After my nocturnal adventure in Prague, I made up my mind that if I wanted to do Austria thoroughly in a fortnight it was absolutely necessary I should have someone familiar with the tongues of Bohemia and Hungary, to say nothing of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro. I met Herr Julius, cosmopolitan courier, promiscuously at a cafÉ in Vienna. We fell into conversation, and I secured him then and there to accompany me upon my Hungarian explorations. Herr Julius not only speaks German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish fluently, but is as a native when it comes to Czechish and Magyar and Croatian.

Herr Julius shares with Albert Edward a taste for good cigars and high-class cookery. In other matters he has a frugal mind. He delights in bargains, and points with pride to his success in various parts of the world. Herr Julius is an object-lesson in economy. He shows me his umbrella, and his face lights up with pride as he informs me that he has had it for some years, and that he bought it for eight shillings in Cairo. He takes off his hat, pats it lovingly, and tells me that he got it in the winter of 1889 in Naples for four shillings and sixpence. He asks me what I think of his boots. I admire them, and he explains that he purchased them of a waiter at Seville for two shillings, because they had been left behind by a German prince who died in the hotel. Charmed by these revelations, I venture to ask him what he paid for his suit, and instantly his face assumes an expression of triumph. He asks me to guess. I guess five pounds. ‘No, sir,’ he exclaims, with a grin that displays every tooth in his head, and he has an excellent set; ‘for dis suit I give two pounds five in Tottenhams Court Road more two year ago. Ah, what a suit! I put him away every winter and he comes out die nexto sommer every year better he was before.’

The most picturesque way of going to Budapest from Vienna is naturally down the Danube. But there are slight difficulties in the way. The steamer leaves at seven in the morning, and that means getting up at four o’clock at your hotel. Four o’clock is not my usual hour of rising. It is nearer my usual time of going to bed, and, much as I wanted to take the Danube trip, I could not contemplate that early departure without a shudder. But Herr Julius came to the rescue. ‘You shall go on board the night before, you see, sir,’ he said, ‘and there you shall sleep comfortable, and no get up till so you choose.’ I agreed that this would be one way out of the difficulty, but as I was desirous to go to the Theater an der Wien in the evening, in order to see ‘Heisses Blut,’ a play which had gained considerable vogue in Vienna, I explained that I should have to come on board rather late. ‘That shall not matter,’ replied Herr Julius, ‘you shall pack everythings, pay your bill, go to the theatre, and I shall take your everythings on board de shiff and make you secure one nice cabines. Is that good?’

We took a ‘fiaker’ that afternoon, and drove to the ship, which was lying alongside the quay. There was only one official on board, and he received us with a bow so low that his front hair swept a lot of coal-dust from the deck. This official was the second steward. We explained our needs, and he immediately placed the entire vessel at our disposal. It was rarely that passengers came on board at night, but we were welcome. A bed should be made up for the gentlemen in a cabin. The kitchen would be shut at eleven, but cold meat and bread and wine should be left out, and he (the under-steward) would remain ever at the gentlemen’s service. The preliminary arrangements were made, the under-steward swept the deck again with his front hair, and Herr Julius and your humble servant drove back to the town.

I packed and saw my luggage loaded on a cab and taken to the quay, and then I went to the theatre and was hugely entertained by ‘Heisses Blut,’ a musical absurdity written around a well-known Hungarian actress, FrÄulein Palma. At ten I left the theatre, made my way to the ship, found an excellent supper waiting for me, went to bed, and slept soundly. When I awoke the ship was well on her way down the Danube, and the excellent Herr Julius was knocking at my cabin-door with a cup of strong tea and the information that it was a fine day, and that there was nobody on board but ourselves, ten dwarfs, a giant, and a performing boarhound.

I soon made friends with the dwarfs. Four of them were the smallest little fellows I have ever seen. They had been all over France and Germany, and had been touring for two years in Spain. The giant also was affable, and an American travelling with them as lecturer favoured me with much curious information.

Budapest is, as the guide-books say, ‘picturesquely situated’ on both sides of the Danube; Buda is on one side, and Pest is on the other. It takes you a little time after you arrive in Hungary to find out where you actually are, because the Hungarians in their intense Magyarism have abolished all German names, signs, notices, and indications. A traveller, for instance, who wanted to get off the Danube steamer at Pressburg, the first big stopping-place in Hungary one gets to after leaving Vienna, would probably pass Pozsony by. But Pozsony is Pressburg, though there is nothing but your guide-book to let you know it. At one time in Hungary names of streets, etc., were put up in the two languages; now the German is all taken down and Magyar reigns supreme.

