

"You are getting slightly mixed," said Jimmie, politely. "If you mention crowing, 'tis Peter you ought to have been lodged with."

"What a fool you are, Jimmie!"

Jimmie gave an ecstatic bounce. Whenever he has completely exasperated anybody he simply beams with joy.

"Where have they put me, Jimmie?" asked Bee.

"They have thoughtfully assigned you to Thomas,—last name not mentioned,—where you can sit down and hold regular doubting conventions with each other and both have the time of your lives."

"I don't believe you!"

"Look and see, O doubtful—doubting one, I mean!"

"My word! He is telling the truth!" cried Bee in astonishment.

"I tried to get—" began Jimmie to his wife, but she stopped him.

"Don't, dear," she said, gently. "You know I love your jokes, but don't be sacrilegious. Leave His name out of this nonsense. I—I couldn't quite bear that."

Jimmie got up and kissed her.

"They have lodged you with the Virgin Mary, sweetheart, and the two most lovely Marys in the world will be in the same house together," he said.

Mrs. Jimmie blushed and smoothed Jimmie's riotous hair tenderly.

"And have they separated you and me, dear? Where have they lodged you?"

"I have secured an apartment with Mary Magdalene—in her house, I mean!" said Jimmie, straightening up.

Bee and I shrieked. Jimmie edged toward the door.

"Jimmie!" said his wife in horror. "Please don't—"

"Don't what?"

His wife rose from her chair and turned away.

"Don't what?" he repeated.

"I was only going to say," said Mrs. Jimmie, "don't make a joke of every—"

"Well, if you don't want me to go there, I'll trade places with the scribe and put her with the lady who is generally represented reclining on the ground in a blue dress improving her mind by reading. Perhaps you would feel more comfortable if I lodged with Judas?"

"No, indeed! and put her with Mary Magdalene?" said Mrs. Jimmie, whose serious turn of mind was as a well-spring in a thirsty land to Jimmie.

"My dear," he said, impressively, with his hand on the door-knob. "Two things seem to have escaped your mind. One is that this is only play-acting, and the other is that Mary Magdalene, when history let go of her, was a reformed character anyway."

The door slammed. We both looked expectantly at Mrs. Jimmie. Her apologies for Jimmie's most delicious impertinences are so sincere and her sense of humour so absolutely wanting that we love her almost as dearly as we love Jimmie.

Mrs. Jimmie, large, placid, fair and beautiful as a Madonna, rose and looked doubtfully at us after Jimmie had fled.

"You mustn't mind his—what he said or implied," she said, the colour again rising in her creamy cheeks. "Jimmie never realises how things will sound, or I think he wouldn't—or I don't know—" She hesitated between her desire to clear Jimmie and her absolute truthfulness. She changed the conversation by coming over to me and laying her hand tenderly on my hair.

"You are sure, dear, that you don't mind lodging with Judas Iscariot?"

Bee stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and politely turned her back. I bit my lip. It hurts her feelings to be laughed at.

"Not a bit, Mrs. Jimmie. I shall love it."

"Because I was going to say that if you did, I would gladly exchange with you, and you could lodge with Mary."

"Mrs. Jimmie," I said, "you are an angel. That's what you are."

"And now," said Bee, cheerfully, who hates sentiment, "let's pack, for we leave at noon."

I don't apologise for Jimmie's ribald conversation, because many people, until they have seen the Passion Play, make frivolous remarks, which would be impossible after viewing it, except to the totally insensible or irreligious.

Jimmie is irreligious, but not insensible. He really had gone to no end of trouble to obtain these lodgings for us, and he had insisted so tenaciously that we must be lodged with the principals that we were obliged to wait for an extra performance, and live in Munich meanwhile.

We all four made the journey from Munich to Oberammergau, which lies in so picturesque a spot in the Bavarian Alps, from very different motives. Mrs. Jimmie, who is an ardent churchwoman, went in a spirit of deep devotion. Bee went because one agent told her that over twelve thousand Americans had been booked through their company alone. Bee goes to everything that everybody else goes to. Jimmie went in exactly the same spirit of boyish, alert curiosity with which, when he is in New York, he goes to each new attraction at Weber and Field's.

As we got off the train the little town looked like an exposition, except that there were no exhibits. English, German, and French spoken constantly, and not infrequently Russian, Spanish, and Italian assailed our ears the whole time we were there. Only one thing was characteristic. The native peasants looked different. The picturesque costume of the Tyrolese men, consisting of velveteen knee breeches, gay coloured stockings, embroidered white blouse, and short bolero jacket with gold braid or fringe, and the Alpine hat, with a pheasant or eagle feather in it, sat jauntily upon most of the young men, whose bold glances and sinewy movements suggested their alert, out-of-door life in their mountain homes. But the Oberammergau peasants walked with a slower step. Their eyes were meek instead of roving, their smiles tender instead of saucy, and they say it is all the influence of the Passion Play, which for over three hundred years has dominated their lives. No one who commits a crime, or who lives an impure life, can act in the great drama, nor can any except natives take part. And as the ambition of every man, woman, and child in Oberammergau is to form part of this glorious company, the reason for the purity of their aspect is at once to be seen. No murder, robbery, or crime of any description has been committed in Oberammergau for three hundred years.

The peasants of this little mountain village live their whole lives under the shadow of the cross.

Nor was it long before our little party came under this strange influence. My own sense of the eternal fitness of things is so highly developed that I was under the tense strain of nervous excitement which always wrecks me after reading a strong novel or witnessing a tragic play. I was afraid to see the Passion Play for two reasons. One that I could not bear to see the Saviour of mankind personified, and the other that I was afraid that the audience would misbehave. If I am going to have my emotions wrenched, I never want any one near me. To my mind the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria obtained the highest enjoyment possible from having performances of magnificent merit with himself as the sole auditor. This world is so mixed anyway, and audiences at any entertainment so hopelessly beyond my control. Nothing, for example, makes me feel so murderous as for an audience to go mad and stamp and kick and howl over a cornet solo with variations, no matter how ribald, and beg for more of it. And they always do!

The Passion Play, up to a comparatively few years ago, had comic characters and scenes, as for instance, there was once a scene in hell where the Devil, as chief comedian, ripped open the bowels of Judas and took therefrom a string of sausages. This vulgar and hideous buffoonery was in the habit of being received with delight by the peasants from neighbouring hamlets, which, up to fifty years ago, formed the principal part of the Passion Play audiences.

And as tradition, the handing down of legends from father to son, forms such a part of the mountaineer's education, I was not surprised to hear a party of Tyrolese giggle at moments when the deeper meaning of the play was holding the rest of us in a spell so tense that it hurt.

I remember in Modjeska's rendition of Frou-frou, when Frou-frou's lover is breaking her heart, and the strain becomes almost unbearable, Modjeska's nervous hands tear her valuable lace handkerchief into bits. It is a piece of inspired acting to make the discriminating weep, but my friend the audience always giggled irresistibly, as if the sound of rending lace, when a woman's agony was the most intense, were a bit of exquisite comedy.

I am constrained to believe, however, that in almost entirely remodelling the Passion Play, the village priest, Daisenberger, was not moved by any consideration of what an ignorant audience might do, but rather by the noble, Oberammergau spirit of a life of devotion, dedicated to the rewriting, rehearsing, and directing of the performance.

The history of this man illustrates what I mean by the Oberammergau spirit. In 1830 he was a young peasant who saw the possibilities of the Passion Play. He went to the head of the Monastery at Ettal, and vowed to consecrate his whole life to this work, if they would make him a priest and permit him to become the spiritual director of the people of the village. But he was obliged to study seven years before they gave him the position. He was seventy years old when he died, having so nobly fulfilled his vow that he is called "The Shakespeare of the Passion Play." For forty-five years he superintended every performance and every public rehearsal, and as these rehearsals take place in some form or other almost every night during the ten years which intervene between one performance and another, something of the depth of his devotion to his beloved task may be gathered.

Jimmie marvelled that he could leave his money and his valuables around, and his room door unlocked, until they told him that the street door was never locked either. At this information Jimmie grew suspicious, and locked his bedroom door, much to the affliction of the gentle family of Bertha Wolf, who plays Mary Magdalene. He explained to them that there were plenty of Italian, French, and English robbers, even if there were no Tyrolese. "And are there no American robbers?" they asked, simply, to which Jimmie replied with equal guilelessness that Americans in Europe had no time to rob other people, they were so busy in being robbed.

"People think we are so very rich, you see," he explained, when they gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Then he gave the little brown-eyed boy who clings to his mother's skirt in one of the tableaux five pfennigs to see him clap his hands twice and bob his yellow head, which is the way Tyrolese children express their thanks.

This living in the families of the actors was most interesting, except for the autograph fiends, who simply mobbed the Christus, Anton Lang, and Josef Maier, the Christus of the last three performances, who now takes the part of the speaker of the prologue. Those dear people were so obliging that no one was ever refused, consequently thousands of tourists must possess autographs of most of the principals. Not one of our party asked an autograph of anybody. I hope they are grateful to us. I should think they would remember us for that alone.

