utside
the city walls, was one of the spectacles that made the deepest
impression on this chatty old lady in her childhood.

The Turks' Cellar is still famous. It is noted now, not for its bread or
its canal-water, but for its white wine, its baked veal, and its savoury
chickens. Descend into its depths (for it is truly a cellar and nothing
else) late in the evening, when citizens have time and money at their
disposal, and you find it full of jolly company. As well as the
tobacco-smoke will permit you to see what the place resembles, you would
say that it is like nothing so much as the after cabin of a Gravesend
steamer on a summer Sunday afternoon. There is just such a row of tables
on each side; just such a low roof; just such a thick palpable air,
uncertain light, and noisy steamy crowd of occupants. The place is
intolerable in itself, but fall-to upon the steaming block of baked veal
which is set before you; clear your throat of the tobacco-smoke by mighty
draughts of the pale yellow wine which is its proper accompaniment;
finally, fill a deep-bowled meerschaum with Three Kings tobacco, creating
for yourself your own private and exclusive atmosphere, and you begin to
feel the situation. The temperature of mine host's cellar aids
imagination greatly in recalling the idea of the old bakehouse, and there
comes over you, after a while, a sense of stifling that mixes with the
nightmare, usually constituting in this place an after-supper nap. In
the waking lethargy that succeeds, you feel as if jostled in dark vaults
by a mob of frantic Turks, labouring heavily to get breath, and sucking
in foul water for air.

Possibly when fully awakened you begin to consider that the Turks' Cellar
is not the most healthful place of recreation to be in; and, cleaving the
dense smoke, you ascend into sunlight. Perhaps you stroll to some place
where the air is better, but which may still have a story quite as
exciting as the catastrophe of the imperial bakehouse: perhaps to
Bertholdsdorf; a pretty little market-town with a tall-steepled church,
and a half ruined battlement, situated on the hill slope about six miles
to the south of Vienna. It forms a pretty summer day's ramble. Its
chronicler is the worthy Markt-richter, or Town-justice, Jacob
Trinksgeld; and his unvarnished story, freely translated, runs thus:--

"When the Turkish army, two hundred thousand strong without their allies,
raised the siege of Raab, the retreating