Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

Rautschin, still Rautschin! -- the tiny town lying at the feet of the huge castle on the tower of which the clock has stopped for twenty years -- but no longer in pouring rain with thunder and lightning, but Rautschin beneath skies of sapphire blue, upon a hot July afternoon.

The sun was still high in the heavens. The crooked little row of houses on one side of the Market Square, cast short, black shadows, the national red kerchiefs, with broad borders of gay flowers hanging at the door of the principal shop, fluttered gently in the summer breeze. A melancholy hubbub of discords, struggling in vain for a solution, was heard through the open window of one of the newest and ugliest houses. Eugene Alexander Cibulka, and the wife of the district commissioner, were playing Wagner's 'Walkuere,' arranged for four hands, and each had again 'lost the place. ' They regularly lose the place every time a leaf is turned, and so the one who gets first to the bottom of the page, very kindly waits for the other.