Mrs. Jimmie was not at all disturbed by the somewhat wooden and inadequate acting of Anna Flunger, who plays Mary, and loved, I believe almost worshipped, that young peasant girl, who walked bareheaded and with downcast eyes through the streets, or who waited upon the guests in her father's house with such sweet simplicity. To Mrs. Jimmie, Anna Flunger was the real Virgin Mary, so real, indeed, that I believe that Mrs. Jimmie could almost have prayed to her.

Even Bee was intensely touched by an act of Peter,—for her lodging was changed to the house of Thomas and Peter Rendl after we arrived. The father, Thomas Rendl, plays St. Peter, while his son is again John, the beloved disciple. He played John in 1890, at the age of seventeen, but they say that there is not a line in his beautiful, spiritual face to show the flight of time. His large liquid eyes follow the every movement of the Master's on the stage, and their expression is so hauntingly beautiful that even Bee admitted its influence. Bee said that one evening, as they were sitting around the table, resting for a moment after supper was finished, the village church bell began to ring for the Angelus. In an instant the two men and the two women politely made their excuses and rising, stood in the middle of the room facing eastward, crossing their hands upon their breasts in silent prayer. Bee said it was most beautiful to see how simply they performed this little act of devotion.

I wouldn't let Jimmie know of it for the world, but it has been quite a trial to me to live in the house with Judas. He plays with such tremendous power—he makes it seem so real, so close, so near. Once I asked him if he liked the part, and he broke down and wept. He said he hated it—that he loathed himself for playing it, and that his one ambition was to be allowed to play the Christus for just one time before he died, in order to wipe out the disgrace of his part as Judas and to cleanse his soul. I cried too, for I knew that his ambition could never be realised. I told him that perhaps they would allow him to act the part at a rehearsal, if he told them of his ambition, and the thought seemed to cheer him. He said he knew the part perfectly, and had often rehearsed it in private to comfort his own soul.

Such was his sincerity and grief, such his contrition and remorse after a performance, that it would not surprise me some day to know that the part had overpowered him, and that he had actually hanged himself.

As to the play itself—I wish I need say nothing about it. My mind, my heart, my soul, have all been wrenched and twisted with such emotion as is not pleasant to feel nor expedient to speak about. It was too real, too heart-rending, too awful. I hate, I abhor myself for feeling things so acutely. I wish I were a skeptic, a scoffer, an atheist. I wish I could put my mind on the mechanism of the play. I wish I could believe that it all took place two thousand years ago. I wish I didn't know that this suffering on the stage was all actual. I wish I thought these people were really Tyrolese peasants, wood-carvers and potters, and that all this agony was only a play. I hate the women who are weeping all around me. I hate the men who let the tears run down their cheeks, and whose shoulders heave with their sobs. It is so awful to see a man cry.

But no, it is all true. It is taking place now. I am one of the women at the foot of the cross. The anguish, the cries, the sobs are all actual. They pierce my heart. The cross with its piteous burden is outlined against the real sky. The green hill beyond is Calvary. Doves flutter in and out, and butterflies dart across the shafts of sunlight. The expression of Christ's face is one of anguish, forgiveness, and pity unspeakable. Then his head drops forward on his breast. It grows dark. The weeping becomes lamentation, and as they approach to thrust the spear into His side, from which I have been told the blood and water really may be seen to pour forth, I turn faint and sick and close my eyes. It has gone too far. I no longer am myself, but a disorganised heap of racked nerves and hysterical weeping, and not even the descent from the cross, the rising from the dead, nor the triumphant ascension can console me nor restore my balance.

The Passion Play but once in a lifetime!



CHAPTER VI

MUNICH TO THE ACHENSEE

If there were a country where the crowned heads of Europe in ball costume sat in a magnificent hall, drinking nothing less than champagne, while the court band discoursed bewitching music, and the electric lights flashed on myriads of jewels, Bee and Mrs. Jimmie would declare that sort of Bohemia to be quite in their line. And because that kind of refined stupidity would bore Jimmie and me to the verge of extinction, and because we really prefer an open-air concert-garden with beer, where the people are likely to be any sort of cattle whom nobody would want to know, yet who are interesting to speculate about, I really believe that Bee and Mrs. Jimmie think we are a little low.

However, their impossible tastes being happily for us unattainable, three hours after our arrival in Munich found Jimmie proudly marching three sailor-hat and shirt-waist women into the Lowenbraukeller.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we arrived, and we took our seats at a little table in the terraced garden. A rosy-cheeked maid, who evidently had violent objections to soap, brought us our beer, and then we looked around. There was music, not very good, only a few people smoking china pipes and not even drinking beer, a few idly reading the paper, and a general air over everybody of Mr. Micawber waiting for something to turn up.

Jimmie glanced around anxiously. The length of our stay depended upon our ability to please Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, who were easily fatigued by the populistic element of society.

"Nothin' doin'," growled Jimmie in my ear. "Wake 'em up, can't you? Create a riot. Let's smash our beer-mugs, and shout 'Down with the Kaiser!'"

"You'd find you would stay longer than you wanted to if you did that," I said. "What do you suppose they are all waiting for?"

Jimmie called the redolent maiden, and in German which made her quiver put the question.

"At five o'clock they will open a fresh hogshead of beer—the Lowenbrau," she answered him.

"Fresh beer?" cried Jimmie. "How long has this been opened?"

"Since three."

"Great Scott!" whispered Jimmie. "Think of me brought up on a bottle, coming to a land where men will sit for an hour to get beer the first five minutes it is opened."

"See, they are opening it now," said the maid.

Sure enough, every man in the garden slowly rose and ambled leisurely to a horse-trough in the centre of the garden in which lay perhaps a score of mugs in running water. Each took a stein or two or three, depending on his party, and formed in line in front of the counter across which the beer was passed.

"Come, Jimmie," I said. "I'm going to get my own stein."

"Why do they do that?" asked Mrs. Jimmie, after we had got in line.

"It saves the half-cent charged for service," answered the maid.

"Now isn't she funny!" complained Bee of me as I returned beaming with content. "She likes to go and do a queer thing like that instead of sitting still to be waited on, like a lady."

"Been waited on a million times like a lady," I ventured to respond. "It isn't every day one can get a cool mug and see the beer drawn fresh and foaming like that. I felt like a Holbein painting."

Bee, as at Baden-Baden, plaintively gave the attendant a double fee to show that meanness had not caused my apparently thrifty act. Then for the first time in our lives we found what fresh beer really meant.

Even Bee and Mrs. Jimmie admitted that it was worth while coming, and let me record in advance that when we got to Vienna, and they served us an equally delicious beer in long thin glasses as delicate as an eggshell, Bee grew so enthusiastic in the process of beer drinking that Jimmie grew absurdly proud of his pupil, and professed to think that she was "coming round after all." But Bee declared that it was the thinness of the glasses which attracted her, and insisted that beer out of a German stein was like trying to drink over a stone wall.

We went many times after that, generally in the evening, when the concert was held in a hall which must have contained two thousand people, even when all seated at little tables, and where the band would have deafened you if the hall had not been so large. Here Jimmie and the waitress prevailed upon us to taste the most inhuman dishes with names a yard long, which the maid declared we would find to be "wunderschoen."

We began in a spirit of adventure, but Jimmie's taste in food is so depraved that if he followed the precedent all through his life, Lombroso would class him as a degenerate. As it was, he soon had us distanced. But we let him eat pickles and cherries and herring and cream and tripe and garlic and pig's feet all stewed up together, while we listened to the music, and planned what we would bury him in.

The pictures in Munich we loved. I must say that I enjoy the atmosphere of the Munich school better than any other. There is a healthiness about German realism that one is not afraid nor ashamed to admire. French realism is like a suggestive story, expunged of all but the surface fun for girls' hearing. You are afraid of the laugh it raises for fear there is something beneath it all that you don't understand. But the modern Munich galleries were not the task that picture galleries often are. They were a sincere delight, and let me pause to say that Munich art was one thing that we four were unanimous in praising and enjoying as a happy and united family.

It was here that Jimmie proceeded to go mad over Verboeckhoven's sheep pictures, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee over the crown jewels in the Treasury of the Alte Residenz. To be sure they are fine. For example, there is the famous "Pearl of the Palatinate," which is half black, and a glorious blue diamond about twice as fine as the one owned by Lord Francis Hope, which his family went to law to prevent his selling not long ago, and a superb group of St. George and the dragon, the knight being in chased gold, the dragon made entirely of jasper, and the whole thing studded thickly with precious stones of every description. But, except that these things are historic and kept in royal vaults, they are no more wonderful than jewellers' exhibits at the expositions.

But if you want to be thoroughly mixed up on the Nibelungenlied, after you think you have got those depraved old parties with their iniquitous marriages and loose morals pretty well adjusted by a faithful attendance at Walter Damrosch's lectures and Wagner operas, just go through the Koenigsbau, and let one of those automatic conductors in uniform take you through the Schnorr Nibelungen Frescoes, and from personal experience I will guarantee that, when you have completed the rounds, you won't even know who Siegfried is.

There is one thing particularly worth mentioning about Munich, and that is that also in Alte Residenz, in the Festsaalbau, which faces on the Hofgarten, and is 256 yards, not feet, long, are two small card rooms, with what they call a "gallery of beauties."

