The theatre in Vienna is a part of the life. It is not indulged in as a mere amusement or diversion, like shooting the chutes or going to church. It is an evening's obligation. This accounts for the large number of Vienna theatres and for their architectural beauty. But do not think that when you have attended a dozen such places as the Hofoperntheatre, the Hofburgtheatre, the Deutsches Volkstheatre and the Carltheatre you have sensed the entire theatrical appeal of Vienna. Far from it. No city in the world is punctuated with so large a number of semi-private intimate theatres and cabarets as Vienna--theatres with a seating capacity of forty or fifty. You may know the Kleine Bühne and the Max und Moritz and the Hölle, but there are fifty others, and every night finds them crowded.
Theatregoing is occasionally varied with lesser and more primitive pastimes. Go out on the crooked Sieveringerstrasse and behold the multitudes waxing mellow over the sweet red _heuriger_. Go to the Volksgarten-Café Restaurant any summer night after seven, pay sixty heller, and see the crowds gathered to hear the military band concerts; or seek the halls in winter and join the audiences who come to wallow in the florid polyphonies of the _Wiener Tonkünstler Orchester_. Sundays and holiday nights go to Grinsing and Nussdorf and watch the people at play. Make the rounds of the wine houses--the Rathaus Keller, the Nieder-Oesterreichisches Winzerhaus, the Tommasoni--and behold the spooning and the rough joking.
All this is part of the night life of Vienna. But it is not the life in which Bianca participates. Therefore we cannot tarry in the wine houses or at the concerts. Instead let us attend the opera. We go early before the sun has set. The curtain rises at six-thirty to permit of our leaving by half past ten, for there is much to do before morning. After the performance--dinner! The Viennese are adepts in the gustatory art. Their meals have the heft of German victualty combined with the delicacies and imaginative qualities of French cooking. An ideal and seductive combination! A rich and toothsome blending!... Bianca touches my arm and says we must make haste. This evening I am to be honoured with dinner in her apartment. So we drive to her rooms on the Franzenring overlooking the Volksgarten.