ted from one station in
Vienna to the other driving about in an open carriage, and stopped for
a few moments in front of a cafe to drink beer and to feel solid earth
under them again, returning to the train with a feeling which was
almost that of getting back to their own rooms. Then they came to
great steppes covered with long thick grass, and flooded in places with
little lakes of broken ice; great horned cattle stood knee-deep in this
grass, and at the villages and way-stations were people wearing
sheepskin jackets and waistcoats covered with silver buttons. In one
place there was a wedding procession waiting for the train to pass,
with the friends of the bride and groom in their best clothes, the
women with silver breastplates, and boots to their knees. It seemed
hardly possible that only two days before they had seen another wedding
party in the Champs Elysees, where the men wore evening dress, and the
women were bareheaded and with long trains. In forty-eight hours they
had passed through republics, principalities, empires, and kingdoms,
and from spring to winter. It was like walking rapidly over a painted
panorama of Europe.

On the second evening Carlton went off into the smoking-car alone. The
Duke of Hohenwald and two of his friends had finished a late supper,
and were seated in the apartment adjoining it. The Duke was a young
man with a heavy beard and eyeglasses. He was looking over an
illustrated catalogue of the Salon, and as Carlton dropped on the sofa
opposite the Duke raised his head and looked at him curiously, and then
turned over several pages of the catalogue and studied one of them, and
then back at Carlton, as though he were comparing him with something on
the page before him. Carlton was looking out at the night, but he
could follow what was going forward, as it was reflected in the glass
of the car window. He saw the Duke hand the catalogue to one of the
equerries, who raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in assent.
Carlton wondered what this might mean, until he remembered that there
was a portrait of himself by a French artist in the Salon, and
concluded it had been reproduced in the catalogue. He could think of
nothing else which would explain the interest the two men showed in
him. On the morning following he sent Nolan out to purchase a
catalogue at the first station at which they stopped, and found that
his guess was a correct one. A portrait of himself had been reproduced