An Austrian employé has no country. No sooner has he arrived at a place, than all his endeavours are bent on how to get away again. Of freedom he has less than any man in the town. He dares do nothing, however innocent, on which suspicion could by possibility fasten. He dares not visit his fellow employés: that would be plotting; he dares not openly offer a pinch of snuff to his superiors: that would be bribery; if he is in the money department, he must not have father, brother, or far-away cousin in the same office, for fear of connivance. For the Austrian Government has the worst possible opinion of its bureaucratic members; saying “_quibbet præsumitur_,” a thief—“_donec probetur_,” the contrary. If the employé is an inferior, he is condemned to starvation; if a superior, he is surrounded by a swarm of inferiors, who wait for his place, like carrion crows waiting for the carcase on which the vultures are feeding. When such a place is vacant, what an uproar! what whisperings and shruggings of shoulders, what calculations and intrigues, hopes, energies, expectations and disappointments, among the office-seeking crowd! Early in the morning the candidate’s wife, if she is young, or his daughters, if they are pretty, go about from office to office canvassing for votes. Courtesies are proffered, promises are made, tears are shed, and family miseries related again and again; variegated, however, in pattern and direction, to suit the exigencies of the moment: sentimental with the amiable, humble with the proud, pleading poverty to the rich, and the rapid increase of a family to the bachelor, the fair petitioners always close with the same formulæ—“generous protector,” “just appreciator of the meanest merit,” “your great influence,” and “eternal gratitude.” And sometimes the candidate opens the small chest where, in spite of multitudinous christenings and many doctors’ bills, he has managed to keep a few articles of family plate or ancestral _vertù_, and, with a heavy sigh, wraps perhaps his silver candelabra in tissue paper, and sends them to the chief power among the electors—an incorruptible man, whom he does not attempt to bribe, but whose choice he seeks to enlighten. In this scramble two men only come off well—the chief elector, whom everybody propitiates, and the successful candidate: unless, indeed, his place has cost him more than it is worth: which is not a rare occurrence in bribing, money-loving Austria.