No national movement in Europe has of late years made such tremendous strides as Magyarism. The Hungarians have Home Rule, and mean to stick to it. The Emperor of Austria reigns only as King of Hungary. Hungary has its own Parliament, makes its own laws, and has its own postage-stamps. The Austrians are not so unpopular as they were in years gone by, when the Hungarians called them ‘damned Germans;’ but there is still a strong feeling against Austrian interference. As I write these lines all Budapest is bubbling over with excitement about the death of General Klapka, the hero of Komorn, one of the patriots of the former stormy days. Klapka died in one of the hotels here. The Austrian officials—so the Hungarians say—tried to get him buried quietly and at once, whereupon Budapest rose up, and the voice of the Magyar was heard in the land. ‘Is he a drowned dog, this our hero,’ the Hungarians said, ‘that he should be flung into the earth at once? No! we—we his fellow-countrymen, his fellow-sufferers in days gone by, his fellow-patriots now, will honour him dead as we loved him living!’ And so General Klapka had a grand Hungarian funeral, and thousands upon thousands of Hungarians flocked to the ceremony.

There are two things you never get away from in Budapest—red pepper, called pÁprÏka, and czigani, or gipsy music. On every table you have dark red pepper in a salt-cellar, and in every hotel you find the gipsy band worrying away at the fiddlestrings.

The Hungarian ladies are famed for their beauty, and Budapest has a reputation which would not recommend it as a summer residence to Messrs. M’Dougall and Parkinson. The poet might here indulge in ‘a dream of dark women’ to his heart’s content. The baths for which Budapest is renowned are conducted on principles not altogether in accordance with English ideas of morality, and are frequently meeting-places for affairs of gallantry. The modest Englishman with insular prejudices has all his work cut out to avoid blushing at the propositions which are made to him by the couriers and guides attached to the principal hotels, propositions made not with a grin and a whisper, but with a stately bow, and in the ordinary tone of general conversation.

The Hungarian or Magyar language is startling in its peculiarities. When you wish to bid anyone good-day you say ‘Yonapol,’ and if you meet anyone to whom you wish to be polite you say ‘Alarzatos Szolgaya'—‘I am your humble servant.’ That is the ‘Adieu’ of Hungary, and takes the place of the Viennese ‘I kiss the hand.’ Everybody in Hungary is ‘your humble servant.’

My favourite stroll in Budapest when I am tired of red pepper and the gipsies is the bridge which connects Buda and Pest and makes them one town. The Danube here is 1,800 feet broad, and until the bridge was built in 1849 the only means of connection was a bridge of barges, and in the winter, when the Danube was swollen, this was frequently unsafe, and all connection between the two towns was suspended. The English engineers, Clark and Tiernay, built this bridge, but the opposition of the Hungarian nobles was tremendous. They had the right of crossing the old bridge free by reason of their rank, but Baron Sma, of Vienna, who found the £500,000 necessary for the undertaking, claimed the right to levy toll for the space of eighty-five years, and so everyone has to pay toll at the present day. The Hungarian nobleman still feels that he is sacrificing himself to ‘a d——d German’ every time he pulls out the kreuzers demanded by the bridge-keepers.

The old Hungarian prejudices remain, but, alas! the old Hungarian costumes are rapidly disappearing. The young noblemen still drive four spanking horses in a mail-phaeton, and now and then one sees the Hungarian coachman in high boots, light blue coat and silver buttons, and the pork-pie hat with long ribbons hanging down behind it. But the bulk of the populace have abandoned high boots and frogged coats, and now and then one even sees a tall hat on a Hungarian head.

The high Wellington boots are still worn by the peasant women and the peasant men, but not by the better classes. The high hat is not so generally adopted as modern trousers and boots, because for many years it was the sign of a ‘German.’ Herr Julius can remember the day when a man in a high hat was yelled at by the roughs wherever he went, and many a luckless owner of a chimney-pot was bonneted in public amid the jeers of the bystanders. ‘A Schwoab!’ the people would cry directly they espied the obnoxious topper. ‘A Schwoab’ means a German, and sounds suspiciously like ‘a swab.’ ‘NÉmet’ is another name for a German. I am assured this feeling has passed away, but I know better. ‘The King of Hungary’ comes to his palace at Buda now for three months in the year, and the Austrians talk their German language and wear their chimney-pots without being insulted; but the Hungarians still look upon all things Austrian askance, and it did not need the demonstration and the speeches which the recent attempt to bury Klapka GyÖrgy Tabornok quietly has called forth to prove that the patriotic Magyar still chafes beneath the Austrian yoke.

I am going to the theatre in Budapest to see a Magyar melodrama, entitled ‘A BetyÁr KendÖje’ ('The Brigand’s Handkerchief'). They call the theatre a SzinhÁz. That is a little startling, but when you have got accustomed to fogado for a hotel, and you have to tell the porter to look after your podgyars for luggage, and you learn that Ó nÖ is an old woman, and that Vienna is BÉcs, and bor is wine, and viz—not namely—is water, and Isten is God, you are prepared for anything.

