Of the people in Austria the citizens of the Empire knew little. Even the Bavarian, before whose eyes his Danube flowed to Vienna, desired no intercourse with these neighbours; he preferred looking over the mountains to the Tyrol, for the hatred which so readily divides frontier people was there in full force. The Saxon had important trade with the Germans in Northern Bohemia; it mattered little to him what lay beyond; it was a foreign race, in evil repute, from the old war. To other Germans the "Bohemian Mountains" and an unknown land signified the same thing. The nations which dwelt along the Danube, amongst them Czechs, Moravians, Italians, Slovenes, Magyars, and Slovaks, were a vigorous, powerful race, of ancient German blood; the Thirty Years' War had little injured their stately carriage and personal beauty, but their own rulers had estranged them from Germany. By persecution, not only the heretics, but also the activity and culture of those who remained, had been frightened away; but a life of enjoyment and pleasure still pulsated in the great capital. Any one who wished to enjoy himself went there--Hungarians, Bohemians, and nobles from the Empire. Germany lay outside the Vienna world, and they thought little of it. Undoubtedly the ruler of Austria was also the Emperor of Germany. The double eagle hung against all the post-houses in the Empire, and when the Emperor died, according to old custom, the church bells tolled. Any one who sought for armorial bearings, or quarrelled about privileges, went to the Imperial court; otherwise the Empire knew nothing of the Emperor or his supremacy. When the soldiers of the Princes of the Empire came together with the Austrians and Prussians, they were derided as good-for-nothing people; the "_Kostbeutel_"[33] and the "Schwabische Kragen" hated each other intensely; when the Austrian received a blow, no one was better pleased than the contingent from the Empire. Even among themselves the subjects of the small rulers did not live in peace; insulting language and blows were common; the Mainzers attacked the inhabitants of the Palatinate, and when the French occupied Electoral Mainz, the inhabitants of the Palatinate and Darmstadt rejoiced in the sufferings of their neighbours.[34] The mass of the people in the Empire lived quietly to themselves. The peasant performed his service, and the citizen worked; both had been worse off than now, but there was no difficulty in earning a livelihood. If they had a mild ruler, they served him willingly; the citizens clung to the city and province whose dialect they spoke; they frequently bore great attachment to their little State, which enclosed almost all that they knew, and whose helplessness they only imperfectly understood. When it became a cipher, they did not the more know what they were, and asked one another with anxious curiosity what they should now become. It was an old, quiet misery!