"The one fault I have to find with European life is the poor quality of
tobacco used."
It was eight o'clock, Thursday night, the night of the dinner at
Müller's. I was dressing when Max entered, with a miserable cheroot
between his teeth.
"They say," he went on, "that in Russia they drink the finest tea in
the world, simply because it is brought overland and not by sea.
Unfortunately, tobacco--we Americans recognize no leaf as tobacco
unless it comes from Cuba--has to cross the sea, and is, in some
unaccountable manner, weakened in the transit. There are worse cigars
in Germany than in France, and I wouldn't have believed it possible, if
I had not gone to the trouble of proving it. Fine country! For a week
I've been trying to smoke the German quality of the weed, as a
preventive, but I see I must give it up on account of my throat. My
boy, I have news for you,"--tossing the cheroot into the grate.
"Fire away," said I, struggling with a collar.
"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.