Devout Turks were always worshiping Mahomet in the church and here and there on the pavement schools were being held; but on the walls the older frescoes representing the Crucified One were everywhere, showing through the Mahometan paint or plaster, and the impression left on me was that the Cross everywhere was slowly but surely triumphing over the Crescent. In time I came to see that St. Sophia was a greater achievement even than the Parthenon, and learned in this way that the loftier Spirit usually finds in Time the nobler body.
My German friend took me too, to the Church of the Saviour, which he called "the gem of Byzantine work," and indeed the mosaics, at least of the fourteenth century, were richer and more varied than anything I have since seen, even in Palermo.
We had a wild passage through the Black Sea and neither Varna nor the Danube wiped out the sense of discomfort.
But Belgrade with its citadel pleased me intimately, and Buda with Pesth across the great bridge caught my fancy, its fortress hill reminding me of the Acropolis; but Vienna won my heart. The old Burg Theatre with actors and actresses as good as those of Paris, the noble Opera-House with the best music in Europe, and the Belvedere with its gorgeous Venetian pictures, and the wonderful Armoury, all appealed to me intensely! Then too there was the Court and the military pageants of the Hofburg, and the great library, and above all the rich kindly life of the people in the Wurstelprater, the stout German carpet, so to speak, illumined with a thousand colours of Slav and Semite, Bohemian and Polish embroidery, till even the gypsies seemed to add the touches of barbarism and superstition needed to fringe and set off the gorgeous fabric. In many-sided appeal, Vienna seemed to me richer even than Paris; and Pauline Lucca, exquisite singer at once and beautiful charming person, became to my imagination the genius of the city, with Billroth, the great doctor, as symbol of the science on which the whole life was builded. I find it hard to forgive the barbarian Wilson for maiming and impoverishing a nobler corporate life than he and his compatriots are able to produce. It takes a thousand years to make a Vienna and fortunately for us no one man can utterly destroy it.
After spending some months in Vienna, I realized that the Danube was the great patrimony which the Viennese had left unexploited. Vienna should be the greatest port in south-western Europe, but the Austrians haven't dredged and developed the noble stream as they should have done. Will they now, in poverty and misery, repair the fault? It is still time-always time, thank goodness!
Why did I leave Vienna? Because I had met a girl who attracted me, a cafedancer who was returning for a rest to her home in Salzburg, and who talked to me so much of Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart-"the most beautiful city in the world," she called it-that I had to go and visit it with Marie for guide.
Marie, Marie Kirschner was her real name, and I have tried to sketch her in my story, A Mad Love, for indeed she was the best type of German, or perhaps I should say Austrian. To me she represented Vienna and its charms quite exquisitely. She had a perfect girl's figure, kept slight and lithe with constant exercise, for she danced at least an hour every day to keep up to the mark, as she said. Marie had a piquant, intelligent face with a nez retrousse as cheeky as her light hazel eyes; best of all, she was curiously frank about her sexual experiences and won my heart by telling me, one of the first evenings, how she had been seduced willingly enough, because of her curiosity, by an old banker of Buda-Pesth when she was barely thirteen. "He gave my mother and me enough to live on comfortably for six years or more and let me learn dancing. Otto died in his sleep or he'd have done more for us; he was really kind and I had grown to care for him, though he was a poor lover.
However, he left us the house and furniture and I was already earning a fair living-"
"And since then?" I asked.
Marie tossed her head. "Qui a bu, boira," she said. "Isn't love a part of life and the best part? Even the illusion of love is worth more than anything else, and now and then hope tempts me, as I believe I tempt you. Oh, if we could see Salzburg and the Berchtesgaden and the Geiereck together; what a perfect summer we might have, in most lovely surroundings!"
"It's impossible," I said, "to give you an unforgettable memory; you've had so many lovers!"
"Never fear a number," she replied, smiling. "The great majority leave us nothing worth remembering; men know little about love. Why till now, my old banker's the best memory I have: he was really affectionate und hatte mich auf den Handen tragen mogen (he would have carried me in his hands)"-a German expression meaning "he took every care of me"
"He taught me a lot too; oh, Otto was a dear," and with this assurance I took Marie to Salzburg.
I had never even heard Salzburg mentioned before among the beautiful cities of Europe, but I found by chance that Wilkie, the Scottish painter, had used something like the right words to describe it. He said that "If the old town of Edinburgh with its castle on a rock were planted in the Trossachs and had a broad swift river like the Tay flowing between the houses of the town, it might resemble Salzburg." Salzburg itself is set amongst mountains and nearby are numberless scenes of romantic beauty: the Traunsee to the east, and the Chiemsee with the King of Bavaria's wonderful palace to the west; while to the south across the Bavarian border is Berchtesgaden, one of the most beautiful regions in Europe. Here is the Untersberg, nearly 7000 feet in height, with the famous Kolowrat caverns containing ice-masses that look like great waterfalls suddenly frozen; and on the eastern side, the Geiereck with the cliffs and precipices that have earned it its name. Marie was an incomparable guide, of the sweetest temper, a born companion and as good a lover as a man. Better indeed in that she made all the preliminaries of love fascinating: Marie was the first to tell me that my voice was musical-a delight to hear-exceedingly powerful, yet resonant and sweet. "I'd rather hear you recite than anyone," she said. "No actor was ever your equal; and your face too: I love the courage in it and the amazing life in it."
Marie was a born flatterer and found new compliments continually. Every day she discovered some new trait to praise, but goodness and sweetness of nature are not dramatic or interesting. I did my best forty years later to picture Marie in A Mad Love, and trying to find some fault to make her human, hit upon the fact that she would give her lips readily to any one who touched her heart, even tho' she didn't love him. But-I've not done her goodness justice. Time and again she reminded me of Browning's wonderful verses:
Teach me only teach, love,
As I ought!
I will speak thy speech, love,
Think thy thought.
Meet if thou require it
Both demands
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands.
But after six weeks or so I began to feel tired. Eirene's passion had weakened me, and charming, faultless as Marie was, I wanted to learn something new, and I had for the time being at least exhausted German. When we returned from the lovely country and its exquisite walks and drives, I bought Marie a gorgeous picture of Leopold's fairy palace on the Chiemsee and fairly ran away to Florence for the fall.
There I worked at Italian first and then at the pictures and the art-life. And now my education in art, always growing, took in the mosaics at Ravenna, and in Milan I came upon a small collection of Visconti armour of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some suits of which I managed to secure for very small sums. Before the American demand began to grow imperious in the middle eighties, good suits of armour cost very little. I bought a gold inlaid suit complete for?. 100 that I sold five years later In London for?. 5,000; and the dealer got?. 15,000 for it.