STORIES IN LIGHT AND SHADOW




"UNSER KARL"


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