Now everybody knows how disappointing professional beauties are. Think over the names of actresses heralded as "beauties;" of belles, who have been said to turn men's heads by the score; of Venuses, and Psyches, and Madonnas of the galleries of Europe, and tell me your honest opinion. Aren't most of them really—well, trying, to say the least?

Titian's beauties all need an obesity remedy, and Jimmie criticises most "beauties" so severely that we have got to searching them out, when we are tired and cross, just to vent our spleen upon.

Jimmie's favourite story is the old, old one of the old woman who saw a hippopotamus for the first time. She looked at him a moment in silence and then said: "My! ain't he plain!"

It is pre-historic, that story, but it has saved our lives many a time in Europe. It fits so many cases, and I mention it here just to prove my point. Go, then, to the "Gallery of Beauties" in the Palace, and you will find thirty-six portraits by Steiler, of thirty-six of the most exquisite women conceivable to the mind of man. Some of these are women, like the Empress of Austria, who were justly famed for a beauty which is not often the gift of royalty. Others are women of whom you have never heard, but so lovely that it would be impossible not to remember their loveliness for ever and a day.

We all enthusiastically bought photographs of the painting of the Empress Elizabeth at the age of eighteen, which to my mind is one of the most exquisite faces ever put upon canvas, and then, highly elated with our presentation of Munich to Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, we gaily wended our way southward, following the river Isar for a time, until we reached Innsbruck, on our way to the Achensee.

At Innsbruck we halted for a sentimental reason which I am not ashamed to divulge, as the ridicule of the public would be sweet approval compared to the way Jimmie wore himself to a shadow in the violence of his jeers. But the fact is that the King Arthur of Tennyson has always been one of my heroes, and in the Franciscan Church or the Hofkirche in Innsbruck, there were twenty-eight heroic bronze statues, the finest of these being of Arthur, Koenig von England, by the famous Peter Vischer of Nuremberg.

So in Innsbruck we paused for a few days, finding it delightful beyond our ideas of it, and exquisitely picturesque, situated on both banks of a dear little foaming, yellow river, with foot-bridges upon which you may stand and watch it rage and churn, and around it on all sides rising the mountains of the Bavarian Alps, which are not so near as to crowd you. Mountains smother me as a rule.

Jimmie obligingly took us at once to the Hofkirche, to get to which we passed under the Triumphal Gate, erected by the citizens on the occasion of the entry of the Emperor Francis I. and the Empress Maria Theresa, to commemorate the marriage of Prince Leopold, who afterward became the Emperor Leopold II., with the Infanta Maria Ludovica. This magnificent arch is of granite and will last thousands of years. It reminded me of the Dewey Arch in New York—it was so different.

The Emperor Maximilian I. directed in his will that the Hofkirche should be built, and in the centre of the nave he is represented kneeling by a sumptuous bronze statue, surrounded by the statues I had come to see. Jimmie declared that the marble sarcophagus upon which the statue of Maximilian is placed was "worth the price of admission," but Jimmie's opinion is of no value except when he is accidentally right, as in this instance. He studied this and the monument of Andreas Hofer, whose remains are buried here, under a magnificent sarcophagus of Tyrolese marble, leaving us to our bronze statues.

I found my King Arthur perfectly satisfactory, much to my surprise, for I am always prepared to be disappointed. Some of the statues are ridiculous in the extreme, but these monstrosities served the better to emphasise the dignity of King Arthur's pose and the nobility of his countenance.

Just after you leave the Hofkirche, you find yourself just opposite to the "Golden Dachl," which the natives tell you is a roof built of pure gold, but which the skeptical declare to be copper gilded. This roof covers a handsome Gothic balcony and blazes as splendidly as if it were gold, as Bee and Mrs. Jimmie preferred to believe. It is said to have cost seventy thousand dollars, and was built by Count Frederick of Tyrol, who was called "The Count of the Empty Pockets," to refute his nickname.

While we were taking infinite satisfaction in this little history, we lost Jimmie. He emerged presently from a handsome shop near by followed by a man bearing a large box.

"What have you been buying, Jimmie?" we demanded, suspiciously.

"Only a replica of Maximilian's statue," he answered, blandly.

"You mean a 'copy,' my darling," I corrected him, sweetly.

Now Jimmie loves a fight and so do I, so we immediately offered battle to each other, Jimmie insisting on his replica, and I declaring that a replica meant that the same artist must have made both the original and the second article, which when made by another craftsman became a "copy."

Jimmie got red in the face and abusive, while I remained cool and exasperating. I was getting even with Jimmie for everything since Paris.

But conceive, if you can, my utter humiliation when, upon arriving at the hotel, I discovered that the box contained, not Maximilian, but my dear King Arthur, and that Jimmie had bought it for me!

I really cried.

"Jimmie," I said in a meek and lowly voice, "you are an angel—a bright, beautiful, golden angel, and from now on, I'll call this a replica,—when I'm talking to a wayfaring man. And I'll never, never fight with you again!"

"Then gimme back that bronze man!" declared Jimmie. "If you give up the battlefield I'll start home to-morrow!" Which shows you where I got encouragement to be "ungentlemanly," as Jimmie calls me.

Innsbruck is the capital of Tyrol, and the whole country of Tyrol is like a picture-book. Its history is so stirring, its country so beautiful, its people are so picturesque. There are any number of dainty little lakes lying in among its mountains, which are accessible to the tourist, and therefore semi-public, by which I mean not as public as the Swiss or Italian lakes. But up the Inn River a few miles, and completely hidden from the tourist, being out of the way and little known to Americans, there lies the most lovely lake of all, the Achensee, and all around it the Tyrolese peasants, as they ought to be allowed to remain, simple, primitive, natural. We wanted to see them dance. So regardless of whether an iron bound itinerary would take us there next, we folded away our maps, put our trust in our little yellow coupon ticket book, and started for the Achensee. From the moment we began to see less of tourists and more of the natives, Jimmie's and my spirits rose. Chiffon and patent leather might belong to Bee and Mrs. Jimmie, but here in the Austrian Tyrol, Jimmie and I were getting our innings.

We got off the train at Jenbach and left our trunks there. Then on the same platform, but behind it, and a few yards beyond the station, there is a curious little hunchbacked engine and an open car. Into this car we climbed with our handbags, and beheld on the same seat with Mrs. Jimmie a beautiful woman in a gown unmistakably from Paris, who looked so familiar that we could scarcely keep from staring her out of countenance. Finally Bee leaned across and whispered:

"Don't look, but isn't that Madame Carreno?"

Without heeding Bee's polite warning, I turned and pounced upon my idol.

"Madame Carreno!"

"My dear child!"

"What in the world are you doing here?"

"Why I live here! And you? How came you to find your way to this inaccessible spot?"

"We are going to the Achensee—to the Hotel Rhiner, to hear Fraeulein Therese—"

"You have heard of my little friend Therese, and you have come—how many thousand miles?—to hear her sing and play on her zither?"

"To do all that, but mostly to see if she will tell me her love story."

"How do you know she had one?" inquired Madame Carreno, quickly.

"I heard of it in England. Some one who knew the duke told me."

"It was a lucky escape for her, and I think she will tell you all about it. You see it happened, ah, so many years ago."

To my mind, Madame Carreno is the most wonderful genius of modern times at the piano. I have heard all the others scores of times, so don't argue with me. You may all worship whom you will, but the whole musical part of my heart is at Madame Carreno's feet, with a small corner saved for Vladimir de Pachmann, when he plays Chopin. She claims to be an American, but she plays with a heart of a Slav, and as one whose untamed spirit can never be held in leash even by her music. Her playing is so intoxicating that it goes through my veins like wine. The last time I heard her play was in an enormous hall in the West, when her audience was composed of music lovers of every class and description. Just back of me was a woman whose whole soul seemed to respond to Carreno's hypnotic genius. Carreno had just finished Liszt's "Rhapsodic Hongroise" No. 2, and had followed it up with a mad Tschaikowsky fragment. I was so excited I was on the verge of tears when I heard the woman behind me catch her breath with a sob and exclaim:

"My Lord! Ain't she got vinegar!"

I repeated this to Madame Carreno at Jenbach, and she seized my hands and shouted with laughter. Such a grip as she has! Her hands are filled with steel wires instead of muscles, and her arms have the strength of an athlete in training.

The car propelled by the hunchbacked engine grated and bumped its way over its cog-wheel road, pushing its delighted quota of passengers higher and higher into the mountains. The Inn valley fell away from our view, and wooded slopes, fir-trees, patches of snow on far hillsides, and tiny hamlets took its place.

"Here and there among these little villages live my summer pupils," said Madame Carreno. "I have six. One from San Francisco, one from Australia, one from Paris, one from Geneva, and two from Russia—all young girls, and with such talent! They live all the way from Jenbach to the Achensee, and come to see me once a week."

The train stopped with a final squeal of the chain, and a lurch which loosened our joints.

Before us spread a sheet of water of such a blueness, such a limpid, clear, deep sapphire blue as I never saw in water before.

Around it rose the hills of Tyrol, guarding it like sentinels.

It was the Achensee!



