Vienna's hotels were full of _Kriegslieferanten_. The _portiers_ and waiters addressed them as "_Baron_" and "_Graf_" (count), and for this bestowal of letters-patent nobility were rewarded with truly regal tips. But there the matter ended.
I was holding converse with the _portier_ of the Hotel Bristol when a war purveyor came up and wanted to know whether telegrams had arrived for him--the war purveyor never uses the mail.
"_Nein, Herr Graf_," replied the _portier_.
The war purveyor seemed inclined to blame the _portier_ for this. After some remarks, alleging slovenliness on the part of somebody and everybody in so impersonal a manner that even I felt guilty, he turned away.
The _portier_--I had known him a day--seemed to place much confidence in me, despite the fact that so far he had not seen the color of my money.
"That fellow ought to be hung!" he said, as he looked at the revolving door that was spinning madly under the impulse which the wrathful war purveyor had given it. "He is a pig!"
"But how could a count be a pig?" I asked, playfully.
"He isn't a count at all," was the _portier's_ remark. "You see, that is a habit we easy-going Viennese have. The fellow has engaged one of our best suites and the title of count goes with that. It may interest you to know that years ago the same suite was occupied by Prince Bismarck."
There is no reason why in tradition-loving and nobility-adoring Austria the title of count should not thereafter attach to any person occupying a suite of rooms so honored. For all that, it is a peculiar mentality that makes an honorary count an animal of uncleanly habits within the space of a few seconds.
The Grand Hotel was really the citadel of the Austro-Hungarian war purveyors. Every room was taken by them, and the splendid dining-room of the establishment was crammed with them during meal-hours. Dinner was a grandiose affair. The _Kriegslieferanten_ were in dinner coats and bulging shirt-fronts, and the ladies wore all their jewels. Two of the war-purveyor couples were naturalized Americans, and one of them picked me up before I knew what had happened.
While I was in Vienna I was to be their guest. It seems that the man had made a contract with the Austrian Ministry of War for ever so many thousands of tons of canned meat. He thought that his friends "back home" might be interested in that, and that there was no better way of having the news broken to them than by means of a despatch to my service. There is no doubt whatever that being a war purveyor robs a man of his sense of proportions.
