Girls strolled along in parties of three or four, arm in arm, modestly lowering their eyes under the insolent stares of the officers.
I dined at the Lohengrin tavern, the largest and most ornate in Lautenburg. You remember the roundabouts of our childhood. The part reserved for the band and the old blear-eyed, tinsel-covered nag bears a very striking resemblance to a fashionable German tavern. They are the only places, I think, where people can smoke without inconvenience. The clouds of tobacco smoke which rise to the ceiling suggest nothing so much as a rabelaisian Walhalla. It was striking eight when yells of "Hoch! hoch!" in the street brought the diners en masse to the door. Amid a forest of sabres a squadron of dragoons was on its way to the station to act as guard of honour to the King of Würtemberg and General von Eichhorn.
There was such a mob around the station that I gave up any idea of trying to get in. It was from a corner of the Roon Strasse that I managed to get a glimpse, through the hedge of dragoons, of the car in which the Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus and the King of Würtemberg were sitting opposite my pupil and General von Eichhorn.
I was absolutely deafened by the noise. From one café I had to flee in terror of immediate asphyxiation. Students standing on the table declaimed, sang and bawled out their slogans while tossing off the contents of colossal pewter mugs. Under blinding electric standards in the streets women, dressed in the fashion of 1900, with hats slanting skywards and hopelessly drunk, mingled the eternal pan-German "Hoch!" with suggestive invitations.
As I turned the corner of the Königsplatz, on my way back to the castle, I passed by the officers' mess. For one second the bright window revealed to me the pandemonium within. Through the thick curtain of smoke I caught a glimpse of some thirty men, and, stretched on the table among the flowers and pools of wine, two naked women.
* * * * * *
At eight o'clock Pastor Silbermann, at the Tempel in the Siegstrasse, and Monsignor Kreppel in the Cathedral, celebrated the offices of the respective cults, to which the soldiers of the Catholic and Reformed confessions were conducted in detachments. Then at ten o'clock came the review.
The weather favoured the 7th Lautenburg Hussars. The sun shone bright and cold. From the square you could see the black leaves, gripped by the gentle westerly breeze, fall slowly from the castle trees into the Melna. I have said before that from my room I could not see the parade-ground where the review was to be held. But rising at daybreak I was in time to watch the 182nd Prussian Infantry Regiment, of which two companies had been told off for general police duties, crossing the Königsplatz en route to its post. The immense throng filled my heart with the joy of those who know that their seats are reserved.
At seven o'clock I was ready, although I had quite decided not to turn out until much later, certainly not before the stands were half full. I picked up some book and tried to read it, not stopping to analyse the reasons for my growing excitement.
At nine o'clock the noise below became so marked and insistent that I thought I could go down without looking absurd. How small and insignificant I felt crossing the great square, the emptiness of which was emphasized by the enormous crowd gathered round it, only kept within bounds by a cordon of infantry with fixed bayonets. The stands were three-quarters full when I arrived, and I should have had considerable difficulty in finding my place if I hadn't seen a hat frantically waved to attract my attention. It was Count de Marçais.