OFFICERS AT A MASQUERADE
During the last days of January the Casino was in an uproar. A number of mechanics, painters, and florists were busy transforming the rooms and corridors, even the veranda, with its adjoining conservatory, into a suite of daintily decorated festal halls. Numerous booths and tents were being erected, and all other preparations were made worthily to receive Prince Carnival, whose coming was timed for the first week in February.
Hundreds of potted plants and orange and laurel trees from the conservatory gave a gay and summer-like appearance to the ballroom. Placards painted and inscribed in suitable manner hung from the walls. In the booths and tents the usual array of eatables and “wet goods” of every description could be seen, to be sold by pretty womenfolk. One stage had been fitted up for variety performances, while on another a circus was to be seen, in which a number of private soldiers, disguised as wild beasts, were to play leading parts under the eyes and whip of the trainer—none other than Captain Kahle. These men had been drilled for the purpose throughout the whole month.
There was also a stretch of natural greensward, laid down by the Casino gardener. This was to produce the illusion of a small park. Benches placed on it invited the guests to rest and to enjoy the music of a band upon a suitable stand, while Pilsen beer was to be handed to the audience by waiters. In an adjoining room mock marriages were to be performed, the fee to the officiating justice of the peace to consist in the purchase of a bottle of champagne. And, to complete the scene, arrangements had also been made to obtain a quick decree of divorce (by the same official) for all those couples who deemed themselves mismated after a short experience of an hour or so.
The large dining-room represented picnic grounds. On a platform wreathed in green there was room for an orchestra, and the trumpeters of the regiment had been ransacking the whole town for weeks in order to find ragged costumes and discarded garments of every kind, clad in which they were to represent village musicians.
Even photographers were there, to ply their trade in several tents, the outside of which showed a collection of ludicrous portraits and prints of various kinds. The purpose of this stratagem was, of course, to attract customers.
Naturally all these festivities, planned for weeks, formed the main topic of conversation with the members of the club, and the whole garrison was for the time being turned topsy-turvy. Every one intended to appear in as original and amusing a guise as possible, and there was much mutual consulting and guessing as to which particular rôle was to be assumed by each person.
Thus the opening night of the fête drew near. During the afternoon a crowd of hairdressers moved into the Casino, to assist members of the club in getting themselves up properly. The regimental tailor, with his aides, went from one officer’s house to another, making alterations or needed repairs on the uniforms and costumes to be donned.
At seven in the evening the orderlies, in the black garments of waiters, were expecting the guests and members, and half an hour later these began to arrive in crowds.
It was a multi-colored, vivid picture, as all these persons, many of them good-looking and picturesquely attired, in all sorts of disguises, began to move in the brilliantly lighted halls, while the several bands, placed at coigns of vantage, struck up lively and inspiring airs. Dancing began at once, and champagne flowed in streams. At a garden table under an orange tree one could see a powerfully limbed peasant, his hawthorn stick between his knees, devouring a plateful of caviare, while his neighbor, a circus clown, was dissecting a lobster.