Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/538

 deputies, and governmental and city officials of various sorts, were sitting. Then followed other guests, whom I classed as savants and university professors; for I had recognized some of my former teachers among them.

In the Bohemian literary world I knew—at that time—only Pfleger, who was related to my friend, and our beloved poet Neruda, who had been my teacher and my friend’s. Both of them, and many others, I found among the guests, engaged in a lively discourse.

Our friends who failed to come to the inn when I invited them were also present, and sat at a table near by that of the men of letters.

I might perhaps have recognized many other prominent personages, had I not been interrupted in my observations. One of the lackeys, passing by, stopped before me. I recognized an old acquaintance of my early years, when I used to be almost an everyday guest in the castle or in the park.

“Come, at last!” he said, in a low voice; and his gray, deep-set little eyes glittered with a peculiar flame. “I must instantly announce that you have arrived. Please step down into the hall, and take a seat at the middle table.” He pointed to the table where our friends were seated.

“Why at that table, exactly?” I asked.

“Because it has been so ordered,” answered the poor fellow, who had been doing nothing else during all his life but obeying orders.

“But why?”

“I do not know, and I need not know. But it cannot be otherwise. Look how the guests are seated. There noblemen sit in a group; opposite them are the divines; here are the officials, and so forth. ‘Each to his fellows,’ was our motto. Thus there are seated in separate groups the physicians, lawyers, philosophers, architects, sculptors, actors, opera-singers, painters, musicians, authors, and so on; even the people that have no calling are seated together.”

“But why all this? No such ceremonies have ever been observed here!” I remarked.