The cure is an unlimited quantity of Kreuzbrunner water at six o'clock a.m., with an hour's walk, an exquisite band--just as good as Godfrey's, if not better--playing the while. The Maríenbad band is, I think, the best I have ever heard; the conductor is a very big "swell," and has lots of decorations. Later you have fifteen minutes' bath of _Marien Quelle_, which is wonderfully electric, and then you have a _Moor-fuss-bad_, which means mud up to the knees. To a novice this sort of thing is very amusing; to see the procession to the springs, almost like a religious procession, each with a glass in their hand. I think all this is a great mistake for some people, and only produces congestion--I think that Maríenbad exhales congestion out of the very ground. I found a good German professor to read with, and I established a little branch for prevention of cruelty to animals, which was very much needed, especially by the dogs which draw the carts. I here made acquaintance with Madame Olga di Novikoff, who certainly kept me from feeling dull, for she was capital company--most amusing, and was to me a new and interesting study of the sort of life that one reads so much of, but in England rarely meets. [Sidenote: _The Scientific Congress at Venice_.] On the 7th of September I was so ill that I did not know how to get to Vienna, but I had myself put into a _coupé_ to myself, with room to lie down, and I never stirred off it during the eleven hours and forty minutes _viâ_ Pilsen and Budweis to Vienna, when at the station Richard awaited me with the information that he had got a dinner-party to meet me, and so I had to dress and receive. We had after this one delightful dinner and evening with Baron Pino and his wife at Hietzing, and next day we went down to Trieste. We just changed baggage and went to Venice for the great Geographical Congress, which was opened on the 15th. The illuminations at Venice were something to remember all one's life, every bit of tracery of the buildings, and especially that of St. Marco, being picked out with little lamps, and the artistic part of it was to throw the electric light only on the Basilica. I never in my life saw, and never shall again see, anything to equal it. Lady Layard gave a party to all the English and Americans, and the chief of the Venetian Society. Captain Vernon Lovett-Cameron, R.N., V.C., was staying with us, and we collected around us all the pleasantest people there at our breakfasts and dinners. The regatta was also a never-to-be-forgotten sight. The King and Queen were there. All the gondolas represented some country; there were the old Venetian gondoliers, there were Esquimaux, there were troubadours--you could not imagine a country or character that was _not_ represented; and every gondola that assumed no character was dressed in gala array, and their men in gondolier uniform and sash. Ours was covered with pale blue velvet. Another day was the opening of the gardens of St. Giobbe by the