As an aid to recover my strength, I am eating delicious woodcock and soups of extraordinary concoction, which one learns to enjoy with the appetite that comes to him so many feet above the level of the sea. The drawback to this journey is my ignorance of the manners and thoughts of the people, and these things would interest me far more than all the scenery. The women of the Tyrol, it seems to me, are treated as they deserve. They are harnessed to carts, and succeed in drawing very heavy loads. I considered them very homely, with enormous feet. The fine ladies whom I met on the railway trains or steamboats are not much better. They wear hats that are a desecration, and sky-blue half-shoes with apple-green gloves. It is such characteristics as these that make up what the natives call their gemüth, of which they are so vain.
After seeing the works of art which are the product of this country, it seems to me that the quality thereof is fundamentally destitute in imagination. At the same time, they pride themselves upon this very quality, and in their attempt to prove their claim, fall into the most pedantic extravagances. I have just been sight-seeing in the city. Everything there is new, except the tomb of Maximilian. The site of this is admirable. No Parisian costumes here! Everybody I meet is homely, and ordinary in appearance.
One can turn in no direction without seeing a mountain, and what a mountain! To-morrow we are to climb a glacier. The weather is superb, and promises to continue so. In short, I am glad I came. I should like to have you here with me, for I fancy you would find more to entertain you in this place than you do among your sea-lions.
When shall you return to Paris? Write to me at Vienna, and do not lose any time about it. Write a long, affectionate letter.
Wait; here is a flower from the Brenner.
CLX
Prague, September 11, 1854.
My companions left me this morning in order to return to France. I am ill and out of spirits, and the gloomiest thoughts come to my mind. If I feel better to-morrow morning, I shall leave for Vienna, where I shall arrive at night. I am beginning to be horribly tired. This city is quite picturesque, and the music is excellent. I visited yesterday two or three public gardens and concerts, where I saw the national dances and waltzes, all of which were executed with the utmost propriety and composure. There can be no music, however, more captivating than that produced by a Bohemian orchestra.
The faces here are entirely unlike those I saw in Germany; very big heads, broad shoulders, small hips, and no legs at all, is my description of a Bohemian beauty.
We brought into play, to no purpose, yesterday, our knowledge of anatomy, to try to understand how these women walk. Aside from this, they have unusually beautiful eyes, and black hair that is often very long and silky, but hands and feet of a length, width, and coarseness that are a source of wonder to travellers best accustomed to the most extraordinary sights. Crinoline is unknown to them. In the evening, at the public gardens, they drink a jug of beer, and afterwards take a cup of coffee, which gives them an appetite to dispose of three veal cutlets with ham, so that there is room enough left only for several light pastries, somewhat like our tipsy cakes. Such are my observations on manners and customs.