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