Читать книгу The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" or, Life and Adventures in the Orient - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 69

The latter made no resistance, but pulled out his cardcase and demanded the address of his assailant, which was given.

Next day there came a challenge to fight; the Russian wanted satisfaction for the insult he had suffered, and was determined upon a duel. The American was inclined to accommodate him, but his friends interfered, and one of them went to the Russian, with the assurance that the American would have nothing to do with him.

“But I must have satisfaction,” demanded the Russian. “I have been grossly insulted, and must have satisfaction.”

“I don’t see it,” was the American’s reply. “You are even with him and can cry quits. You insulted his wife and he knocked you down. Can anything be more equal than that?”

“But a blow! a blow, is a terrible insult to me, the Count —————, and I must have a duel.

Speaking to a man’s wife is nothing. He had no business to strike me; he could challenge me to fight, but strike me, never!”

“Well, anyhow, it seems he did, and if you were to insult my wife as you did his, I would knock you down too. We do that way in America, and when you insult an American woman you must be treated in American style. My friend shall not fight a duel, and if you go near him you will get knocked down again, or possibly get a revolver-shot through you. Good-day.”

The Russian would not let the matter rest there. He tried to bring it before the Russian Ambassador, and through him, before the United States Minister; and there was a prospect that the affair would cause some trouble. But the American’s friends refused to let him receive a challenge or take any part in the discussion, so that the Russian was forced to the alternative of having his adversary arrested for striking him, or of letting him alone. As arresting him would not heal his wounded honor, he did not do it, and the affair has now, I think, blown over. It is a dangerous business to strike a man in Vienna, and, had the authorities chosen, they could have made things lively for our pugilistic friend. Only physical assaults are held to be an excuse for a blow.

There is a good deal of nonsense afloat about the beauty of the Viennese women. I looked for it, but could not find it. I do not mean to say that there are no handsome women here, as I saw a goodly number of pretty faces, but they are not more numerous than in other cities. I have read about the great beauty of the women, and know several men who have raved about Vienna as the centre of the earth in this respect, but I cannot understand it. Among the women that are seen in public places, such as the music gardens, restaurants, and cafés, there are no more pretty faces than you would see in Berlin or Paris, and the chances are more than even that those you do see are not Viennese.

One evening I was sitting with a newly-arrived friend in the Volks-Garten listening to the music of Strauss’s band. Hundreds of people were walking up and down the gravel promenade, enjoying the cool and delicious air, the bright lights, and above all, the sparkling music of Vienna’s most celebrated composer. Two women passed near us; they were beautiful beyond question, and my friend, who had not yet learned that it is unsafe to say anything in a mixed assemblage, on the supposition that those around will not understand you, remarked audibly: “Those are the prettiest girls I have yet seen in Vienna.”

“Thank you, sir,” said one of them, as the twain passed on and sat down in another part of the garden.

Half an hour later, we were strolling about, and went unnoticed near their table. They were talking English in an accent that showed they were from London, or, at all events, from some part of the Queen’s dominions. Not far from them were two other handsome women, who were talking French with a pure Parisian accent; and near these, again, there were others talking Hungarian.

There is one part of the Volks-Garden where—on Tuesday and Friday evenings—you will find an assemblage of the fashionable men and women of Vienna, the members of the old and wealthy families, who are received at court, and sometimes belong to it, and without whose sanction nobody can be admitted into that charmed circle known as “Society.” I took particular pains to look at this assemblage in a search for beauty, and am obliged to say that I found very little of it. There were some pretty women, but not a conspicuous number; nearly all of them were richly dressed, but in a “louder” style than you expect to find among really fashionable people. New York or Washington society would present a better appearance than would that portion of Viennese society that I saw. And people who lived there told me that I had seen a very good sample of it.

