The long table in the public room, which was filled with tobacco smokers, could scarcely hold the number of guests, although they were sitting closely enough on the hard benches. At the upper end, especially, the crowd was great, for there the artists sat and drank in the full consciousness of their dignity and the hearty enjoyment of a free treat. The director, Mr. Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, presided as a matter of course. He had laid aside all the insignia of the last part he had played, except a few patches of rouge which still adorned his bloated face; he had taken off his nightcap and the blue-checked apron, together with the pillow with which it was stuffed. He appeared now in the comfortable and elegant costume of a gentleman who has relieved himself of his coat and waistcoat, and who forgets, in the consciousness of his artistic fame and of his broad, richly-embroidered suspenders, that his linen is not of the cleanest. Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, who sat on the right hand of his lord and master, had been compelled to make a greater alteration in his toilette, especially since the artistic wardrobe boasted only of a single suit of stockinet, and it was therefore of the utmost importance for him to do all that could be done in order to preserve its delicate whiteness. Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, wore a short, gray coat with green trimmings, and would have looked, all in all, far more like a handsome Tyrolese (which was, by-the-by, his real character) than the son of the land of mystery through which the Nile rolls its waves, if the narrow brass band which still confined his dark locks, and the broken German which he composed most artistically for the occasion, had not vouched for his mystic descent. There were two other artists sitting a little further down the table; one a modest, silent, tall man, who took his craft in earnest, and meditated deeply how he might introduce a new feature in his far-famed performance, the Gigantic Cask; the other, the clown of the company, a round, odd-looking creature, who produced a new grimace at every glass which he drank with a new guest, and thus proved the immense stock of those valuable commodities which he owned, since this process of touching glasses occurred on an average every five minutes.