CHAPTER VII

DANCING IN THE AUSTRIAN TYROL

Jimmie is such a curious mixture that it is really very much worth while to study his emotions. I think perhaps that even I, who find it so hard to discover either man, woman, child, or dog whom I would designate as "typically American," am forced to admit that Jimmie's mental make-up is perfect as a certain type of the American business man, travelling extensively in Europe. The real bread of life to Jimmie is the New York Stock Exchange; but being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he brought his fine steel-wire will to bear upon his recreation with as much nervous force as he ever expended in a deal in Third Avenue or Union Pacific.

Hence he travels nervously yet deliberately, and views Europe from the point of view of the American stock market, scoffing at my enthusiasm, ironical of Bee's most cherished preferences, patient with his wife's serious love of society, and chivalrously tolerant, as only the American man can be, of the prejudices of his travelling family.

I notice that he is taking on a certain amount of true culture. He is broadening. Jimmie is beginning to let his emotions out; however, very gradually, with a firm, nervous hand on the throttle-valve, with the sensitive American's fear of ridicule as his steam-gauge.

I watched Jimmie as he first saw the Achensee. The colour came into his face, his eyes brightened, and he clenched his hands—a sure sign of feeling in Jimmie.

There was a little white steamboat at the pier. The lake spread out before us was of the colour which you see when you look down into the depths of some fine unmounted sapphire at Tiffany's. The pebbles on the beach under the water looked as if they were in a basin of blueing. I reached in to take one out, and thoroughly expected to find my hand stained when I withdrew it. Around the lake arose little hills of the same beauty and verdure as our Berkshires, with the exception that these hills possessed a certain purplish, bluish haze with a gray mist over them, which gave to their colouring the same softness that a woman imparts to her complexion when she wears white chiffon under a black lace veil.

I cannot understand what makes the Achensee so blue and the Koenigsee so green. Chemically analysed, the waters are almost identical, and the verdure surrounding them is very similar, and yet the Koenigsee is as green as the Achensee is blue.

A little steamer took us around the edge of the lake, where at the first landing-place Madame Carreno left us. We could only see the roof of her cottage in the grove of trees.

There is a new hotel somewhere along the lake; but we left that, with its modern equipments and electric lights, and went where we had been directed—to the Hotel Rhiner. Fraeulein Therese met us at the landing. Alas! she was no longer the beauty of her love story of thirty years before. She was ample. Her short hair curled like a boy's, as without a hat she stood under a green umbrella, to welcome her guests. She had large feet, large hips, a large waist, and large lungs; but as she took our hands in the friendliest of greetings, and beamed on us from her full-moon face, we felt how delightful it was to get home once more.

The Hotel Rhiner is severely plain,—almost unfurnished,—and its appointments are primitive in the extreme. There was no carpet upon the floor of our rooms. Two little single beds stood side by side. A single candle was supposed to furnish light, and the wash-bowl was about the size of your hand. Yet everything was exquisitely clean, and from the windows of our corner room stretched away the blue Achensee and the mountains of the Tyrol, making a view which made you forget that the sheets were damp, and that the chairs were uncushioned.

Physically, I am sure that I was never more uncomfortable than I was at the Hotel Rhiner. The bed squeaked; the mattress, I think, was filled with corn-shucks, the hard part of which had an ungentle way of assailing you when you least expected it. Yet, if now were given to me the choice of going back to the Elysee Palace in Paris, or the Hotel Rhiner on the Achensee, it would not take me two seconds to start for the corn-shucks.

A rosy-cheeked, amply proportioned maid, named Rosa, dressed in the picturesque costume of the Tyrolese peasants, installed us in our rooms and advised us to row upon the lake and see the sunset before supper.

Tourists from the other hotels were being landed at our pier from tiny boats, to have their supper at the Hotel Rhiner, for the cooking is famous. Jimmie came and pounded on our door, executing a small war-dance in the corridor when we appeared,

"We've struck our gait," he said, ecstatically, to me. "Virtue is its own reward. This pays us for Baden-Baden and Paris. What do you think? The Rhiner family themselves do the cooking. There are the old mother, Fraeulein Therese, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren who run this house. I have ordered the corner table on the veranda for supper—and such a table! And afterward there is going to be a dance in the kitchen. Fraeulein Therese has promised to play for us on her zither, and there is going to be singing. Now, come along and let's do the sunset stunt."

Bee and Mrs. Jimmie followed us with gentle apprehension, for they are always a little suspicious of anything that Jimmie and I particularly like. Under a long, sloping roof we found several dozen little row-boats, with the "shipmaster," a peasant whose costume might have come out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He launched us, however, and the boat shot out into the lake, with Jimmie and me at the oars, and then we saw a sight that none of us had ever seen before. The air was wonderfully calm and still. The only ripple on the lake was that which was left by our boat as we rowed out to where there was a break in the hills. On the east and west, there the tallest hills fall away from the Achensee and make an undulating line on the horizon. As we reached this break, we stopped rowing, transfixed by the glory of the scene.

The sun was just setting, a great molten mass of flame, splashing down in the crimson clouds, which showed in the aperture between the hills. Little thin wraiths of mist or haze curled up from this molten mass into the rosy sky above, as if the gods on Olympus were mulling claret for a marriage feast. The purple hills curved down on each side in the exact shape of an amethyst punch-bowl, and the radiance of colouring fairly blinded us. On the other hand, the full moon was rising above the eastern hills in a haze of silver, but with a calmness and serene majesty which formed a direct antithesis to the sinking sun she faced.

Lower and lower sank the king, going down out of sight finally in a blaze of splendour which left the western sky aflame with light. In the east higher and higher rose the queen, rising from her silver mists into the clear pale blue of the sky, and sending her white lances gliding across the blue waters of the Achensee, till their tips touched our oars.

We watched it, hushed, breathless, awed. I looked at Jimmie.

"What is it like?" murmured Bee.

And to my surprise, Jimmie answered her from out of the spell this magic scene had caused, saying:

"It is like a glimpse of the splendours of the New Jerusalem."

We had supper that night in the open air of the veranda, where Jimmie had engaged the table. Hedwig, a waitress, whispered into my ear confidentially that we would find the fish delicious, as they were some of those the priests had not needed.

The Tyrol, especially in the vicinity of the Achensee, is absolutely priest-ridden, every one, from the peasants to the gentry, contributing, and the best in the land going into their larders and their coffers.

We were indebted to the overfeeding of these fat priests for a delicacy which was then unknown to me—broiled goose liver with onions. It is a German dish, but a rarity not to be had in even all first-class hotels in Germany and Austria. When you have it, it is announced to the guests personally, with something the same air as if the proprietor should say:

"Madame, the Emperor and his suite will dine at this hotel to-night, at eight."

Goose liver may not sound tempting to some, but as I saw it that night, cooked by the old mother of Fraeulein Therese, a luscious white meat delicately browned and smothered in onions as we smother a steak, and so delicate that it melted in the mouth like an aspic jelly, it was one of the most delicious dishes I ever essayed.

As we were eating our dessert, a gemischtes compote so rich that it nearly sent us to our eternal rest, Fraeulein Therese came and asked us to have our coffee in the kitchen. A long, low-ceiled room, three steps below the level of the ground, with seats against the wall, and a raised platform on each side, with little tables for coffee, adjoined the hotel. This room at one time perhaps had been a real kitchen, where cooking was done. Now it was turned into a place of recreation. Around the walls were seated a variegated, almost motley, array of men and women, from the dear old fat mother of Fraeulein Therese and the three boys, the daughters-in-law, the granddaughters, to a picturesque old man, whose coal-black beard fell almost to his waist, our friend the "shipmaster," and the band of four musicians, all dressed in the Tyrolese costume, with the exception of the women of the Rhiner family.

Some thirty years ago the father Rhiner, now dead and gone, the mother, whose voice is still a wonder, Fraeulein Therese, and the three boys journeyed to London to sing before the Queen at her jubilee. This made them famous, and was the beginning of the Fraeulein's love story, which was told me in London by Lady J., a relative of the duke who so nearly wrecked the Fraeulein's life.

By telling the Fraeulein that I knew Lady J., I induced her to repeat the story to me.

"It was in St. Petersburg that I saw him for the second time. He was then the Marquis of B., in the suite of the Prince of Wales, when he went to pay a visit to the Tzar's court. The marquis loved me, as I thought sincerely. I was very young, and I believed him. After he went back to London, he arranged for me to sing in grand opera; they tell me that it was a lie; that I could not have sung in opera; that he only wanted to get me away from my family. They tell me that it was a wise thing, directed by God, that I should drop the letter in which he gave me directions how to meet him, that my sister-in-law should find it, and that my brother should overtake me at the train, and prevent my going. I do not know. I only know that I have always loved him. Even after he became the Duke of M., and married one of your countrywomen, I still loved him. Now he is dead, and I love him still. See, I wear this black ribbon always in his memory. Yet they tell me that he lied to me, and that it was for the best. Well, we are all in God's hands." And she sighed deeply.

She drew her zither toward her, and began to play as I never heard that simple little instrument played before. Then one by one they began to sing. It was amazing how little of the freshness of their voices has been lost during all this time. I never heard such singing. A bass voice which would have graced the Tzar's choir, came booming from the old man with the black beard, as they yodeled and sang and sang and yodeled again, until their little audience went quite wild with delight.

