White-Bearded Man was sold to England, first to the family of the Duke of Kent, then to my Glasgow aunt. Incidentally, the brother of the present Duke of Kent is married to an Austrian, surely you know that, the Englishman suddenly said to me, Reger said, for the sake of a brief diversion, only to say immediately afterwards that the Tintoretto here, that is the White-Bearded Man at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, was quite certainly a forgery. An absolutely perfect forgery, the Englishman added. I shall discover very soon which White-Bearded Man by Tintoretto is the genuine and which the forgery, the Englishman said, Reger said, and then he said that it was also entirely possible that both White-Bearded Men might be genuine, that is by Tintoretto and genuine. Only a great artist like Tintoretto, the Englishman said, Reger said, could have succeeded in painting a second picture not as a totally similar but as a totally identical one. That, of course, would be a sensation, the Englishman said, Reger said, and walked out of the Bordone Room. He took leave of me with only a short Goodbye, and of Irrsigler, who had witnessed the whole scene, also with the same goodbye, Reger said to me. I do not know how the matter ended, Reger said, I have not concerned myself with it after that. Anyway, the Englishman was the person, Reger said, who was sitting on the Bordone Room settee on one occasion when I entered the Bordone Room. Apart from that, no one. Reger has had this illusion about the Bordone Room settee for more than thirty years, he maintains that he cannot think properly, that is think in accordance with his head, unless he is sitting on the Bordone Room settee. At the Ambassador I have some very good ideas, Reger keeps saying, but on the Bordone Room settee at the Kunsthistorisches Museum I have the best, unquestionably always the best ideas, while at the Ambassador it is scarcely possible to get any so-called philosophical thinking going, it is a matter of course on the Bordone Room settee. At the Ambassador I think the way everyone else thinks, everyday matters and everyday needs, but on the Bordone Room settee I think the unusual and the extraordinary. For instance, he would be unable at the Ambassador to explain the Tempest Sonata in the same concentrated manner as on the Bordone Room settee, and to give a lecture such as the one on the Art of the Fugue with all its profundity and all its particularities and peculiarities would be quite impossible for him at the Ambassador, for such a thing as that all the prerequisites are lacking at the Ambassador, Reger said. On the Bordone Room settee he was able to pick up the most complicated ideas and follow them through and eventually bring them together in an interesting result, but not at the Ambassador. But of course the Ambassador has a number of advantages which the Kunsthistorisches Museum lacks, Reger said, not to mention the fact that I am each time enchanted by the lavatory at the Ambassador since that lavatory was recently rebuilt; in Vienna, let me tell you, where all lavatories are in fact more neglected than in any major city in Europe, this is a rarity, to find a lavatory that does not turn your stomach, where one need not, while using it, hold one's eyes and nose firmly closed the whole time; Viennese lavatories are altogether a scandal, even in the lower Balkans you will not find a lavatory which is quite so neglected, Reger said. Vienna has no lavatory culture, he said, Vienna is one great lavatory scandal, even at the most famous hotels in the city there are scandalous lavatories, you find the most ghastly pissoirs in Vienna, more ghastly than in any other city, and if ever you have to pass water you get the shock of your life. Vienna is quite superficially famous for its opera, but in fact it is feared and detested for its scandalous lavatories. The Viennese, and the Austrians generally, have no lavatory culture, nowhere in the world would you find such filthy and smelly lavatories, Reger said. To have to go to the lavatory in Vienna is usually a disaster, unless you are an acrobat you get yourself filthy, and the stench there is such that it clings to your clothes, often for weeks. The Viennese are altogether dirty, Reger said, there are no city-dwellers in Europe who are dirtier, just as it is a well-known fact that the dirtiest flats in Europe are the Viennese flats; the Viennese flats are even dirtier, a lot dirtier, than the Viennese lavatories. The Viennese keep saying everything is so dirty in the Balkans, you hear this kind of talk everywhere, but Vienna is a hundred times dirtier than the Balkans, Reger said. When you accompany a Viennese to his flat your mind as a rule boggles at the dirt. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule Viennese flats are the dirtiest flats in the world. I always wonder, what must those foreigners think when they have to go to the lavatory in Vienna, what must these people, who after all are used to clean lavatories, think when they have to use the dirtiest lavatories in the whole of Europe. The people only hurry to pass water and emerge from the pissoirs horrified at so much dirt. Everywhere also that horrible stench in every public lavatory, no matter whether you go to a lavatory at a railway station or whether you need to go in the Underground, you have to visit one of the dirtiest lavatories in Europe. In the Vienna cafés too, and especially there, the lavatories are so dirty you feel nauseated. On the one hand this megalomaniac cult of gigantic gateaux, and on the other these frightfully dirty lavatories, he said. With many of these lavatories you have the impression that they have not been cleaned for years. On the one hand the café proprietors protect their gateaux against even the slightest draught, which of course is of benefit to the gateaux, and on the other they attach not the slightest importance to the cleanliness of their lavatories. Just wait, Reger said, if you ever have to go to the lavatory at one of those, for the most part, rather famous cafés before you have started on your gateau, because when you return from the lavatory you will have lost all your appetite for eating even a mouthful of the gateau offered, or maybe even served, to you. And the Viennese restaurants, too, are dirty, I maintain that they are the dirtiest in the whole of Europe. Every other moment you are confronted with a totally bespattered tablecloth and when you draw a waiter's attention to the fact that the tablecloth is bespattered and that you do not intend to eat your meal off a tablecloth bespattered from one end to the other, that bespattered tablecloth is but reluctantly removed and replaced by a fresh one, by asking for a dirty tablecloth to be replaced then you merely attract furious and indeed dangerous glances. In most taverns you do not even get a tablecloth on your table and when you ask for at least the worst mess to be wiped off the dirty and very often even beer-wet table-top you invite an ill-mannered grumpy response, Reger said. The lavatory question and the tablecloth question are still unsolved in Vienna, Reger said. In every big city in the world, and I can say that I have visited nearly all of them and have come to know most of them more than just superficially, you get a clean tablecloth on your table as a matter of course before you start your meal. In Vienna a clean tablecloth or at least a clean table-top is anything but a matter of course. And it is the same with the lavatories, the Viennese lavatories are the most nauseating not only in Europe but in the whole world. What use to you is a superb meal if, even before you start eating, you lose your appetite in the lavatory, and what use to you is a superb meal if your stomach turns afterwards in the lavatory, he said. The Viennese, as indeed the Austrians, have no lavatory culture, an Austrian lavatory has always been a disaster, Reger said. Much as Vienna is famous for its mostly really excellent cuisine, at least as far as desserts are concerned, its renown with regard to its lavatories is inglorious. Until quite recently the Ambassador, too, had a lavatory which defied all description. But one day the management came to its senses and built a new one, an exceptionally well-planned one, in fact