I like fruit, but when the waiter asks me if I will take some ‘gyÜmÖics’ I hesitate. (In parentheses, the most exquisite thing I have eaten in Hungary is the fogas, a Lower Danube fish. Cold, with sauce Tartare, it is delicious. The red-pepper dishes I have not fallen so violently in love with, although pÁprÏka huhn and gulyÁs are by no means to be despised.)

I started to go to the theatre the other night, but I found that the play was ‘Hamlet, Dankiralfy,’ which is ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ and I thought better of it. It may interest the general reader to know that the performance took place on VasÁrnap (which is Sunday), MÁjus 22-Én, and was ‘Eredeti nÉpszinmÜ dalokkal 4 szakaszban. Irta Abonyi Lajos. ZenÉjÉt Nikolics SÁndor.’

The Magyar melodrama, entitled ‘The Brigand’s Handkerchief,’ turned out to be a very old friend. It was only ‘Falsely Accused’ in a foreign language. A Hungarian brigand, having behaved badly to his young wife and attempted to murder her to slow music in the snow, she leaves him and enters the service of a dear old lady under an assumed name. The dear old lady’s son falls in love with her, and asks her to marry him. But she says there are reasons which stand in the way, and, being the leading lady, has a long soliloquy all to herself in the centre of the stage. In the meantime the brigand has fallen into the toils of a gipsy girl, who dances Hungarian dances and sings Hungarian songs at a low Hungarian public-house. The brigand is made drunk with fourteen bottles of wine and fourteen lighted candles, and agrees to go out at night with the gipsy girl and do a little house-breaking. I can’t tell you why, when the fourteen bottles are placed on the table for the brigand, a lighted candle is placed by each bottle. It seemed to me a fearful waste of tallow, but I presume it is a custom of the country.

The gipsy lady dresses herself up as a man, and puts pistols in her belt, and off she goes with the brigand straight to the house of the dear old lady at midnight. All is quiet, only the unhappy wife is about, and she has just packed up everything she has in the world in a small pocket-handkerchief, and is about to leave the house of her benefactress clandestinely, in order to avoid the pathetic love-making of her young master. The brigand and brigandess enter. The wife, who has returned to her bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief—one her husband gave her on her wedding-day—comes out, and is about to be shot by the brigandess, when the brigand starts, and exclaims in the Magyar language, ‘Heaven, it is my long-lost wife!’ and dashes the pistol from his fair (or, rather, dark) accomplice’s hand, while the injured wife falls fainting on the floor. At that moment the young master, having heard a noise, rushes in; the brigandess escapes, but the brigand is seized after a violent struggle, thrust into an inner room, and the keys turned upon him. Then off rushes the young master to fetch a policeman. The wife recovers, says, ‘O Isten’ (Isten is the Magyar for the Deity), ‘my husband will be executed if he is caught and recognised as the notorious brigand.’ So she unlocks the door, and promptly bids him leave by the window, which he does, after giving off a short speech.

You can guess the rest. When the police enter and find the man gone and the girl trembling, they at once accuse her of being an accomplice, and of having let the robber in and also of having let him out. The man has dropped a pocket-handkerchief of a peculiar pattern. On searching the girl they find one of the same make in her pocket. Evidently they were accomplices. So the girl is arrested.

The last act takes place at the police-station. The heroine has a bad time and weeps, but refuses to clear herself. Enter the brigand husband, who says, ‘I am here. I am So-and-so, the notorious brigand. I broke into the house. This woman released me because I was her husband. See, here are the other five handkerchiefs of half a dozen I inherited from my mother. The sixth I gave to Marie on our wedding-day, and that is how our handkerchiefs are of the same pattern.’ The police at once arrest the husband, and the wife is free. The husband is dragged off. A shot is heard. He has killed himself. At that moment the young master rushes in, and exclaims, ‘Marie, will you marry me now?’ Marie falls into her young master’s arms and says, ‘Yes—if you will wait.’ I think she added, ‘Until after the funeral,’ but I am not sufficiently master of Magyar to commit myself absolutely on the point.

Some years ago the crowded house which greeted this Magyar melodrama would have been impossible. Half the audience, though Hungarian, would not have understood their own language. They would have wanted it translated into German.

To understand the immense strides which Magyarism has made one must look back a little. To-day hardly a German word is to be heard in the thoroughfares, and no German words disfigure the public announcements, the sign-posts, the playbills, or the street corners. There are many thousands of Hungarians who do not even understand German. Think of this, and then remember that in 1840 a movement for the reintroduction of the Magyar language at the University of Pest met with but scant encouragement outside the town. The police then spoke German, the army spoke German, the lectures of the University were delivered in Latin. Up to the year 1790 there was not even a professor at the University who spoke Magyar. To-day in the towns everything is Magyar and nothing is German.

