June 25, 1831.—­The day before yesterday we were with Kumelski and Czapek...on the Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg.  It was a magnificent day; I have never had a finer walk.  From the Leopoldsberg one sees all Vienna, Wagram, Aspern, Pressburg, even Kloster-Neuburg, the castle in which Richard the Lion-hearted lived for a long time as a prisoner.  Also the whole of the upper part of the Danube lay before our eyes.  After breakfast we ascended the Kahlenberg, where King John Sobieski pitched his camp and caused the rockets to be fired which announced to Count Starhemberg, the commandant of Vienna, the approach of the Polish army.  There is the Camaldolese Monastery in which the King knighted his son James before the attack on the Turks and himself served as acolyte at the Mass.  I enclose for Isabella a little leaf from that spot, which is now covered with plants.  From there we went in the evening to the Krapfenwald, a beautiful valley, where we saw a comical boys’ trick.  The little fellows had enveloped themselves from head to foot in leaves and looked like walking bushes.  In this costume they crept from one visitor to another.  Such a boy covered with leaves and his head adorned with twigs is called a “Pfingstkonig” [Whitsuntide-King].  This drollery is customary here at Whitsuntide.

The second excursion is thus described:—­

July, 1831.—­The day before yesterday honest Wurfel called on me; Czapek, Kumelski. and many others also came, and we drove together to St. Veil—­a beautiful place; I could not say the same of Tivoli, where they have constructed a kind ol caroitsscl, or rather a track with a sledge, which is called Rutsch.  It is a childish amusement, but a great number of grown-up people have themselves rolled down the hill in this carriage just for pastime.  At first I did not feel inclined to try it, but as there were eight of us, all good friends, we began to vie with each other in sliding down.  It was folly, and yet we all laughed heartily.  I myself joined in the sport with much satisfaction until it struck me that healthy and strong men could do something better—­now, when humanity calls to them for protection and defence.  May the devil take this frivolity!

In the same letter Chopin expresses the hope that his use of various, not quite unobjectionable, words beginning with a “d” may not give his parents a bad opinion of the culture he has acquired in Vienna, and removes any possible disquietude on their part by assuring them that he has adopted nothing that is Viennese in its nature, that, in fact, he has not even learnt to play a Tanzwalzer (a dancing waltz).  This, then, is the sad result of his sojourn in Vienna.

On July 20, 1831, Chopin, accompanied by his friend Kumelski, left Vienna and travelled by Linz and Salzburg to Munich, where he had to wait some weeks for supplies from home.  His stay in the capital of Bavaria, however, was not lost time, for he made there the acquaintance of several clever musicians, and they, charmed by his playing and compositions, induced him to give a concert.  Karasowski tells us that Chopin played his E minor Concerto at one of the Philharmonic Society’s concerts—­which is not quite correct, as we shall see presently—­and adds that