Bee and Mrs. Jimmie were beginning to forgive us. Jimmie dashed over to Fraeulein Therese, at Bee's request, to ask who the old man was.

"It's the cowherd," he announced, with his evil-minded simplicity, and seemed to obtain a huge interior enjoyment from the way Bee pushed her chair back out of range, and looked disgusted.

Presently came Rosa, the chambermaid, and Hedwig, the waitress, and a dozen young men from the neighbouring hamlet, and began to dance the "schuplattle." I have seen this wonderful dance performed on the stage and in other Tyrolese villages, but never have I seen it danced with the abandonment of those young peasants in that little kitchen on the Achensee. They were all beautiful dancers. The young "shipmaster" seized our pretty Rosa around the waist, and they began to waltz. Suddenly, without a moment's warning, they fell apart, with a yell from the boy which curdled the blood in our veins. Rosa continued waltzing alone, with her hands on her hips, while her partner did a series of cart-wheels around the room, bringing up just in front of her, and waltzing with her again without either of them losing a step. Then he lifted her hands by the finger tips high above her head, and they writhed their bodies in and out under this arch, he occasionally stooping to snatch a kiss, and all the time their feet waltzing in perfect time to the music. Suddenly, with another yell, he leaped into the air, and, with Rosa waltzing demurely in front of him, began the fantastic part of the schuplattle, which consists, as Jimmie says, "of making tambourines all over yourself, spanking yourself on the arms, thighs, legs, and soles of your feet, and the crown of your head, and winding up by boxing your partner's ears or kissing her, just as you feel inclined."

I never saw anything like it. I never heard anything like it. It was so exhilarating it aroused even the cowherd's enthusiasm, so that he came and did a turn with Fraeulein Therese.

Then more of the peasants joined in the schuplattle, and in a moment the kitchen was a mass of flying feet, waving arms, leaping, shouting men and laughing girls, the dance growing wilder and wilder, until, with a final yell that split the ears of the groundlings, the music stopped, and the dancers sank breathless into their seats. The excitement was contagious. One after another got up and danced singly, each attempting to outdo the other.

The other guests, who had seen this before, by this time had finished their coffee and left. Our little party remained. The Fraeulein Therese came over to our table, saying that the "shipmaster" would like very much to dance with me. I don't blush often, but I actually felt my whole face blaze at the proposition. I protested that I couldn't, and wouldn't; that I should die of fright if he yelled in my ear, and that he would split my sleeves out if he tried "London bridge" with me. She urged, and Jimmie urged, and Bee and Mrs. Jimmie joined. So finally I did, the Fraeulein having warned him that I would simply consent to waltz, with nothing else. They never reverse, the music was fast and furious, and the room was as hot as a desert at midday. After I had gone around that room twice with the "shipmaster," he whirled me to my seat, and for fully five minutes the room, the musicians, and the tables continued the waltz that I had left off. It makes me dizzy to think of it even now.

When I got my sight back, I looked apprehensively at Bee, to see if I had gone beyond the limit which her own perfectly ladylike manner always sets for me; but to my surprise her foot was tapping the floor, and there was a gleam in her eyes which told the mischievous Jimmie that the music was getting into Bee's blood. Jimmie wrenched my little finger under the table and whispered:

"For two cents, Bee would do the skirt dance!"

"Ask her," I whispered back.

He jogged her elbow and said:

"Give 'um the skirt dance, Bee. You could knock 'um all silly with the way you dance."

Bee needed no urging. It was quite evident she had made up her mind to do it before we asked. She arose with a look of determination in her eyes, which would have carried her through a murder. When Bee makes up her mind to do a thing, she'll put it through, good or bad, determined and remorseless, from giving a dinner to the poor to robbing a grave, and nobody can stop her, or laugh her out of it any more than you can persuade her to do it, if she doesn't want to. Nobody is responsible for Bee's acts but herself. Therefore, I recall that scene with a peculiar and exquisite joy which the truly good never feel.

Bee's travelling-skirt was tailor-made, tight at the belt, and of ample fulness around the bottom. She had on a shirt-waist, a linen collar, the Charvet tie, a black hat with a few gay coloured flowers on it, and a lace petticoat from the Rue de la Paix. At the first strains of the skirt dance from the delighted band Bee seized her skirts firmly and began the dance which is so familiar to us, but which those Tyrolese peasants had never seen before. Jimmie says he would rather see Bee do the skirt dance than any professional he ever saw on any stage. He says that her kicks are such poems that he forgives her everything when he thinks of them, but when she danced that night, Jimmie was so tickled by the excitement and polite interest she created in her primitive audience, that he stretched himself out on the bench in such shrieks of laughter that even Bee grinned at him, while I simply passed away. She sat down, flushed, breathless, but triumphant.

Instantly she was surrounded by every young fellow in the room, imploring her to dance with him, and at once Bee became the belle of the ball. And, if you will believe it, when Mrs. Jimmie and I went outside to get a breath of air, Bee, the ladylike; Bee, the conservative; haughty, intolerant Bee, was dancing with the cowherd!



CHAPTER VIII

SALZBURG

We had our breakfast the next morning on the same piazza where we had dined and where the early morning sun gave an entirely new aspect to the eternal blueness of the Achensee. Oh, you who have seen only Italian lakes, think not that you know blue when you see it, until you have seen the Achensee!

"If you would only get back into yourself," said Jimmie, addressing my absent spirit, "you might help me decide where we shall go next."

"I can't leave here," I replied. "I cannot tear myself away from this spot."

"It is beautiful," murmured Bee, dreamily, but she murmured dreamily not so much because of the beauty of the scene as because eating in the open air that early in the morning always makes her sleepy.

"'Tis not that," I responded. "'Tis because, while some few modest triumphs have come my way, I think I never achieved one which gave me such acute physical satisfaction as I underwent last night at my sister Bee's success as a premiere danseuse. Shall I ever forget it? Shall danger, or sickness, or poverty, or disaster ever blot from my mind that scene? Jimmie, never again can she scorn us for our sawdust-ring proclivities, for do you know, I shouldn't be surprised to see her end her days on the trapeze!"

But if I fondly hoped to make Bee waver in her thorough approval of her own acts, this cheerful exchange of badinage, where the exchange was all on my part, undeceived me, for Bee simply looked at me without replying, so Jimmie uncoiled himself and handed the map to Bee.

"Jimmie has talked nothing but salt mines for a fortnight," said Bee, finally, "yet by coming here we have left Salzburg behind us."

"Let's go back then," he said. "It isn't far, and it's all through a beautiful country."

For a wonder, we all agreed to this plan without the usual discussion of individual tastes which usually follows the most tentative suggestion on the part of any one of us who has the temerity to leap into the arena to be worried.

The whole Rhiner family, including the chambermaid, the shipmaster, and Bee's friend the cowherd, were on the little pier, under some pretext or other, to see us off, and not only feeling but knowing that we left real friends behind us, we started on our way to Jenbach, down the same little cog-wheel road up which we had climbed, and, as Jimmie said: "literally getting back to earth again," for the descent was like being dropped from the clouds.

The journey from Jenbach to Salzburg was indeed marvellously beautiful, but some little time before we arrived Jimmie emerged from his guide-book to say, somewhat timidly:

"Are you tired of lakes?"

"Tired of lakes? How could we be when we've only seen one this week?"

"And that the most exquisite spot we have found this summer!"

"Certainly we are not tired of the beautiful things!"

From this avalanche of replies Jimmie gathered an idea of our attitude.

"Thank you!" he said, politely. "I think I understand. Would you consent to turn aside to see the Koenigsee, another small lake which belongs more to the natives than to the tourists?"

For reply, we simply rose in concert. Mrs. Jimmie drew on her gloves and Bee pulled down her veil.

"When do we get off, Jimmie?"

"In ten minutes," he said with a delighted grin. And in another ten minutes we were off, and Salzburg was removed another twenty-four hours from us.

But after the Achensee, the Koenigsee was something of an anticlimax, although the natives were perfectly satisfactory, and not an English word was spoken outside of our party. But as Jimmie speaks German-American, we got what we wanted in the way of a boat, and found that the Koenigsee is quite as green as the Achensee is blue. At least it was the day we were there. The tiny Tyrolese lad who went with us as guide, told us that it was sometimes as blue as the sky. But the black shadows cast upon its waters by the steep cliffs which rise sheerly from its sides, give back their darkness to the depths of the lake, and for the scene of a picturesque murder it would be perfect. There is a magnificent echo around certain parts of the Koenigsee, and swans sailing majestically on the breast of the lake remind one of the Lohengrin country.

We rested that night at a dear little inn and the next morning took up our interrupted journey to Salzburg.

On the way Jimmie talked salt mines to us until, when we arrived at Salzburg, we imagined the whole town must be given up to them. But to our surprise, and no less to our delight, we found Salzburg not only one of the most picturesque towns we had met with, but interesting and highly satisfactory, while the salt mines are not at Salzburg at all, but half a day's drive away. Salzburg satisfied the entire emotional gamut of our diversified and centrifugal party. It had mountains for Jimmie, the rushing, roaring, picturesque little river Salzach for me, the Residenz-Schloss, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany lives part of his time, for Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, and the glorious views from every direction for all of us. Here, also, Bee found her restaurants, with bands, situated more delightfully than any we had found before.

