Every second the distance between the carriages diminishes.  Occasionally more fashionable equipages mingle in the oft-interrupted procession.  The carriages no longer dash along.  Finally, about five or six hours before dark, the individual horses and carriages condense into a compact line, which, arresting itself and arrested by new vehicles from every side street, obviously belies the truth of the old proverb:  “It is better to ride in a poor carriage than to go on foot.”  Stared at, pitied, mocked, the richly dressed ladies sit in their carriages, which are apparently standing still.  Unaccustomed to constant stopping, the black Holstein steed rears, as if intending to jump straight up over the wicker-carriage blocking its way, a thing the screaming women and children in the plebeian vehicle evidently seem to fear.  The cabby, so accustomed to rapid driving and now balked for the first time, angrily counts up the loss he suffers in being obliged to spend three hours traversing a distance which under ordinary conditions he could cover in five minutes.  Quarreling and shouting are heard, insults pass back and forth between the drivers, and now and then blows with the whip are exchanged.

Finally, since in this world all standing still, however persistent, is after all merely an imperceptible advancing, a ray of hope appears even in this status quo.  The first trees of the Augarten and the Brigittenau come into view.  The country!  The country!  All troubles are forgotten.  Those who have come in vehicles alight and mingle with the pedestrians; strains of distant dance-music are wafted across the intervening space and are answered by the joyous shouts of the new arrivals.  And thus it goes on and on, until at last the broad haven of pleasure opens up and grove and meadow, music and dancing, drinking and eating, magic lantern shows and tight-rope dancing, illumination and fireworks, combine to produce a pays de cocagne, an El Dorado, a veritable paradise, which fortunately or unfortunately—­take it as you will—­lasts only this day and the next, to vanish like the dream of a summer night, remaining only as a memory, or, possibly, as a hope.

I never miss this festival if I can help it.  To me, as a passionate lover of mankind, especially of the common people, and more especially so when, united into a mass, the individuals forget for a time their own private ends and consider themselves part of a whole, in which there is, after all, the spirit of divinity, nay, God Himself—­to me every popular festival is a real soul-festival, a pilgrimage, an act of devotion.  Even in my capacity as dramatic poet, I always find the spontaneous outburst of an overcrowded theatre ten times more interesting, even more instructive, than the sophisticated judgment of some literary matador, who is crippled in body and soul and swollen up, spider-like, with the blood of authors whom he has sucked dry.  As from a huge open volume of Plutarch, which has escaped from the