"Is it a begging-letter?"
"Yes."
He thrust her from him indignantly. "Shame upon you!" he exclaimed.
"It is all your fault!" she replied scornfully, "if you won't work, I must beg."
"Ah!"--he staggered as if from a blow full in the face, snatched up his hat and went out.
Before night he had a situation in the office of a tramway company, at a hundred gulden a month.
The summer was more sultry than usual. The air in Vienna seemed fever-laden. The trees in Ring street no longer rustled dreamily as in Spring, there was a sound among their parched leaves as of a low cough. If a rose bloomed out in the public gardens in early morning, before evening it looked dry and withered, like a reveller returning from a masked ball; the blue Danube was as tawny as a canal, and Vienna reminded one more than ever of Manzanares.
The theatres were deserted, the tramways overcrowded, all who could went out into the country. Pedestrians hugged the wall on the shady side of the street; the skies were one monotone of blue. The glare of the house-fronts made the eyes ache.
The pestilent summer atmosphere of cities hung over Vienna, saturated with decay, and reeking with filth. A deadly epidemic broke out; in almost every block one met a sad litter, borne by silent sanitary officials.