Hills bound the town on two sides—thickly wooded, with ravishing shades of green, to the side of which a schloss, or convent, or perhaps only a terraced restaurant, clings like a swallow's nest. All the bridle-paths, walks, and drives around Salzburg lead somewhere. You may be quite certain that no matter what road you follow you will find your diligence rewarded.

There is one curious restaurant where we went for our first dinner, because two rival singing societies were to furnish the programme. It is reached by an enormous elevator which takes you up some two hundred feet, where there spreads before you a series of terraces, each with tables and diners, and above all the band-stand. Here were the singers singing quite abominably out of key, but with great vigour and earnestness, and always applauded to the echo, but getting quite a little overcome by their exhilaration later in the evening. Then there is the fortress protecting the town, the Nonnberg, the cloisters in whose church are the oldest in Germany, and they won't let you in to see them at any price. This of itself is an attraction, for as a rule there is no spot so sacred, so old, or so queer in all Europe that you can't buy admission to it. But when I found the cloisters of the Convent Church closed to the gaping public, I thanked God and took courage. We found another spot in Salzburg where they allow only men to enter, but as we found plenty of those in Turkey, we paid no particular attention to the Franciscan Monastery for barring women, except that we had some curiosity to hear the performance which is given daily on the pansymphonicon, a queer instrument invented by one of the monks. Jimmie, of course, came out fairly bursting with unnecessary pride, and to this day pretends that you have lived only half your life if you haven't heard the pansymphonicon. We gave him little satisfaction by asking no questions and yawning or asking what time it was every time he tried to whet our curiosity by vague references and half descriptions of it. Jimmie is a frightful liar, and would sacrifice his hope of heaven to torture us successfully for half a day. I don't believe one word of all he has said or hinted or drawn or sung about that thing, and yet, I would give everything I possess, and all Bee's good clothes, and all Mrs. Jimmie's jewels, if I could hear and see the pansymphonicon just once!

One of the most romantic things we did was to take the little railway leading to the top of the Gaisberg, where we spent the night at the little Hotel Gaisbergspilze, and saw Salzburg lying beneath us, twinkling with lights, and making a sight to be remembered for ever. Tucked in among the Salzburg Alps you can see seven little lakes, and the colouring, the dark shadows, and fleecy belts of clouds make it a ravishing view, and full of a tender, poetic melancholy. Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie sat very close together, and renewed the days of their courting, but poor Bee and I held each other's hands and felt lonely.

The romance of the situation drove me to poetry, and reduced Bee to the submission of listening to it—for a short time. Trust me! I know how far to trespass on my sister's patience! But when I said, mournfully:

"Never the time and place And the loved one all together,"

Bee nodded a plaintive acquiescence.

In the morning, we almost saw the sun rise, but not quite. Aigen, the chateau of Prince Schwarzenberg, was more cheerful; so was Mozart's statue and his Geburthaus. I didn't know that Mozart was born in Salzburg, but he was. There is something actually furtive about the way certain facts have a habit of existing and I not learning of them until everybody else has forgotten them.

We decided to make the excursion to the salt mine on Monday, and on the Sunday Jimmie arranged for us to visit the Imperial chateau of Helbrun, built in the seventeenth century, and promising us several new features of amusement and interest not generally to be met with. Our hotel being a very smart one, filled with Americans, we naturally had on rather good frocks, for it was Sunday, and we were to drive instead of taking the train. We had all been to the church in the morning, and felt at liberty to escape from the gossip of the piazzas, and to amuse ourselves in this decorous way.

Now, Jimmie is thoroughly ashamed of himself, and would give anything if I would not tell this, but I have recently suffered an attack of pansymphonicon, and this is my revenge.

I noticed something suspicious in Jimmie's childlike innocence and elaborate amiability during our drive. If Jimmie is business-like and somewhat indifferent, he is behaving himself. If he is officiously attentive to our comfort, and his countenance is frank and open, look out for him. I hate practical jokes, and on that Sunday I almost hated Jimmie.

We drove first into a great yard surrounded by high trees. The horses were immediately taken from our carriage, as if our stay was to be a long one. Then we made our way through the gates into what appeared to be a lovely garden or park with gravelled walks, flowering shrubs, and large shade trees. There were any number of pleasure seekers there besides ourselves. Father, mother, and six or seven children in one party, with the air of cheerfulness and light-heartedness—an air of those who have no burdens to carry, and no bills to pay, which characterises the Continental middle class on its Sunday outing. It was impossible to escape them, for their cheerful interest in our clothes, their friendly smiling countenances robbed their attendance of all impertinence. Thus, somewhat of their company, although not strictly belonging to it, we went to the Steinerne Theatre, hewn in the rock, where pastorals and operas were at one time performed under the direction of the prince-bishops.

Then, in front of the Mechanical Theatre, there is a flight of great stone steps and balustrades of granite upon which, in company with our German friends, we hung and climbed and stood, while the most ingenious little play was performed by tiny puppets that I ever had the good fortune to behold. Over and over again the midgets went through every performance of mechanicism with such precision and accuracy that it took me back to the first mechanical toy I ever possessed. This little mechanical theatre is really a wonder.

I have never been sure how seriously to blame Jimmie for what followed. At any rate, he knew something of the trick, and I have a distant recollection of the gleam in his eyes when he led his unsuspecting party along the gravel walk to the side of a certain granite building, whose function I have forgotten. I remember standing there and looking up the stone steps at our German friends, when suddenly out from behind the stones of this building, from the cornice, from above and from beneath, shot jets of water, drenching me and all others who were back of me, and sending us forward in a mad rush to gain the top of those stone steps, and so to safety. A stout German frau, weighing something between three and four hundred pounds, trod on the train of my gown, and the gathers gave way at the belt with that horrid ripping noise which every woman has heard at some time of her life. It generally means a man. It makes no difference, however; man or woman, the result is the same. As I could not shake her off, and we were both bound for the same place, she continued walking up my back, and in this manner we gained the top of the steps and the gravelled walk, only to find that thin streams of water from subterranean fountains were shooting up through the gravel, making it useless to try to escape. It was all over in a minute, but in the meantime we were drenched within and without and in such a fury that I for one am not recovered from it. It seems that this is one of the practical jokes of which the German mind is capable. Practical jokes seem to me worse than, and on the order of, calamities. Unfortunately Mrs. Jimmie was the wettest of any of us. She had on better clothes than Bee or I, and she refused to run, and she got soaking wet. I really pity Jimmie as I look back on it.

The visit to the salt mine we had planned for the next day. It was necessarily put off. Two of us were not on speaking terms with Jimmie,—Bee and I,—while Mrs. Jimmie, from driving back to the hotel in her wet clothes, had a slight attack of her strange trouble, croup. Poor dear Mrs. Jimmie! However, Jimmie's repentance was so deep and sincere, he was so thoroughly scared by the extent of the calamity, so deeply sorry for our ruined clothes, apart from his anxiety over his wife, that we finally forgave him and took him into our favour again, to escape his remorseful attentions to us. So one day late, but on a better day, we took a fine large carriage, having previously tested the springs, and started for the salt mines. A description of that drive is almost impossible. To be sure, it was hot, dusty, and long. Before we got to the first wayside inn we were ravenous, and Jimmie's thirst could be indicated only by capital letters. But winding in and out among farmhouses with flower gardens of hollyhocks, poppies, and roses; passing now a wayside shrine with the crucifixion exploited in heroic size; houses and barns and stables all under one roof; and now curiously painted doors peculiar to Bavarian houses; the country inns with their wooden benches and deal tables spread under the shade of the trees; parties of pedestrians, members of Alpine clubs, taking their vacations by tramping through this wonderful district; the sloping hills over and around which the road winds; the blues and greens and shadows of the more distant mountains, all combine to make this road from Salzburg to the salt mines one of the most interesting to be found in all Germany.

Never did small cheese sandwiches and little German sausages taste so delicious as at our first stop on our way to the salt mines. Jimmie said never was anything to drink so long in coming. Near us sat eight members of a Mannerchor, whose first act was to unsling a long curved horn capable of holding a gallon. This was filled with beer, and formed a loving-cup. Afterward, at the request of the landlord, and evidently to their great gratification, these men regaled us with songs, all sung with exceeding great earnestness, little regard to tune, and great carelessness as to pitch; but, if one may judge from their smiling and streaming countenances, the music had proved perfectly satisfactory to the singers themselves. Another drive, and soon we were at the mouth of the salt mine. We had learned previously that the better way would be to go as a private party and pay a small fee, as otherwise we would find ourselves in as great a crowd as on a free day at a museum. If I remember rightly, four o'clock marks the free hour. It had commenced to rain a little,—a fine, thin mountain shower,—but the carriage was closed up, the horses led away to be rested, and we three women pushed our way through the crowd of summer tourists waiting for the free hour to strike in the courtyard, and found ourselves in a room in which women were being arrayed in the salt mine costume. This costume is so absurd that it requires a specific description.

