at I escaped with so slight a punishment.

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHAT MY LANDLORD BELIEVED.

My Bohemian landlord in Vienna told me a story of an English nobleman.
It may be worth relating, as showing what my landlord, quite in good
faith and earnest, believed.

You know, Lieber Herr, said Vater Bohm, there is nothing in the whole
Kaiserstadt so astonishing to strangers as our signboards. Those
beautiful paintings that you see--Am Graben and Hohe Markt,--real works
of art, with which the sign-boards of other countries are no more to be
compared, than your hum-drum English music is to the delicious waltzes of
Lanner, or the magic polkas of Strauss. Imagine an Englishman, who knows
nothing of painting, finding himself all at once in front of one of those
charming compositions--pictures that they would make a gallery of in
London, but which we can afford to put out of doors; he is fixed, he is
dumb with astonishment and delight--he goes mad. Well, Lieber Herr, this
is exactly what happened to one of your English nobility. Milor arrived
in Vienna; and as he had made a wager that he would see every notability
in the city and its environs in the course of three days, which was all
the time he could spare, he hired a fiaker at the Tabor-Linie, and drove
as fast as the police would let him from church to theatre; from museum
to wine-cellar; till chance and the fiaker brought him into the Graben.
Milor got out to stretch himself, and to see the wonderful shops, and
after a few turns came suddenly upon the house at the sign of the Joan of
Arc.

"Goddam!" exclaimed Milor, as his eye met the sign-board.

There he stood, this English nobleman, in his drab coat with pearl
buttons, his red neckcloth, blue pantaloons and white hat, transfixed for
at least five minutes. Then, swearing some hard oaths--a thing the
English always do when they are particularly pleased--Milor exclaimed,
"It is exquisite! Holy Lord Mayor, it is unbelievable!"

Mein Lieber, you have seen that painting of course, I mean Joan of Arc,
life-size, clad in steel, sword in hand, and with a wonderful serenity
expressed in her countenance, as she leads her flagging troops once more
to the attack upon the walls. It has all the softness of a Coreggio, and
the vigour of a Rubens. Milor gave three bounds, and was in the middle
of the shop in a moment.

"That picture!" he exclaimed.

"What picture--Eurer Gnaden?" inquired the shopkeeper, bowing in the m