We only stayed here just to change baggage, as Richard was engaged as reporter to a newspaper for the Great Exhibition of Vienna. I will only say _en passant_ that the journey from Trieste to Vienna by express (fifteen hours) is stupendously lovely for the first six hours, and likewise all round Graz, halfway to Vienna; and the passage over the Semmering is a dream, at any rate for the first and second time. We were three weeks at Vienna. The Exhibition was very fine; the buildings were beautiful; there were royalties from every Court in the world, so that the mob could feast their eyes on them thirty at a time--not that a foreign mob ever stares rudely at royalties. But the Exhibition was spoilt by one or two things. Firstly, the hotels made everything so dear that few people could afford to go there. It is told of Richard, that while travelling on a steamboat he seated himself at the table and called for a beefsteak. The waiter furnished him with a small strip of that article. Taking it upon his fork, and turning it over and examining it with one of his peculiar looks, he coolly remarked, "Yes, that's it. Bring me some." As a pendant to that, it was during the Viennese Exhibition when supplies at the hotels were charged enormous prices, and all portions were most homœopathic. A waiter brought Richard a cup of coffee, not Turkish coffee, but a doll's cup with the chestnut water which Europeans presume to _call_ coffee. "What is that?" asked Richard, looking at it curiously, with his head on one side. "Coffee for one, sir." "Oh! is it indeed?" inspecting it still more curiously. "H'm! bring me coffee for ten!" "Yes, sir," said the waiter, looking as if he thought it a capital joke, and presently returned with a common-sized cup of coffee. People waited until the end, hoping things would get cheaper, and by that time the great "Krach," or money failures, had come, followed by the cholera, so that Vienna was huge sums to the bad, instead of gaining. We had a very gay time. Whilst we were there we went to the Viennese Court. There was a great difficulty about Richard, because Consuls are not admissible at the Vienna Court; but upon the Emperor being told this, he said, "Fancy being obliged to exclude such a man as Burton because he is a Consul! Has he no other profession?" And they said, "Yes, your Majesty; he has been in the Army." So he said, "Oh, tell him to come as a military man, and not as a Consul." [Sidenote: _The Imperial Family_.]