One pleasant afternoon in October, when the sun shed its mellow rays on the grey walls of Vienna, tinging the lofty spire of St. Stephen’s Cathedral with golden light, and burnishing the faded foliage of the venerable trees in the delightful park of Austria’s capital, I hurried to the banks of the beautiful blue Danube, which Strauss has made famous through the music loving world by the dedication of one of his most charming waltzes. My prosaic object, amid so many poetical surroundings, was to take the evening boat to Presburg. After the customary wrangle with the hackman, I passed the gang-plank and stood among plump “fraus” and “frauleins” with keen black eyes, set above rosy cheeks, beneath an abundance of luxuriant hair of raven hue. Austrian peasants were there with coats of coarse cloth like our once famous “butternut” and Hungarian peasants were there with coats of sheep-skin. Languages mingled, as did the speakers, but the Austrian voices were in the majority, quite as much as were the owners thereof. The Austrian is more loquacious than the Hungarian; the latter has a calm dignity about him, reminding one of the Orient, and he is more economic in his use of words—possibly for the reason that it is no easy matter to speak his language even when one is born to it. Immediately below Vienna the Danube runs through a broad plain that offers nothing of special interest, unless it be the spot where in 1809 Napoleon built a bridge by which his army crossed the river on the night of the fourth of July, to fight on the fifth the battle of Wagram, which cost the Austrians twenty-six thousand men and led to the treaty of Vienna in October of the same year. As we look towards the east the horizon is everywhere limited by mountains; and as we approach them we discover a change in the character of the country. The plain disappears and is succeeded by hills. On the first of these, on the right bank, is the picturesque town of Hainburg, with its ruined chateau dating from the middle ages, and also a well built one of more modern days.

If we are smokers we should take a second look at Hainburg, for here is the imperial factory employing two thousand persons in the manufacture of cigars. Tobacco in Austria is a government monopoly; cigars are made by the government and sold to the retail dealers at a discount of five per cent., and this is the only profit allowed. Whether you, as a smoker, buy one cigar, five cigars, five hundred or five thousand, you pay the same price per stuck, and there is no choice as to shops, so far as quality is concerned. Whether you buy in the Graben or the Taberstrasse of Vienna, or in an obscure shop in an obscure village a hundred miles from the capitol, you get the same quality of cigar for five, seven, nine, ten, or twelve kreutzers, in the one place as in the other. All come from one factory, and their goodness or badness never varies.

A little below Hainburg we pass the mouth of the river March, which separates Austria from Hungary. It is not a large stream, barely wide enough at this season of the year to be called a brook, but it is not always thus. The March is sometimes very deep and strong, and it has puzzled many a military commander how to cross it. During the various wars between Austria and Hungary several battles were fought on the banks of this river, some of them of a very sanguinary character. But all is quiet now, and the only demonstration witnessed during our voyage was that some of the Hungarian passengers raised their hats as the boat passed the March, and one of them took the trouble to inform me of the political importance of the locality, saying that he had served in the last war between the kingdom and the empire.

We wind among hills, some of them steep and rugged, and one crowned by a ruined fortress which once guarded the frontier and kept watch over the river. We see the old castle of Presburg, standing out against the evening sky; and it is dusk when we pass the bridge of boats which has been opened for our descent, and the boat swings round to the landing place at the ancient capital of Hungary. No wonder Austria and Hungary were always at each other’s ears when their capitals were only forty miles apart.‘Tis distance lends enchantment and preserves peace and harmony.

Our indefatigable consul at Vienna, General Post, had given me a letter of introduction to the prince of wine-growers at Presburg, Herr Palaguay; and as the Herr kept a hotel in addition to his wine business, the pair of us—an American naval captain and myself—sought that establishment without delay. We ordered dinner as it was late and we were hungry; the excellence of the pheasant, venison, beef, and other good things that were set before us, caused us to eat abundantly and to entertain a good opinion of the edible resources of Hungary. If we lived thus at the gateway what should we not find in traversing the kingdom? If it were only to secure a supply of Hungarian pheasants, Austria would be justified, in the mind of a gourmet, in the subjugation and appropriation of the entire land of Kossuth. What are national rights against a well-supplied dinner table?

We devoted the evening to a visit to the spacious wine cellars of our host. Very spacious they were; and we wandered about for two hours among huge casks, some of them containing three thousand five hundred gallons each, and worthy of being converted into tenement houses. We tasted of Tokay Imperial and Tokay Royal, of Chateau Presburg, Blood of Hungary, and I don’t know what else; and finally we grew weary of tasting and went home. It was from these cellars that the imperial cellar of Maximilian I., the ill-fated Emperor of Mexico, was stocked, and we were shown through the place by the younger Palaguay, who went to Mexico with Maximilian and arranged his wine vaults in the city of the Aztecs. Father and son were warm admirers of the adventurous scion of the House of Hapsburg, and the old gentleman never wearied of telling us about Kaiser Max and his good qualities.