Lieutenant von Meckelburg, during the earlier part of the evening, stuck resolutely and almost silently to his assigned duty, it being that of an organ-grinder. He had picked up somewhere a villainous specimen of this instrument of torture, and with it had retired into a corner, wearing the ragged and faded clothes of an impecunious veteran of the wars, with his visorless, crumpled cap pulled over his eyes, and with a face which for unadulterated melancholy could not be duplicated. Hardly any one took notice of him, and his physiognomy grew sadder and sadder. At last, however, he left his organ in its corner, and visited the various bars where champagne could be had. With each generous libation his features cleared, and finally he got himself into a decidedly hilarious condition, and not only moved with his organ into the centre of the greensward, where he placed it on one of the benches, but accompanied its shrill and squeaking notes with a mellow basso of his own. The bands meanwhile played their best and merriest, and as several casks of beer and some dozen bottles of cheap spirits had been provided for them, the members, both trumpeters of the regiment and civilian musicians hired for the night, devoted no inconsiderable portion of the intervals between their playing to frequent and prolonged visits to that small side-room where these drinkables had been placed ready for use. After a while they dispensed even with such formalities. They rolled the remaining casks up the steps of their podium, and shortly the faucet could be espied from among the greenery, and the musicians hovering about it. As a matter of course, their playing soon showed the effects of all this tippling. One man particularly, one of the flageolets, became quite unmanageable,--or rather the instrument on which he was performing,--so that it usually was the space of a second or two ahead of the others. This weird music only ended with the removal of flageolet and man from the scene. At eleven began the festal performance on the small stage constructed for the purpose.