In the years that followed the war and revolution Vienna had developed more and more into the hub of Central-European extravagance, and the life of certain classes had grown so luxurious that it became the talk of all the world. The masses of Vienna, however--not only the laborers, but also the middle classes--had gnashed their teeth as they watched the foreign elements, especially the Galician, Roumanian, and Hungarian Jews, lord it over Vienna. Spending lavishly the practically worthless money of Austria, they drank champagne when the poor man could hardly pay for his glass of beer; they adorned their women with pearls and furs while the real aristocracy was forced to sell its family jewels one by one; they raced through the streets in their luxurious automobiles, they took away the homes of Viennese residents of long standing, and filled the cultured old city with their noisy ostentation. When the Jews had been exiled all this was changed entirely overnight. The dumfounding extravagance disappeared, the Viennese rummage sales came to a stop, it no longer required superhuman effort to secure a seat for the opera, and life became calmer, simpler, more substantial. Until it developed that a city like Vienna cannot exist without luxury. At the beginning, the Christian business men who took over the Jewish shops had also taken possession of the Jewish automobiles; the general prosperity seemed to be unchanged, but merely to have been redistributed. The joy which the citizens of Vienna felt when they no longer had to bump into Jewish profiteers at every step, was as genuine as it was easily comprehensible. But when the krone soon began to drop again toward the infinitesimal, and prices rose like a tidal wave--when every business that depended on unlimited luxury, (like the exclusive stores, the cabarets, theatres, and princely restaurants and bars,) failed--when unemployment became general and the export trade with foreign countries grew less and less--then high living also had its wings clipped. The tens of thousands of automobiles that had gone over from Jewish into Christian hands were sold to foreign buyers for a handful of lire or francs, for business went so badly that it was impossible to buy gasoline; art dealers complained of a complete standstill in their business, the deficit of the state-subventioned theatres grew by leaps and bounds, and eminent Christian artists and scholars, especially the great physicians, emigrated to other countries because their own people no longer were willing or able to pay them the fees to which they had become accustomed in the Jewish era. And it was impossible to stop the constant growth of discontent, irritation, and the realization that the country was on the downward path. CHAPTER VIII. THE SWEET, GAY YOUNG THINGS