A CHILD OF WAR 9
spent some time in Paris and then returned to Vienna for a second
visit in January, 1836. This time he did not work for a master
tailor, but made various trimmings, artificial flowers, and ribbons
which he sold to ladies' tailors. He had a room at the home of a
shoemaker's widow, and shared it with three rather stupid com
panions. During his sojourn in Vienna, he may have talked fre
quently about the conditions of the laboring class in Austria with
Josef Schastag, a worker who was later tried for treason, but there
is no evidence to show that Weitling himself was involved in any
way in political activity. The severe penalties prescribed for com
munist agitators no doubt persuaded the young tailor that it would
be wise to act circumspectly.
The Habsburg capital made a deep and lasting and, on the
whole, very pleasing impression on the young journeyman. Years
after, in his Die Republik der Arbeiter, the labor paper which he
published in New York in the 1850's, he liked to recall that in all
the months he spent in Vienna, he had never seen any but genial,
friendly Viennese. In Vienna, visitors were not suspected of being
potential thieves, and waiters did not stand by with open palms,
demanding immediate payment for what their guests had ordered.
The attitude of the Viennese toward each other and toward visi
tors from other areas was marked by "mutual trust."
Weitling reported that he had never seen a disastrous fire in
Vienna; he remembered the marvelous baked goods which filled
the tables in the taverns; he recalled the strange practice of faithful
Catholics who brought food and drink to the churches on Easter
to be blessed by the priests; and he had watched an elaborate
parade in Vienna on the occasion when an old hat, supposedly
worn by Francis I in his battles against Napoleon, was carried with
pomp and ceremony to its final resting place in the city's museum.
Perhaps Vienna continued to evoke such pleasant memories
primarily because it was there that Weitling had his first youthful
adventure with a beautiful and romantic lady. His activity as a
maker of artificial flowers and decorations for women's apparel
brought him in contact with a young woman who also was the