grand duchesses, some as demure as shoplifters, some as
graceful as _prime ballerini_, but none reaching so high a general level
of merit, none so thoroughly satisfying to eye and soul as Fraeulein
Sophie. She is a lady, every inch of her, a lady presenting to all
gentlemanly clients the ideal blend of cordiality and dignity, and she
serves the best beer in Christendom. Take away that beer, and it is
possible, of course, that Sophie would lose some minute granule or
globule of her charm; but take away Sophie and I fear the beer would
lose even more.

In fact, I know it, for I have drunk that same beer in the
Spatenbraeukeller in the Bayerstrasse, at all hours of the day and night,
and always the ultimate thrill was missing. Good beer, to be sure, and a
hundred times better than the common brews, even in Munich, but not
perfect beer, not beer _de luxe_, not super-beer. It is the human
equation that counts, in the _bierhalle_ as on the battlefield. One
resents, somehow a _kellnerin_ with the figure of a taxicab, no matter
how good her intentions and fluent her technique, just as one resents a
trained nurse with a double chin or a glass eye. When a personal office
that a man might perform, or even an intelligent machine, is put into
the hands of a woman, it is put there simply and solely because the
woman can bring charm to it and irradiate it with romance. If, now, she
fails to do so--if she brings, not charm, not beauty, not romance, but
the gross curves of an aurochs and a voice of brass--if she offers bulk
when the heart cries for grace and adenoids when the order is for music,
then the whole thing becomes a hissing and a mocking, and a grey fog is
on the world.

But to get back to the Hoftheatre Cafe. It stands, as I have said, in
the Residenzstrasse, where that narrow street bulges out into the
Max-Joseph-platz, and facing it, as its name suggests, is the
Hoftheatre, the most solemn-looking playhouse in Europe, but the scene
of appalling tone debaucheries within. The supreme idea at the
Hoftheatre is to get the curtain down at ten o'clock. If the bill
happens to be a short one, say "Haensel and Gretel" or "Elektra," the
three thumps of the starting mallet may not come until eight o'clock or
even 8:30, but if it is a long one, say "Parsifal" or "Les Huguenots," a
beginning is made far back in the afternoon. Always the end arrives at
ten, with perhaps a moment or two leeway in one direction or the other.
And two minu