At the Karnthner Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed.  Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the Academie Royale.  Meyerbeer’s brilliant and original conceptions, in turning the chorus into an oral orchestra, are better realized.  A French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights.  Carl, the rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston of Vienna.  The former of these excellent actors is certainly the most successful farce-writer in Germany.  Without any of Raimund’s sentimental-humorous dialogue, he has a far happier eye for character, and only the untranslatable dialect of Vienna has preserved him from foreign play-wrights.

Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty’s ambassador, whose unbounded and truly sumptuous hospitalities are worthy of his high position, did me the honour to take me to one of Princess Metternich’s receptions, in the apartments of the chancery of state, one side of which is devoted to business, the other to the private residence of the minister.  After passing through a vestibule on the first floor, paved with marble, we entered a well-lighted saloon of palatial altitude, at the further end of which sat the youthful and fascinating princess, in conversation with M. Bailli de Tatischeff ex-ambassador of Russia.

There, almost blind and bent double with the weight of eighty years, sat the whilom profoundly sagacious diplomatist, whose accomplished manners and quick perception of character have procured him a European reputation.  He quitted public business some years ago, but even in retirement Vienna had its attractions for him.  There is an unaccountable fascination in a residence in this capital; those who live long in it become ipsis Vindobonensibus Vindobonensiores.

Prince Metternich, who was busy when we entered with a group, examining some views of Venice, received me with that quaker-like simplicity which forms the last polish of the perfect gentleman and man of the world; “les extremes se touchent,” in manners as in literature:  but for the riband of the Golden Fleece, which crossed his breast, there was nothing to remind me that I was conversing with the statesman, who, after the armistice of Plesswitz, held the destinies of all Europe in his hands.  After some conversation, the prince asked me to call upon him on a certain forenoon.

Most of the diplomatic corps were present, one of whom was the amiable and well-known Marshal Saldanha, who, a few years ago, played so prominent a part in the affairs of Portugal.  The usual resources of whist and the tea-buffet changed the conversational circle, and at midnight there was a general movement to the Kleine Redouten Saal, where the Armen Ball had attracted so crowded an assemblage, that more than one archduchess had her share of elbowing.