Two or three motherly-looking German attendants gave us instructions. Our costumes consisted of white duck trousers, clean, but still damp from recent washing, a thick leather apron, a short duck blouse, something like those worn by bakers, and a cap. The trousers, being all the same size and same length, came to Bee's ankles, were knickerbockers for me and tights for Mrs. Jimmie.

European travel hardens one to many of the hitherto essential delicacies of refinement, which, however, the American instantly resumes upon landing upon the New York pier; it being, I think, simply the instinct of "when in Rome do as the Romans do," which compels us to pretend that we do not object to things which, nevertheless, are never-ending shocks. I have seldom undergone anything more difficult than the walk in broad daylight, across that courtyard to the mouth of the salt mine. We were borne up by the fact that perhaps one hundred other women were similarly attired, and that both men and women looked upon it as a huge joke and nothing more. One rather incomprehensible thing struck us as we left the attiring-room. This was the use of the leather apron. The attendant switched it around in the back and tied it firmly in place, and when we demanded to know the reason, she said, in German, "It is for the swift descent."

Jimmie was similarly arrayed when he met us at the door, but he seemed to know no more about it than we did. At the mouth of the salt mine we were met by our conductor, who took us along a dark passage, where all the lights furnished were those from the covered candles fastened to our belts, something on the order of the miner's lamp.

Further and further into the blackness we went, our shoes grinding into the coarse salt mixed with dirt, and the dampness smelling like the spray from the sea. Presently we came to the mouth of something that evidently led down somewhere. Blindly following our guide who sat astride of a pole, Jimmie planted himself beside him, astride of the guide's back; Mrs. Jimmie, after having absolutely refused, was finally persuaded to place herself behind Jimmie, then came Bee, and last of all myself.

Our German is not fluent, nevertheless we asked many questions of the guide, whose only instructions were to hold on tight. He then asked us if we were ready.

"Ready for what?" we said.

"For the swift descent," he answered.

"The descent into what?" said Jimmie.

But at that, and as if disdaining our ignorance, we suddenly began to shoot downward with fearful rapidity on nothing at all. All at once the high polish on the leather aprons was explained to me. We were not on any toboggan; we formed one ourselves.

When we arrived they said we had descended three hundred feet. But we women had done nothing but emit piercing shrieks the entire way, and it might have been three hundred feet or three hundred miles, for all we knew. After our fierce refusal to start and our horrible screams during the descent, Jimmie's disgust was something unspeakable when we instantly said we wished we could do it again. Our guide, however, being matter of fact, and utterly without imagination, was as indifferent to our appreciation as he had been to our screams.

He unmoored a boat, and we were rowed across a subterranean lake which was nothing more or less than liquid salt. We were in an enormous cavern, lighted only by candles here and there on the banks of the lake. The walls glittered fitfully with the crystals of salt, and there was not a sound except the dipping of the oars into the dark water.

Arriving at the other side, we continued to go down corridor after corridor, sometimes descending, sometimes mounting flights of steps, always seeing nothing but salt—salt—salt.

In one place, artificially lighted, there are exhibited all the curious formations of salt, with their beautiful crystals and varied colours. It takes about an hour to explore the mine, and then comes what to us was the pleasantest part of all. There is a tiny narrow gauge road, possibly not over eighteen inches broad, upon which are eight-seated, little open cars. It seems that, in spite of sometimes descending, we had, after all, been ascending most of the time, for these cars descend of their own momentum from the highest point of the salt mine to its mouth. The roar of that little car, the occasional parties of pedestrians we passed, crowded into cavities in the salty walls (for the free hour had struck), who shouted to us a friendly good luck, the salt wind whistling past our ears and blowing out our lanterns, made of that final ride one of the most exhilarating that we ever took.

But, of course, from now on in describing rides we must always except "the swift descent."



CHAPTER IX

ISCHL

We were wondering where we should go next with the delicious idle wonder of those who drop off the train at a moment's notice if a fellow passenger vouchsafes an alluring description of a certain village, or if the approach from the car window attracts. Only those who have bound themselves down on a European tour to an itinerary can understand the freedom and delight of idle wanderings such as ours. We never feel compelled to go on even one mile from where we thought for a moment we should like to stop.

It was Jimmie who made this plan possible, without the friction and unnecessary expense which we should have incurred had we followed this plan, and bought tickets from one city to another, but in fussing around information bureaux and railway stations, Jimmie unearthed the information that one can buy circular tickets of a certain route, embodying from one to three months in time, and including all the spice for a picturesque trip of Germany and Austria, where one would naturally like to travel. By purchasing these little books with the tickets in the form of coupons at the railway station we saved the additional fee which the tourist agent usually exacts, and this frugal act so filled us with joy that our trip proved unusually expensive, for at every stop we indulged in a small extravagance which we felt that we could well afford on account of this accidental saving at the start. We have been so amply repaid at every pause on our journey that it has become a matter of pride with Jimmie and me to have no falling off from the standard we had set. Therefore Jimmie came and sat down by me one morning and said:

"Ever hear of Ischl?"

"No," I said, "what is it? But I warn you beforehand that I sha'n't touch it if it's a mixture of sarsaparilla and ginger ale, or lime juice and red ink, or anything like that thing you—"

"It isn't a drink," said Jimmie, in disgust. "It's a town! If people who read your stuff realised how little you know—"

"I am perfectly satisfied," I said, looking at him firmly, "that it isn't twenty minutes since you found what Ischl is yourself. You never learned a thing in your life that you didn't bring it to me as though you had known it for ever, whereas your information is always so fresh that it's still bubbling, and if Kissingen is a town as well as a drink, why shouldn't Ischl be a drink as well as a town?"

My triumphant manner was a little annoying that early in the morning, but as Jimmie really had something to say, my gauntlet lay where I cast it, unnoticed by the adversary.

"Now Ischl," said Jimmie, "is where the Austrian Emperor has his summer residence. It is tucked up in the hills with drives which you would call 'heavenly.' People from all over Austria gather there during the season. There will be royalty for my wife; German officers for Bee; heaps of people for you to stare at, and as for me, I don't need any attraction. I can be perfectly happy where there is no strife and where I can enjoy the delight of a small but interesting family party."

I smiled at this statement, for when Jimmie is not carefully stirring me up for argument or battle, I always feel his pulse to see if he is ill.

"It will probably please Bee and Mrs. Jimmie," I said, doubtfully, "and they have been so good to us at the Achensee and Salzburg, perhaps—"

"That's just what I was thinking," said Jimmie. "You're a good old sort. You're as square as a man."

At this, I positively gurgled with delight, for it is not once in a million—no, not once in ten million years that Jimmie says anything decent about me to my face. I sometimes hear rumours of approving remarks that he makes behind my back, but I never have been able to run any of them to earth.

"If Ischl is a royal country-seat," said Jimmie, "I'll bet you a 'blaue cravatte' for yourself against a 'blaue cravatte' for myself—both to come from Charvet's—that Bee will know all about it."

"You can't bet with me on that because I know I'd lose. I'll bet that they both know all about it. Let's ask them."

"Ever hear of Ischl, Bee?" said Jimmie, as Bee appeared as smartly got up as if she were in New Bond Street.

"Did I ever hear of Ischl?" repeated Bee, in surprise. "Why, certainly. Ischl is where Emperor Franz Josef has his summer home. He is there now with his entire suite, and next Wednesday is his birthday."

"Say 'geburt-day,' Bee," I pleaded. Nobody paid any attention. Jimmie looked meekly at Bee.

"Have you decided on a hotel there?" he asked, ironically. But Bee flinched not.

"There are two good ones—the 'Kaiserin Elisabeth' and the 'Goldenes Kreuz.' It will probably be very crowded, for they always celebrate the Emperor's birthday."

Jimmie and I looked at each other helplessly. She knew all about Ischl, and had intended to steer the whole four of us there, while Jimmie and I had just heard of it, and were planning to give her a nice little surprise!

Jimmie said nothing, but took his hat and went out to telegraph for rooms.

"I'm glad I didn't bet with you, Jimmie," I whispered as he passed me.

It is the merest suspicion of a journey from Salzburg to Ischl, but it consumes several hours, because every inch of the country on both sides of the car is worth looking at. The little train creeps along now at the foot of a mountain, now at the edge of a lake, and it is such a vision of loveliness that even those unfeeling persons who "don't care for scenery" would be roused from their lethargy by the gentle seductiveness of its beauty. Ischl appears when you are least looking for it, tucked in the hollow of a mountain's arm as lovingly as ever a baby was cradled.

Our rooms at the Goldenes Kreuz had a wide balcony where our breakfasts were served, and commanded not only a view of the mountains and valleys, and a rushing stream, but afforded us our only meal where we could get plenty of air.

Our first experience in the general dining-room was a revelation of many things. The room was air-tight. Not a window or door was permitted to be opened the smallest crack. The men smoked all through dinner, and quite a number of women smoked from one to a dozen cigarettes held in all manner of curious cigarette-holders, some of which were only a handle with a ring for the cigarette, something like our opera-glass handles, while others were the more familiar mouthpieces. But all were jewelled and handsome, and the women who used them were all elderly. Two women smoked strong black cigars, but as the smokers were very smart and went in court society, Bee's eyes only grew round and big, and she ventured no word of criticism.

