The interior of the hall was, when seen by daylight, not altogether unornamented. The inspired hand of some house-painter had covered the wall spaces between the windows with bold landscape conceptions _al fresco_, where were to be seen, amid fabulous castles, cities, river-gorges, and wooded ravines, blue wanderers strolling about in green hats, and horsemen careering on chargers of very questionable anatomy, followed by dogs that belonged to no known race. In the dazzling blue sky above these outgrowths of a cheery decorator's fantasy, sometimes through a tree-top or the slanting pinnacle of a robber-castle, a society of carpenters' apprentices, which met here once a week, had driven large nails that they might hang up symmetrically their various diplomas, decorated with pictures and mottoes, and dotted with little balls. But, on the night of which we speak, all this splendor had disappeared behind a thick veil of growing plants. Tall evergreen bushes stood between the windows, and stretched their slender branches to the roof, so that the squalid walls seemed transformed into a tropical garden. A long, narrow table, with green, big-bellied flagons, occupied the middle of the room, and in a corner was a cask, about the polished tap of which hung a wreath of roses, while on a little table near by stood baskets with white rolls and a few plates of fruit. Only a few dozen chairs surrounded the table, and these were not more than half occupied, when Jansen and Felix entered the room. Through the light haze of lamplight and tobacco-smoke they could discern the pale face of Elfinger beside the battle-painter's blooming countenance; the fez-covered head of Edward Rossel, comfortably reclining in an American rocking-chair and smoking a chibouque; then one and another of the artists who had occasionally shown themselves in Jansen's studio. Nothing like a servant was anywhere to be seen; and each, as soon as he had emptied his glass, went himself to the cask and filled it. Some strolled, chatting, along the green hedge up and down the hall; others sat, absent and expectant, in their places, as though in a theatre before the beginning of the play; and only Fat Rossel, who alone rejoiced in a comfortable seat, seemed to blow clouds of smoke up to the ceiling as if already in a true paradisaic frame of mind.