The American consul for Schlachtstadt had just turned out of the broad
Konig's Allee into the little square that held his consulate. Its
residences always seemed to him to wear that singularly uninhabited air
peculiar to a street scene in a theatre. The facades, with their stiff,
striped wooden awnings over the windows, were of the regularity, color,
and pattern only seen on the stage, and conversation carried on in the
street below always seemed to be invested with that perfect confidence
and security which surrounds the actor in his painted desert of urban
perspective. Yet it was a peaceful change to the other byways and
highways of Schlachtstadt which were always filled with an equally
unreal and mechanical soldiery, who appeared to be daily taken out of
their boxes of "caserne" or "depot" and loosely scattered all over
the pretty linden-haunted German town. There were soldiers standing on
street corners; soldiers staring woodenly into shop windows; soldiers
halted suddenly into stone, like lizards, at the approach of Offiziere;
Offiziere lounging stiffly four abreast, sweeping the pavement with
their trailing sabres all at one angle. There were cavalcades of
red hussars, cavalcades of blue hussars, cavalcades of Uhlans, with
glittering lances and pennons--with or without a band--formally
parading; there were straggling "fatigues" or "details" coming round
the corners; there were dusty, businesslike columns of infantry, going
nowhere and to no purpose. And they one and all seemed to be WOUND
UP--for that service--and apparently always in the same place. In the
band of their caps--invariably of one pattern--was a button, in the
centre of which was a square opening or keyhole. The consul was always
convinced that through this keyhole opening, by means of a key, the
humblest caporal wound up his file, the Hauptmann controlled his
lieutenants and non-commissioned officers, and even the general himself,
wearing the same cap, was subject through his cap to a higher moving
power. In the suburbs, when the supply of soldiers gave out, there
|