It is a common belief that only people who are themselves unfortunate can understand the misfortunes of others, and they call that the hard school of suffering. With us it was different: whatever we experienced of deep pity, of warm wishes to help and to better, had its root in the _joy_ which we had in life and life’s beauties. It was in the college of happiness that we had learned that here on earth life may be—in other words, ought to be—glorious and joyous and rich in love. The unfortunate are likelier to get embittered: “other folks may as well have their troubles too,” they think, and they comfort themselves by saying “there is no such thing as happiness anyhow.” We knew better: there is. It is only that not all find it, that very few indeed can find it because so much stupidity blocks the way to it,—these things will not let the happy be at peace. For a little change from our workaday existence in the country we had brief trips to Vienna. There we attended the theater and associated with a few friends, mostly in literary circles. When Carneri was in town we joined the “deputy table” at the Hotel Meissl. We had a very pleasant intercourse with Balduin Groller, then editor of the _Oesterreichische Illustrierte Zeitung_. While still in the Caucasus we had formed an epistolary friendship with him, a friendship which has remained steadfast to this day. Humor and heart are the two qualities which characterize Balduin Groller as a feuilletonist and as a man. This is why in his company one is excellently amused and at the same time is in such a comfortable frame of mind; you laugh at his dry wit and bask in his warm geniality. That he was a handsome, dark-eyed, elegant man, an adept in sports, did not detract from the effect. Moreover, he liked us as well as we liked him, and those evenings when we four—Groller has the dearest little wife—chatted together over our food and wine were most delightful. Often Theodor Herzl joined us. He also sparkled with wit. And that head of his—like an Assyrian king’s! He ought to have been really king of the new Zion, whose awakener he was, and which might perhaps already exist if he had not died so prematurely.