After This Digression Let Us Hurry Right Back To That Loyal Berliner
Whom We Left Seated In The Palais Du Danse On The Behrenstrasse,
Waiting For The Hour Of Two In The Morning To Come.
The hour of
two in the morning does come; the lights die down; the dancers
pick up their heavy
Feet - it takes an effort to pick up those
Continental feet - and quit the waxen floor; the Oberkellner comes
round with his gold chain of office dangling on his breast and
collects for the wine, and our German friend, politely inhaling
his yawns, gets up and goes elsewhere to finish his good time.
And, goldarn it, how he does dread it! Yet he goes, faithful soul
that he is.
He goes, let us say, to the Pavilion Mascotte - no dancing, but
plenty of drinking and music and food - which opens at two and stays
open until four, when it shuts up shop in order that another place
in the nature of a cabaret may open. And so, between five and six
o'clock in the morning of the new day, when the lady garbagemen
and the gentlemen chambermaids of the German capital are abroad
on their several duties, he journeys homeward, and so, as Mr. Pepys
says, to bed, with nothing disagreeable to look forward to except
repeating the same dose all over again the coming night. This
sort of thing would kill anybody except a Prussian - for, mark you,
between intervals of drinking he has been eating all night; but
then a Prussian has no digestion.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 157 of 341
Words from 42375 to 42634
of 93169
