"I have a box of Havanas over at the custom house that I forgot to bail out."
"No!" said I joyfully. A Havana, and one of Scharfenstein's!
"I've an idea that they would go well with the dinner. So, if you don't mind, I'll trot over and get 'em."
"Be sure and get around to Müller, at half-past eight, then," said I.
"I'll be there." He knew where to find the place.
Müller's Rathskeller was the rendezvous of students, officers and all those persons of quality who liked music with their meat. The place was low-ceilinged, but roomy, and the ventilation was excellent, considering. The smoke never got so thick that one couldn't see the way to the door when the students started in to "clean up the place," to use the happy idiom of mine own country. There were marble tables and floors and arches and light, cane-bottomed chairs from Kohn's. It was at once Bohemian and cosmopolitan, and, once inside, it was easy to imagine oneself in Vienna. A Hungarian orchestra occupied an inclosed platform, and every night the wail of the violin and the pom-pom of the wool-tipped hammers on the Hungarian "piano" might be heard.
It was essentially a man's place of entertainment; few women ever had the courage or the inclination to enter. In America it would have been the fashion; but in the capital of Barscheit the women ate in the restaurant above, which was attached to the hotel, and depended upon the Volksgarten band for their evening's diversion.
You had to order your table hours ahead—that is, if you were a civilian. If you were lucky enough to be an officer, you were privileged to take any vacant chair you saw. But Heaven aid you if you attempted to do this not being an officer! In Barscheit there were also many unwritten laws, and you were obliged to observe these with all the fidelity and attention that you gave to the enameled signs. Only the military had the right to request the orchestra to repeat a piece of music. Sometimes the lieutenants, seized with that gay humor known only to cubs, would force the orchestra in Müller's to play the Hungarian war-song till the ears cried out in pain. This was always the case when any Austrians happened to be present. But ordinarily the crowds were good-natured, boisterous, but orderly.
It was here, then, that I had arranged to give my little dinner. The orchestra had agreed—for a liberal tip—to play The Star-Spangled Banner, and there was a case of Doppelkinn's sparkling Moselle. I may as well state right here that we neither heard our national anthem nor drank the vintage. You will soon learn why. I can laugh now, I can treat the whole affair with becoming levity, but at the time I gained several extra grey hairs.
If the princess hadn't turned around, and if Max hadn't wanted that box of Havanas!