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When off duty in Calcutta the pilot goes to his club and drives on the Maidan with other Anglo-Indians of quality, and never is seen about hotel bars and cafés like the ruck of seafaring men having a spare day on shore. The Hooghly is charted practically every twenty-four hours, and on his way upstream the pilot gets his information pertaining to depths and bars by signals from stations on shore.
These, however, were far from being a proof of suffering; they were evidently a relief to the surcharged spirit. One evening, a little before sunset, they found themselves in the crowded piazza of Saint Mark. The cafes were thronged with noble Venetians, come to witness the evening parade of an Austrian regiment.
Besides, the officers of the Blue Hussars, who arrogantly rattled their big instruments of death on the pavements, did not seem to have for the plain citizens enormously more contempt than the officers of the French Chasseurs who, the year before, had been drinking in the same Cafes.
As the day declined, many of the scattered loungers crowded into the Boulevards; the cafes and restaurants began to light up. About this time a young man, who might be some five or six and twenty, was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, heeding little the throng through which he glided his solitary way: there was that in his aspect and bearing which caught attention.
Perhaps the cafes are more crowded; passengers in the streets stop each other more often, and converse in small knots and groups; yet, on the whole, there is little externally to show how loudly the heart of Paris is beating.
Meanwhile, as the child sprang rapidly into precocious youth, he was permitted a liberty in his hours of leisure of which he availed himself with all the zest of his earlier habits and adventurous temper. He formed acquaintances among the loose young haunters of cafes and spendthrifts of that capital, the wits!
Around these stables were numerous cafés, and a collection of people of various nationalities were gathered in front and within them. Arabs, negroes, Bedouins, and others were consuming spicy drinks; a group of Persians in picturesque costumes were regaling themselves with great dough-balls, made of flour, sugar, and milk; and dirty visitors from Cabul were feeding themselves on dates.
The population of over a hundred thousand is indeed a mixed one. Tiflis is a city of contrasts. The principal boulevard, with its handsome stone buildings and shops, tramways, gay cafés, and electric light, would compare favourably with the Nevski Prospect in St.
The radiance of the cafes was exchanged for darkness; whispering groups of residents broke up hurriedly and locked themselves into their homes, where they put up the shutters and drew in their tricolored Belgian flags.
The cafés were once more thronged. Semi-weekly concerts were given in the Plaza Principal by the band of the Eleventh Infantry and the Banda del Bomberos, in alternation. Balls, dinner-parties, and flirtations resumed their interrupted course, gathering new zest and brilliancy from the foreign element within the gates.
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