The dining-room was a long apartment with three windows. Its walls were perfectly bare, and the old white-lace curtains made them seem still more cold and unhomelike. A narrow table, whose uneven width betrayed that it had been formed of several sets of boards, occupied the center; its cloth was not fine, but exquisitely clean. About fourteen rude wooden chairs were ranged around it, all as yet unoccupied, and the number of guests, who stood chatting together in the window-niches, seemed still incomplete. I was presented, as an old friend of the family and embryo student of the dramatic art, first to a married couple, Herr and Frau Selmar, who eyed me in unfriendly silence. These two oldest members of the company, as I afterward learned, were in a chronic state of dissatisfaction with everything and everybody except themselves. Probably there is no class of persons among whom the type of character embodying cureless, arrogant pride, may so frequently be found as amid the older dramatic artists, whose profession compels them to attach value to their personality, to long passionately for momentary triumphs, and to be on their guard against any rivalry. Herr Selmar, who took the parts of the stage fathers and blustering old men, considered himself still young enough for the lover's roles in which the manager shone, and his faded wife, who years before had bewitched all hearts by her personal charms as much as by her acting, could not now feel satisfied to fill the characters of old women and mothers. They had just been venting their irritation concerning some jealous grievance to each other, and I admired the good-natured cheerfulness with which the manager gradually soothed them. True, he was most ably assisted in doing so by the droll quips interposed by a tall, thin man of uncertain age, dressed in a greenish summer suit. The latter was presented to me as Herr Laban, comedian of the company, and as, spite of my uncomfortable mood, I could not help laughing heartily at his quaint jests, a sort of friendly familiarity instantly arose between us, and he took the seat next me at table. Frau Luise sat at the head, and on a high cushion in the chair at her right was the little boy, who managed his knife and fork very prettily from his miniature throne. Her husband occupied the seat at her left, then came the Selmar couple, I sat next the child, and with tender delight rendered him all sorts of little services. A few of the lesser lights of the company joined us, and, just as the soup was served, a dilatory pair appeared, in whom I recognized the young man and his companion who had attracted my attention while sitting on the bench in front of the village tavern. "Herr Daniel Kontzky--Fraeulein Victorine."