As it turned out, I found myself as free as air, and as obsequiously treated as royalty, and I might have gone home thinking that the German government was cruelly maligned by its subjects if I had not happened to go one evening to the Opera.
It was in summer, but there had been a cold rain-storm all day, and as the Opera House was excessively chilly, and it was not a full-dress occasion, but merely an out-of-season performance, with everybody wearing ordinary street clothes, I decided to keep on the light silk cloak I was wearing. But as I started for my seat I felt a tap on my shoulder, and one of the polite officials requested me to take off my cloak.
"Thank you: but I prefer to keep it on."
"You can't; it's forbidden. Es ist verboten."
"Forbidden? Why, what do you mean?"
"His Majesty the Emperor forbids any lady in the audience of the Royal and Imperial Opera House to keep on her cloak."
"But I've a cold, and the house is so chilly——"
The polite official had grown suddenly stern and bullying. "Take off your cloak," he ordered.
"I won't," I said.
We looked at each other hard for a minute—and I went in with my cloak on.