The young councilmen of Ruechenstein, their new-won friends, rode out some little distance without the city gates to welcome them, and led them a bit crestfallen within. The strong entrance gate had had that ominous black paint scratched off as much as had been found feasible, had then been plentifully whitewashed and decorated with wreaths. But just within this gate the guests found the whole contingent of Ruechenstein's town mercenaries in rank and file, clad in full armor and looking like brawny warriors indeed. These escorted the guests, rattling and clanging in their iron harness, through the shady and rather dark streets, with fierce mien. The people of the town peered mute but curious out of their windows, as though their guests had been beings from another world. When one of the gay Seldwylians gazed upwards at the ladies leaning out of their windows, these would at once duck and disappear. Their menfolk, though, flattened the tips of their long noses against the greenish window panes, in order to observe as closely as possible the spectacle of bare female necks, such as the Seldwyla ladies offered. Thus, then, the whole cavalcade finally reached the huge hall inside the town house, and that looked ornate but forbiddingly austere. Walls and ceiling were decorated entirely with black-tinted oak, here and there gilt. A long, long banqueting board was covered with beautiful linen, and woven into it were foliage, stags, huntsmen and dogs of green silk picked out with thin gold wire. Above this were further spread dainty napkins of snowy white damask, and these again on nearer sight exhibited patterns woven into them representing rather broadly joyous scenes from Roman and Greek mythology, such as would have been least expected in this grave concourse. Thickly grouped there stood on this festal table everything which at that time belonged to a gala meal, and what particularly claimed the attention of the Seldwyla observers was a number of truly magnificent pieces of tableware--some of them being in repoussé work, some round and some in relief, a glittering world of nymphs, fauns, nude demigods and heroes, with lovely feminine forms intermingled. Even the chief table ornament, a warship in solid silver, with sails spread and bellying in the breeze, otherwise very respectable and officially stiff, showed as its emblem a Galathea of the most opulent forms.