attain the coveted professorship I had to go to Vienna and solicit the favour of an audience with the Emperor. The Emperor Francis Joseph, a noble-minded monarch and exceptionally kind-hearted--who was not unjustly called the first gentleman of the realm--received me most graciously, asked some particulars about my travels, and at once granted me my request, adding, "You have suffered much and deserve this post." He made only one objection, viz., that even in Vienna there are but few who devote themselves to the study of Oriental languages, and that in Hungary I should find scarcely any hearers. On my reply, "If I can get no one to listen to me I can learn myself," the Emperor smiled and graciously dismissed me. I shall always feel indebted to this noble monarch, although, on the other hand, from the very first I have had much to bear from the Austrian Bureaucracy and the fustiness of the mediæval spirit which ruled the higher circles of Austrian society; perhaps more correctly from their innate ignorance and stupidity. The Lord-High-Steward, Prince A., whom I had to see before the audience, regardless of the recommendations I brought from the Austrian Ambassador in London, received me with a coldness and pride as if I had come to apply for a position as lackey, and while royal personages of the West, and later on also Napoleon, had shaken hands with me and asked me to sit down, this Austrian aristocrat kept me standing for ten minutes, spoke roughly to me, and dismissed me with the impression that a man of letters is treated with more consideration in Khiva and among the Turkomans than in the Austrian capital. And this, alas! hurt me all the more, as the social conditions at home in my native land were no better. Here also the wall of partition, class distinctions and religious differences rose like a black, impenetrable screen adorned with loathsome figures before my eyes, and the monster of blind prejudice blocked my way. The enormous distance between the appreciation of literary endeavours in the West and in the East grew in proportion as I left the banks of the Thames and neared my native land; for although the public in Hungary warmly welcomed their countryman, re-echoing the shouts of applause from England and France, nay, even looked upon him with national pride, I could not fail to notice on the part of the heads of society and the leading circles a cold and intentional neglect, which hurt me. The fact that this Hungarian, who had been so much fêted abroad, was of obscure origin, without family relations, and, moreover, of Jewish extraction, spoiled the interest for many, and they forcibly suppressed any feelings of appreciation they may have had. The Catholic Church, that hotbed of intolerance and blind prejudice, was the first in attack. It upbraided me for figuring as a Protestant and not as a Catholic, as if I, the freethinker, took any interest in sectarian matters!