Since the cold weather had set in, making the Prater somewhat too chilly for idlers and loungers on foot, the latter foregathered on the Graben. The newspaper writers thronged the public resort, and, in default of genuine particulars of the Congress, retailed their so-called political information and Court stories, as devoid of probability, not to say of truth, as the rest. Outdoor life had assumed such proportions that one might have safely said to one’s friends in the evening, ‘I looked for you on the Graben to-day. I failed to find you, so I left my card.’ The Graben was to the majority of strangers what the Square of St. Mark is to the Venetians. They spent the greater part of their time there. It was a kind of open-air club; everybody received and returned calls there; the life of the capital was practically regulated on that spot; folk appointed to meet there to discuss their future movements, and to organise pleasure parties for the evening. Hence, it would be no exaggeration to say that people lived in common on the Graben, amidst an immense group of ‘loafers,’ idlers, ‘spouters,’ and disputants. There was another kind of store-house for news, epigrams, witty sallies, and satirical observation; a kind of ‘lion’s mouth’ _à la Vénitienne_, less the secret denunciations. Or rather, the place was like the Marforio in Rome, I mean the statue at the foot of which there was a constant flow of criticism both on the governors and on the governed. The second spot was the big room of the ‘Empress of Austria’ tavern, which I have already mentioned. Every day, at the dinner-hour, the place was thronged with illustrious and important personages, anxious to escape from the magnificent but somewhat solemn banquets of the Austrian Court. At a ‘round table’ the occupants vied with each other in challenges--not like those of the ancient knights of King Arthur, but in wit-combats, sarcastic lunges, and epigrams, all of them tempered by the perfect tone of Courts and of the best society. The constant variety of its patrons invested this improvised club with the greatest interest. Among the _habitués_ were the Chevalier de Los Rios, Ypsilanti, Tettenborn, MM. Achille Rouen, Koreff, Danilewski, the Prince Koslowski, Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, the Comte de Witt, Carpani, the poet, ever so many generals, ambassadors, and very often some royal highnesses. Narischkine, the great-chamberlain, came now and again, treating the company to his biting and dreaded sallies. In short, there was a never-failing muster of all that Vienna held within its walls in the way of political, artistic, and social celebrities. The stories told there could have rightly been called the ‘Chronicle of the Congress,’ and even the ‘Chronicles of Europe’; everybody of note, or of erewhile renown, being apparently responsible for his doings and sayings to the jurisdiction of the caustic Areopagus of that tavern.