To-day (it was ‘to-day’ when this was written), in the hotel at which I am staying, the patriots have a dinner. Their dining-room adjoins the writing-room in which I am penning (or rather pencilling) these lines. Great speeches are being made, and every now and then the room rings again with the Magyar cries of ‘Elyen! Elyen!’ (Bravo! bravo!) and ‘Hayunk, hayunk!’ (Hear, hear). There is in the room, writing, a young man with a coal-black beard, fierce gleaming eyes, and the milk-white teeth for which the Magyars are renowned. He listens to the speeches that come through the closed door, and presently, as one of the speakers makes a great point amid a roar of applause in the next room, he springs to his feet and shouts ‘Elyen! Elyen!’ too. Then, catching my astonished gaze, he smiles, begs me to excuse him, and explains that he is the son of a Hungarian exile, that he was born in Egypt, whither his father fled to escape imprisonment for his political opinions in the days of tyranny, and that he is thinking of those years of exile now, and the father who died in a far-off country for love of his native land.

I left Budapest on Monday morning by the Orient express for Munich, and Herr Julius, who saw me to the railway-station, wept on my breast and whiled away the time with anecdotes of his past career. Herr Julius had once saved a nice little fortune—many thousands of florins—and he wanted to invest it. He knew many of the financial barons of Vienna. He asked their advice, and, acting on it, he bought the ‘obligations’ of a local company. These obligations cost him five hundred florins each, and they were soon to be worth a thousand, and Herr Julius would make a fine thing of his investment. But the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley, and the great ‘krach’ came suddenly, and with it widespread ruin. Companies were scattered before the winds like chaff. Great financial houses came tumbling down as though they had been built of cards, and Vienna rang with the cries and curses of the ruined and undone. The ‘obligations’ which Herr Julius had bought rattled down in value till at last they became almost worthless. In despair the poor fellow was glad to take five florins each for the ‘obligations’ for which he had paid five hundred, and he was lucky to get that, for a day or two afterwards the bubble burst utterly, and the ‘papers’ he had held were not worth a kreuzer each!

‘Ah, sir,’ says Herr Julius, his eyes filling with tears, ‘after that my little fortune was gone, not for months did I sleep. I beat my breast, I tore my hair, I could eat nothings; my life was to me one great burthen. At last I say to myself, Julius, old man, this does not do; your little fortune it has gone, but you must cheer yourself and begin again the battle of life. So one day I say to myself, I will forget, I will drown care, I will go out and enjoy myself, and laugh with the rest. The first day that I shake the sorrow from my mind I go to the Prater in the afternoon. I enter the third coffee-house; I sit in the garden and listen to the band. I drink my beer and feel hungry. The man come with salami; I say I will eat, and I buy for twopence halfpenny some salami.

‘Well, sir,’ continued Herr Julius, ‘the man he weigh me out my salami, and he spread out a piece of paper, and he put upon it my six slices. I drink a good draught of beer. I pick up my salami, and I say, “Julius, after all life is good, still can you have your beer and salami.” At that moment my eye it catches the piece of paper. I look at it. It has print on it. It has a number. Ach, leiber Gott! it is my “obligation” for which I have paid once five hundred florins. On that has the sausage man served me with twopennyworth of salami! That night again I sleep not.’

I express my sympathy with Herr Julius, and the Orient express steams into the station. In his excitement at bidding me farewell Herr Julius drops his overcoat, which he carries over his arm. Instantly the platform is spread as for a feast. Herr Julius has carefully collected the dÉbris of dinners for which I have paid without availing myself of all the privileges to which I am entitled. Oranges roll about in every direction; sweet biscuits are crushed under the heels of hurrying porters; pink prawns and white radishes make the dull platform gay with colour; the wing of a fowl and the leg of a goose fall together on to the line. Here is a piece of cheese, there half a dozen lumps of sugar. Herr Julius gives a wild shriek, falls upon his hands and knees, and proceeds to gather up the fragments that remain. And while he is still collecting these remnants of our many feasts the engine whistles, and the Orient express bears me away. I thrust my head out of the window, and the last glimpse I get of Herr Julius shows me that remarkable man busily engaged in picking gravel and cinders from a small piece of GruyÈre cheese. I paid for it, and he is determined that it shall not be wasted.

I only spent one day in Munich, and then I fled to the Bavarian Alps. The customs of the city were too much for me. From early morn till late at night the Munichers drink beer and eat radishes the size of turnips. I had great difficulty, not being Sandow, in lifting up the mug of beer which was brought to me at a beer-garden. Putting it down I found a sheer impossibility. But I sat at a table with a fine young Bavarian, who put away ten huge mugs of the national beverage in rapid succession. I was taken to one garden—the Lion Brewery Garden—where the average sale is 10,000 litres a day, and there are fifty such establishments in full swing in Munich.