Marco Davos left Ischl on the midday train, that picturesque,
huddled Austrian watering-place was stuffy. He was surprised then most
pleasantly by the coolness of Aussee, further down the line in the
direction of Vienna. Ischl is not a bad place, but it lies, as the
natives say, smothered in a kettle. He rode over from the station to the
stadt park, where the band was playing. There he dismounted, for he was
going further--Aussee is not very interesting, but it principally serves
as a good starting-point for trips to many of the charming lakes with
which Styria is dotted. After asking his way, Davos passed the swimming
baths, and keeping on the left bank of a tiny stream, he presently found
himself walking through an earthly paradise. Since his advent in Ischl,
where he drank the waters and endeavoured to quiet his overtaxed nerves,
he had made up his mind to visit Alt-Aussee; several Viennese friends
had assured him that this hamlet, beneath a terrific precipice and on
the borders of a fairy-like lake, would be well worth the while.

It was a relief to breathe the thinner mountain air, and the young
artist inhaled it with satisfaction, his big hat in hand, his long curly
black hair flowing in the gentle breeze. He found himself in tunnels of
verdure, the sunlight shut off by the heavy leafage; then the path
debouched into the open and, skirting closely the rocky wall, it widened
into an island of green where a shady pagoda invited. He sat down for a
few minutes and congratulated himself that he had escaped the intimate
discomforts of the omnibus he discerned on the opposite bank, packed
with stout people. This was the third week of his vacation, one enforced
by a nerve specialist in the Austrian capital, and for the first time
Davos felt almost cheerful. Perhaps the absolute hush of the country and
the purity of the atmosphere, with its suggestion of recent rain,--the
skies weep at least once a day in the Salzkammergut region,--proved a
welcome foil to fashionable Ischl, with its crowds, its stiffness, its
court ceremonial--for the emperor enjoys his _villegiatura_ there. And
Davos was sick and irritable after a prolonged musical season. He had
studied the pianoforte with Rosenthal, and his success, from his debut,
had been so unequivocal that he played too much in public. There was a
fiery particle in his interpretations of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt
that proclaimed the temperament, if not the actual possession, of
ge