night's wage, assist the skirmish on with incendiary quip and tender touch of foot and similar cantharides of financial amour. And we track them later to such institutions as the Fledermaus—"der grosse luxuriöse, vornehmstes vergnügungsplatz, paradiesgarten, grösste sehenswürdigkeit Berlins" (in the advertisements)—as the Victoria and the Café Riche, the Westminster and the Café Opéra and—
* * *
"Berlin spirit, huh!" they are telling their wives a month later—"Berlin spirit? All artificial. Just to make money out of the visitors. And very sordid!"
* * *
Ah, Cairo dreaming in the Nile's moon-haze—are you to be judged thus by the narrow street that snakes into the dark of Bulak? And Budapest by the Danube—are you to be judged by the wreckage of the Stefansplatz that has drifted on your shores? And you, Vienna, and you, Paris—
