m gaudy enough when they
are, so to speak, off duty, when the choir is deserted, and there is
only here and there a solitary worshiper at his prayers; unless,
indeed, as it sometimes happens, when I fancy myself quite alone, I
come by chance upon a hundred people, in some remote corner before a
side chapel, where mass is going on, but so quietly that the sense of
solitude in the church is not disturbed. Sometimes, when the place
is left entirely to myself, and the servants who are putting it to
rights and, as it were, shifting the scenes, I get a glimpse of the
reality of all the pomp and parade of the services. At first I may
be a little shocked with the familiar manner in which the images and
statues and the gilded paraphernalia are treated, very different from
the stately ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at the
altar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd nave and
aisles. Then everything is sanctified and inviolate. Now, as I
loiter here, the old woman sweeps and dusts about as if she were in
an ordinary crockery store: the sacred things are handled without
gloves. And, lo! an unclerical servant, in his shirt-sleeves,
climbs up to the altar, and, taking down the silver-gilded cherubs,
holds them, head down, by one fat foot, while he wipes them off with
a damp cloth. To think of submitting a holy cherub to the indignity
of a damp cloth!

One could never say too much about the music here. I do not mean
that of the regimental bands, or the orchestras in every hall and
beer-garden, or that in the churches on Sundays, both orchestral and
vocal. Nearly every day, at half-past eleven, there is a parade by
the Residenz, and another on the Marian Platz; and at each the bands
play for half an hour. In the Loggie by the palace the music-stands
can always be set out, and they are used in the platz when it does
not storm; and the bands play choice overtures and selections from
the operas in fine style. The bands are always preceded and followed
by a great crowd as they march through the streets, people who seem
to live only for this half hour in the day, and whom no mud or snow
can deter from keeping up with the music. It is a little gleam of
comfort in the day for the most wearied portion of the community: I
mean those who have nothing to do.

But the music of which I speak is that of the conservatoire and
opera. The Hof Theater, opera, and conservatoire are all under one
royal direction. The latte