But all this smoke and lack of ventilation made the air very thick and hot and unbreathable for us, so that we complained to the proprietor, who sympathised with us so deeply that he nearly wept, but he assured us that Austrians were even worse than the French in their fear of a draught, and he declared that while he would very willingly open all the windows, and as far as he was concerned, he himself revelled in fresh air,—nevertheless, if he should follow our advice, his hotel would be emptied the next day of all but our one American party.

In vain we reminded him that it was August. Not a window nor a door was opened in that dining-room while we were there.

But we got along very well, for we are not too strenuous in our demands,—especially when we realise that we cannot get them acceded to,—so in lieu of air we breathed smoke, and in watching the people we soon forgot all about it. Air is not essential after all when royalty is present.

If not royalty, at least the next thing to it. The gorgeous and glorious officers of his Majesty's suite, handsome, distinguished, young, and ever near the throne! Bee's eyes were glued to their table. We were afraid the poor dear would never pull through. She scarcely ate any dinner.

"Bee," I whispered, pulling her dress under the table, "you really must not pay them such marked attention. Remember your husband and baby—far away, to be sure, but still there!"

"What difference does it make, I should like to know," was Bee's callous reply. "They can't speak English."

Now of all the irrelevant retorts!

Bee had so evidently capitulated to the whole lot that I stole a few furtive glances myself, and while I was rewarded by some brief interest from their table, and I felt sure that they were talking about us, it seemed to me that the interest of The One, the tallest, handsomest, and the one most suited for a pedestal in Central Park, was overlooking both Bee's and my undeniable attractions, and was concentrating all his fiery, hawk-like glances upon Mrs. Jimmie, whose total unconsciousness of her great beauty is one of her supreme charms. She wore a black lace gown that night with sleeves which came not quite to her elbow; no bracelets to mar those perfect arms, but her hands fairly loaded with rings. She never looks at any other man except Jimmie, and Jimmie thinks that the earth exists simply for her. Poor Jimmie never can express his emotion in proper words, but I have seen his eyes fill with tears of love and pride as he whispered to me, "Isn't she ripping to-night?"

She certainly was "ripping" that first night at Ischl—far more ripping than any titled dame there, upon whose mature ugliness all her calm attention was bestowed, while I was on the verge of collapse when I saw that Bee's love was like to go unrequited, while Mrs. Jimmie's rings and beauty—I name her attractions in their proper order as far as I was able to gather from the enamoured officer's glances—snatched the prize.

The situation as it bade fair to develop was far, far too sacred to permit of ribald speech, so with the greatest difficulty I held my tongue. For my only natural confidant, Jimmie, was plainly disqualified in this case.

The next morning Jimmie wanted us to drive, but I, hoping to give matters an onward fillip, spoke so warmly in favour of a morning stroll in the promenade "to see people" that he gave in, and Bee's attentions to me while garbing ourselves were so marked that I almost hoped I had been wrong the night before.

But alas for our ignorance of officers' duties! Not one of those in his Majesty's suite was visible, although all the old ladies were out in force, and some very pretty Austrian girls appeared, smartly gowned, and most of them carrying slender little gold or silver mounted sticks. Those sticks caught Bee's eye at once, and she bought one before the hour was over, much to Jimmie's disgust.

But his expostulations produced no effect. It seemed queer to me—her sister—that he should waste his breath. But Jimmie was obliged to relieve his mind by saying that it looked too pronounced.

"It's all right for an Austrian," said Jimmie, wagging his head. "But everybody knows you are an American, and it doesn't look right."

"Doesn't it go with my costume, Jimmie?" demanded Bee. "Look me over! Doesn't it match?"

Alas for Jimmie! It did match. Bee's carrying it simply looked saucy, not loud. I couldn't have carried it—I should have tripped over it, and fallen down. Mrs. Jimmie would have dropped or broken it. Bee and that stick simply fitted each other—there in Ischl! Nowhere else.

At luncheon, just as we were going out, the four officers came in. We passed them in the doorway. Bee looked desperate. They lined up to allow us to pass, and for a moment I thought Bee was going to snatch one, and make her escape. But she compromised, on seeing them seat themselves at the table we had just left, by sending Jimmie back to look for her handkerchief.

"If that doesn't fetch an acquaintance," Bee's look seemed to say, "with Jimmie burrowing around on the floor among their boots and spurs, I shall have but a poor opinion of Austrian ingenuity."

Jimmie was gone half an hour. When he came back, his face was too innocent. He seated himself quietly, and after saying, "It wasn't there, Bee," he went on smoking placidly.

Now, any one who knows anything about anything, cannot fail to admit that my sister ought either to be at the head of Tammany Hall or the army. She gave one look at Jimmie's suspiciously bland countenance, then gathered up her gloves, her veil and stick, and went slowly up-stairs, apparently in a brown study.

Jimmie is clever, but he is no match for a clever woman. No man is, for that matter.

The moment she was out of sight, he began to chuckle.

"Great Scott," he whispered, bringing our three heads together by a gesture. "If Bee knew that all those officers we just passed went right in, and sat down at the very table we left, so that when she sent me for her handkerchief I had to run bang into them, I wonder if she would have gone up-stairs so calmly!"

"Why didn't you tell her?" I cried.

"I was going to—after I had got her curiosity up a little. They were very polite, and nothing would do but I must sit down, and have a glass of beer with them. I didn't want that, so I took a cigar, and they all nearly fell over themselves to offer me one—from the most beautiful cigar cases you ever saw. That tall chap with the eyes had one of gold, with the Tzar's face done in enamel, surmounted by the imperial crown in diamonds, and an inscription on the inside showing that the Tzar gave it to him. I took one out of that case for Bee's sake. I'll save her the stub!"

"Did they ask any questions about us?" I said, guilelessly.

"Yes, heaps. And when I told them how devoted my wife was to the Empress Elizabeth they offered to make up a party to show us two of the shrines she built near here, and invited us to dine afterward. So I made it for this afternoon at three. Don't tell Bee. Let's surprise her. Her eyes will pop clear out of her head when she sees them."

Within ten minutes I had told Bee everything I knew, and had even enlarged upon it a little, and Bee, in a holy delight, was preparing to robe herself in costly array. She solemnly promised me to be surprised when she saw them.

Only two of them could leave—The One, whose name shall be Count Andreae von Engel, and the other, Baron Oscar von Furzmann. They had a four-seated carriage for us, while they accompanied us on horseback.

That drive was one of the most romantic episodes which ever came into my prosaic life. To be sure I was not in the romance at all,—neither one of those bottle-green knights had an eye for me—but I was there, and I saw and heard and enjoyed it more than anybody.

Bee, with the craft of a fox, offered to sit riding backward with Jimmie, knowing that she must thus perforce be face to face with the horsemen. But in this she was outwitted by a mere man, but a man skilled in intrigue and court diplomacy. Although the road was narrow and dangerous, twisting over mountains and beside rushing streams, The One, in order to feast his eyes on Mrs. Jimmie, permitted his horse to curvet and caracole as if he were in tourney. Jimmie, while the count was doing it, managed to whisper to me: "Tom Sawyer showing off," but I knew that it was for a second purpose which counted for even more than the first.

I must admit that this Austrian diplomat was very skilful, and managed it in a way to throw the unsuspicious wholly off his guard, for, in order not to make his manoeuvres too marked, he often rode ahead of the carriage, when, by turning in his saddle, he could look back and fling his ardent glances in our direction. They not only overshot me, but glanced as harmlessly off Mrs. Jimmie's arrow-proof armour of complete unconsciousness as if they had hurtled aimlessly over her handsome head.

I was in ecstasies, for Bee's wholesome admiration of her stunning officer and his undeniably unusual horsemanship prevented her from being rendered in any way uncomfortable by his action, for truth to tell, Bee was a target for the roving glances of Baron von Furzmann, but he was so hopelessly the wrong man that she not only was unaware of it then but vehemently disclaimed it when I enlightened her later. Alas and alack! The wrong man is always the wrong man, and never can take the place of the right man, no matter what his country or speech.

It was supremely interesting to talk with men who had known the beautiful Empress well; to whom her living beauty was as familiar as her pictured loveliness was to us. We plied them with countless questions as to her wonderful horsemanship, her daily appearance, her dress, her conversation, and her learning. Their enthusiastic praise of her was genuine and spontaneous.

I was dying to ask minute questions about the Crown Prince's affair, but just enough sense was left in my make-up to know that I must not. They might whisper their gossip to each other who knew all of the truth anyway, but to strangers their loyalty would compel them to suppress not only what they themselves knew but what we knew to be the truth. Both of these officers had known Prince Rudie well; had hunted with him; travelled with him; served with him; had often been at his hunting-lodge Mayerling, where he died, but, when they came to refer to this part of their narrative, they were so visibly embarrassed that we changed the subject to the Princess Stephanie. Here, although they were studiously careful to put nothing into actual words, their manner plainly indicated their contempt and dislike of the heavy Belgian Princess, who was so poor a helpmeet for the graceful and picturesque figure of the Crown Prince of Austria.