The Grafin, who had recovered her calm in the presence of her inferiors of the middle classes, put up her eyeglasses and examined them with interest and indulgence. Helena stared. The cousin twisted his little moustache, standing beside us protectingly, very elegant and slender and nonchalant, and remarked at intervals, "Fabelhafte Enthusiasmus, was?"
It came into my mind that Beerbohm Tree must sometimes look on like that at a successful dress rehearsal of his well-managed stage crowds, with the same nonchalant satisfaction at the excellent results, so well up to time, of careful preparation.
Of course I said "Colossal" to the cousin, when he expressed his satisfaction more particularly to me.
"Dreckiges Yolk, die Russen" he remarked, twisting his little moustache's ends up. "Werden lernen was es heisst, frech sein gegen uns. Wollen sie blau und schwartz dreschen."
You know German, so I needn't take its peculiar flavour out by transplanting the young man's remarks.
"_Oh pardon—aber meine Gnadigste—tausendmal pardon—" he protested the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and therefore not satisfactionsfahig as they say, he merely called him an infame and verfluchte Bengel and smacked his face so hard that he would have been knocked down if there had been room to fall in.
As it was, he was only hurled violently against the side of a man in a black coat and straw hat who looked like an elderly confidential clerk, so respectable and complete with his short grey beard and spectacles, who was evidently the father, for he instantly on his own account smacked the boy on his other ear, and sweeping off his hat entreated the Herr Leutnant to forgive the boy on account of his extreme youth.
The cousin, whom by now I didn't like, was beginning very severely to advise the parent jolly well to see to it, or German words to that effect, that his idiotic boy didn't repeat such insolences, or by hell, etc., etc., when there was such a blast of extra noise and hurrahing that the rest of his remarks were knocked out of his mouth. It was the Kaiser, come out on the balcony of the palace.
The cousin became rigid, and stood at the salute. The air seemed full of hats and handkerchiefs and delirious shrieking. The Kaiser put up his hand.
"Majestat is going to speak," exclaimed the Grafin, her calm fluttered into fragments.