French -- Germany -- Fiction; French fiction -- Translations into English; Mystery fiction; Nobility -- Germany -- Fiction
I was very much tickled at the child-like delight of this barrack-room
savant at having an official place at a military ceremony. "What a world
of difference from our anti-militarist intellectuals," I thought,
without knowing for certain which of the two attitudes was the better.
The entire palace was in a state of extreme confusion. Officers in
full-dress uniform swarmed like ants. I met Kessel up to the eyes in it.
"The King arrives at nine o'clock," he said. "You should go to the
station. It will interest you. Meanwhile, if you like, you can watch the
review which the Grand Duke is holding at three o'clock on the
parade-ground."
I thanked him, but not wishing to take the gilt off the next day's
spectacle, and, if the truth must be told, feeling rather small and
absurd among all these folk in brilliant uniforms, I hid myself in the
library. There I began to jot down a few notes bearing on the young
Duke's next lesson on the history of Alexandrine Philosophy.
When I came out darkness had fallen, and I decided to go for a stroll in
the town. It was already illuminated. When I reached the middle of the
parade-ground I looked back, and the whole castle appeared before me in
a blaze of light. My childish pleasure in the coloured lights and fairy
lamps prevented me from noticing that the exhibition did not err on the
side of good taste. But in Germany there is always too much of
everything except that.
In the centre there was an enormous imperial eagle, ten yards high,
carried out in yellow lights. On the left the Würtemberg lion in red,
and on the right the Lautenburg lion in green. The difficulty of
distinguishing these animals with electric lamps had been a very serious
problem for the artist in charge, but in the end a fair measure of
success had been achieved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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