"Well, it's just around the corner, here." The consul turned him about, and in another minute they walked under an archway into a court-yard, and were met by the portier at the door of his room with an inquiring obeisance. Colonel Kenton started. The cap and the cap-band were the same, and it was to all intents and purposes the same portier who had bowed him away in the morning; but the face was different. On noting this fact Colonel Kenton observed so general a change in the appointments and even architecture of the place that, "Old fellow," he said to the consul, "you've made a little mistake; this isn't the Kaiserin Elisabeth." The consul referred the matter to the portier. Perfectly; that was the Kaiserin Elisabeth. "Well, then," said the colonel, "tell him to have us shown to my room." The portier discovered a certain embarrassment when the colonel's pleasure was made known to him, and ventured something in reply which made the consul smile. "Look here, Kenton," he said, "_you've_ made a little mistake, this time. You're not stopping at the Kaiserin Elisabeth!" "Oh, pshaw! Come now! Don't bring the consular dignity so low as to enter into a practical joke with a hotel porter. It won't do. We got into Vienna this morning at three, and drove straight to the Kaiserin Elisabeth. We had a room and fire, and breakfast about noon. Tell him who I am, and what I say." The consul did so, the portier slowly and respectfully shaking his head at every point. When it came to the name, he turned to his books, and shook his head yet more impressively. Then he took down a letter, spelled its address, and handed it to the colonel; it was his own note to Mrs. Kenton. That quite crushed him. He looked at it in a dull, mechanical way, and nodded his head with compressed lips. Then he scanned the portier, and glanced round once more at the bedevilled architecture. "Well," said he, at last, "there's a mistake somewhere. Unless there are two Kaiserin Elisabeths--. Davis, ask him if there are two Kaiserin Elisabeths." The consul compassionately put the question, received with something like grief by the portier. Impossible! "Then I'm not stopping at either of them," continued the colonel. "So far, so good,--if you want to call it _good_. The question is now, if I'm not stopping at the Kaiserin Elisabeth," he demanded, with sudden heat, and raising his voice, "how the devil did I get there?" The consul at this broke into a fit of laughter so violent that the portier retired a pace or two from these maniacs, and took up a safe position within his doorway. "You didn't--you didn't--get there!" shrieked the consul. "That's what made the whole trouble. You--you meant well, but you got somewhere else." He took out his handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes.