Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

Picture a sleepy little market-town lying, at a respectful distance, near a very large castle, where the clock in the tower has not gone for twenty years; a ruggedly uneven market-place, thickly paved with sharp stones and no sidewalk, queer old-fashioned houses with high-gabled roofs and small windows, and here and there a faded-out image of the Virgin above an arched gateway, a tradesman's shop serving as post-office as well as for the sale of tobacco, and adorned over the doorway with a wreath of wooden lemons and pomegranates, and the imperial double-eagle, a corner where stands a piled-up carrier's van covered with black oilskin, a smithy sending forth from its dark interior a shower of crimson sparks, while from the low passage-way of the opposite inn, 'The Golden Lion,' a waiter with a dirty apron, and bare feet thrust into old red slippers, is gazing over at the smithy where a crowd of dripping street boys are collected about two thoroughbreds and a groom liveried in the English fashion -- picture all this and you see Rautschin, -- Rautschin on a dark afternoon in May in a pouring rain with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

Somewhat apart from the gaping urchins a young man is walking to and fro in front of the row of houses; his quick impatient step testifies to his having been detained by some untoward mishap and also to his being quite unused to such delay.