A few days ago I visited Baden. It is charmingly situated in a valley,
only a stone’s throw from Vienna, but one would fancy himself a hundred
miles from a large city.
My keeper has presented me to a number of beautiful ladies. Society here
being so _gemüthlich_, everything that a Frenchman says is accepted as
clever. They consider me uncommonly amiable. I have written sublime
thoughts in their albums. I have made them drawings; in a word, I have
made myself perfectly ridiculous, and it is on account of a sense of
humiliation for having been up to such a trade that I am leaving to-day
for Dresden. I shall stop there but one day, and then go on to Berlin.
After visiting the Museum I shall start for Cologne, where there will be
a letter from you.
Did I tell you that I went to Hungary? I was in Pesth for three days,
and imagined I was in Spain, or rather in Turkey. While there my modesty
was excessively shocked, for I was taken to a public bath, where I saw
the Hungarian men and women helter-skelter in a court-bouillon of hot
mineral water. I noticed there a lovely Hungarian woman who concealed
her face in her hands, not having, like Turkish women, a covering with
which to veil her face. This spectacle cost me six _kreutzer_, namely,
four half-pennies.
I went to the Hungarian theatre to see _La Dame de Saint-Tropez_, not
having wit enough to recognise a French melodrama under the title
_Saint-Tropez à Unôz_. I heard some Bohemian musicians play Hungarian
melodies, which were strange beyond measure. This music sets the natives
mad. It begins with something intensely mournful, and ends in an
_allegro con spirito_, which completely captivates the audience, who
stamp on the floor, break their glasses, and dance on the tables.
Foreigners, however, are not so affected by this marvellous music.
Finally, and I have reserved the best for the last, I have seen a
collection of very old Magyar jewels of exquisite workmanship. If I
could have brought you one of these you would have come to meet me at
Cologne in order to have it the sooner.
During my entire journey I have been unusually well. The weather is
delightful, but cold at night. I have no dread of the cold during my
travels, for I have bought an enormous pelisse that cost me seventy-five
florins. You could find here magnificent furs for nothing. They are, I
think, the only things in this country that are cheap. I have gone
bankrupt on cabs and dinners down town. The custom is here to pay the
servants for one’s dinner: upon leaving you pay the porter; indeed, you
pay at every step, but only a trifle at a time.
Good-bye. I am not any too well pleased with your last letter, except
when you tell me of your approaching return to Paris. Although I am
bringing you no Magyar chains, I hope you will give me a welcome. I am
beginning to long for my own hearthstone, and the evenings seem to me a
little tedious. I expect to reach Cologne in less than a week, and to be
in Paris from the 10th to the 15th.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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