"We'll have him in, so that he can take your note back; but he doesn't expect to be decently treated: they don't, here. You just sit down and write it," said the consul, pushing the colonel into his own chair before his desk; and when the colonel had superscribed his note, he called in the _Lohndiener_,--patient, hat in hand,--and, "Where are you stopping?" he asked the colonel. "Oh, I forgot that. At the Kaiserin Elisabeth. I'll just write it"-- "Never mind; we'll tell him where to take it. See here," added the consul in a serviceable Viennese German of his own construction. "Take this to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, quick;" and as the man looked up in a dull surprise, "Do you hear? The Kaiserin Elisabeth!" "_I_ don't know what it is about that hotel," said the colonel, when the man had meekly bowed himself away, with a hat that swept the ground in honor of a handsome drink-money; "but the mention of it always seems to awaken some sort of reluctance in the minds of the lower classes. Our driver wanted to enter into conversation with me about it this morning at three o'clock, and I had to be pretty short with him. If you don't know the language, it isn't so difficult to be short in German as I've heard. And another curious thing is that Bradshaw says the Kaiserin Elisabeth has a table d'hote, and the head-waiter says she hasn't, and never did have." "Oh, you can't trust anybody in Europe," said the consul sententiously. "I'd leave Bradshaw and the waiter to fight it out among themselves. We'll get back in time to order a dinner; it's always better, and then we can dine alone, and have a good time." "They couldn't keep us from having a good time at a table d'hote, even. But I don't mind." By this time they had got on their hats and coats and sallied forth. They first went to a cafe and had some of that famous Viennese coffee; and then they went to the imperial and municipal arsenals, and viewed those collections of historical bricabrac, including the head of the unhappy Turkish general who was strangled by his sovereign because he failed to take Vienna in 1683. This from familiarity had no longer any effect upon the consul, but it gave Colonel Kenton prolonged pause. "I should have preferred a subordinate position in the sultan's army, I believe," he said. "Why, Davis, what a museum we could have had out of the Army of the Potomac alone, if Lincoln had been as particular as that sultan!"