The Viennese dinner hour is eleven, and this is why the tourist, fingering his guide book, looks in vain for the diners. Sacher's, the Imperial, the Bristol and the Spatenbräu are deserted in the early evenings. Even after the Opera these restaurants present little of the life found in the Paris, Berlin or London restaurants. The Viennese is not a public diner; and here again we find an explanation for the tourist's impressions. When the Viennese goes to dinner, he does so privately. Bianca's dinner that night was typical. There were twelve at table. There was music by a semi-professional pianist. The service was perfect--it was more like a dinner in a _cabinet particulier_ at a Parisian café than one in a private apartment. But here we catch the spirit of Vienna, the transforming of what the other cities do publicly into the intimacies of the home.
At one o'clock, the meal finished, the intimate theatre claimed us. There the glorious Bianca met her lovers, her little following. At these theatres every one knows every one else. It is the social lure as well as the theatrical appeal that brings the people there. Bianca chats with the actors, flirts with the admiring Lotharios and drinks champagne. At her side sit the greatest artists and dramatists of the day, princes and other celebrities. At one of these performances I saw her bewitching two men--one a composer, the other a writer--whose names lead the artistic activities of Southern Europe. But Bianca is prodigal with her charms, and before the final curtain was dropped she had shed her fascinations on every patron in the theatre. And I, whose thirty kronen had passed her by the satin-pantalooned and lace-bosomed doorkeeper, was quite forgot. But such is Viennese etiquette. An escort may pay the _fiacre_ charge and the entrance fee, but such a meagre, vulgar claim does not suffice to obtain a lady's entire attention for the evening. Such selfishness is not understood by the Viennese.
The real business of the evening came later. The coffee drinking, the theatre and the dining had been so many preliminaries for that form of amusement which forms the basis of all Viennese night life--dancing. The Viennese dance more than any people in the world. During _Faschingzeit_ there are at least fifty large public balls every night. These balls become gay at one o'clock and last through the entire night. For the most part they are masked, and range from the low to the high, from those where the entrance fee is but two kronen to the elaborate ones whose demand is thirty kronen. Every night in Vienna during the season fifty thousand people are dancing. Nor are these balls the suave and conventional dances of less frank nations. By the mere presentation of a flower any one may dance with any one else. In every phase of night life in Vienna flowers play an important part. They constitute the language of the carnival. To such an extent is this true that, though you may ask for a dance by presenting a flower, you may not ask verbally, though your tongue be polished and your soul ablaze with poetry. And while you are dancing you may not talk to your partner. She is yours for that dance--but she is yours in silence. Should you meet her the following afternoon in the Prater or on parade in the Kärntnerstrasse, her eyes will look past you, for the night has gone, carrying with it its memories and its intoxications.