‘How can I? I’m just going back to Cambridge.’
‘You are of age, aren’t you?’
I nodded.
‘And your own master? Come; you’ll never have such a chance again.’
‘When do you start?’
‘To-morrow morning early.’
‘But it is too late to get a passport.’
‘Not a bit of it. I have to go to the Foreign Office for my despatches. Dine with me to-night at my mother’s—nobody else—and I’ll bring your passport in my pocket.’
‘So be it, then. Billy Whistle [the irreverend nickname we undergraduates gave the Master of Trinity] will rusticate me to a certainty. It can’t be helped. The cause is sacred. I’ll meet you at Lady Grey’s to-night.’
We reached our destination at daylight on October 9. We had already heard, while changing carriages at Breslau station, that the revolution had broken out at Vienna, that the rails were torn up, the Bahn-hof burnt, the military defeated and driven from the town. William Grey’s official papers, aided by his fluent German, enabled us to pass the barriers, and find our way into the city. He went straight to the Embassy, and sent me on to the ‘Erzherzog Carl’ in the Kärnthner Thor Strasse, at that time the best hotel in Vienna. It being still nearly dark, candles were burning in every window by order of the insurgents.