Leo pulled Lotte toward him, gave her a long kiss, and then said with an important air: “Now we’ll go to the country, and when I come back I’ll fool the whole town and I’ll do it properly, too! I can’t tell you any more today--but you’ll see some marvelous doings.” This was the second summer to console the Viennese for the great inconvenience and bitter disappointments they had suffered. In former years the most beautiful towns and resorts of diminished Austria had become the playground of the Jews. All of the beautiful Salzkammer region, the Semmering district, and even the more modernized sections of the Tyrol, had been flooded with Austrian, Czechoslovakian, and Hungarian Jews; the appearance of anyone who might be suspected of being a Gentile would actually create a sensation in Ischl, Gmunden, Wolfgang, Gilgen, Strobel, Aussee, or on the Attersee. Not without justification the Christians--partly because of lesser wealth, and partly because of greater conservatism in the matter of money-spending--felt that they were being pushed aside, and had to content themselves with the less expensive, but also much less beautiful resorts of Lower Austria and Steiermark, or with out-of-the-way Tyrolese villages. Since the expulsion of the Jews all this had changed. The most beautiful summer-resorts were crowded no longer, inquiries from city dwellers received immediate and very courteous replies, and in spite of the otherwise increased cost of living the rents of rooms or summer homes were considerably lower than two years before. And therefore all who had the time and the money flocked to the places that had formerly disgusted the genuine Viennese. The owners of the great hotels, health resorts, and so-called sanatoria, however, were not so well pleased. They had always lived off international Jewry--their entire business depended on people who do not calculate cost when their comfort is at stake; and now, as it was impossible for them to be cheap, they could not find enough patrons. The great Semmering hotels did not open at all, and many hostelries of the Salzkammer region and the Tyrol were forced to close and dismiss their employes in the middle of the season. This was gall in their cup of joy, and caused ill will among the country people, who were accustomed to sell their products to the great hotels at enormous prices, and to let their sons and daughters make goodly sums of money as valets and chambermaids during the summer. The mayor of Semmering had the courage to say openly, at a meeting of the Town Council: “Together with the Jews we drove prosperity out of the country. If this lasts a few years longer we may be good Christians, but we’ll be as poor as church mice!” CHAPTER XI. A STORMY DEBATE