The fair sex especially must regret those changes in our social habits. Ever since the levelling tendency of general civilisation lowered the standard of our feelings, women have lost that ideal empire in which they reigned as sovereigns; they have descended from a throne to be confounded with the crowd. It is not difficult, then, to imagine their interest in the preparations for a fête the object of which was to bring back to the mind, and to revive, as it were, the forms and spirit of the age of chivalry. The Prince de Ligne had presented me with one of the tickets sent to him by the great Marshal Trauttmansdorff. At seven we were on our way together to the Burg. ‘Do not imagine,’ said the prince while we were trundling along, ‘that you are going to witness a combat to the death. It will be neither a _pas d’armes_ [the disputing of a passage by one or several knights], nor, least of all, an appeal to “the judgment of God,” in which the vanquished could only redeem his life by entering a monastery. Those serious contests have been replaced by more graceful and less violent exercises. Our modern redressers of wrongs in their tournaments uphold the incomparable beauty of their lady by the power of their lances in as peaceable a manner as the champions of old defended a thesis at the “Courts of Love.” Hence, we need apprehend no fatal accident like that which put an end to the life of Henri II., and caused the abolition of the lists of the Middle Ages.’ Several officers, under the orders of the grand-master of the ceremonies, the Comte de Wurmbrandt, were ready at the doors to conduct the guests to their seats. General curiosity had reached so high as to lead, it was said, to the forging of tickets, which were sold at an enormous price. In consequence of this the police of Vienna had been compelled to institute the most minute researches. The imperial riding-school, constructed by Charles V., and ever since called the ‘Hall of the Carrousel,’ had been set apart for the function. The structure, the vast interior of which is as spacious as an ordinary church, has the form of a long parallelogram. All around it there runs a circular gallery communicating with the apartments of the palace. Seats for twelve hundred spectators rose in a magnificent sweep of tiers. The gallery was divided into four-and-twenty sections by as many Corinthian columns, against which were hung the scutcheons of the knights with their arms and mottoes. At each end of the vast arena two stands, occupying the whole length of the building, had been erected. They were draped with the most gorgeous textile stuffs; the one set apart for the sovereigns, empresses, queens, and reigning princes; the other, exactly facing it, intended for the ladies of the twenty-four paladins about to prove that they were the fairest among the fair. Above these stands were the orchestras, in which forgathered all that Vienna could boast in the way of distinguished musicians.