A Feast of Demons

Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction March 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
If you want my opinion, old Maxwell should have kept his big mouth shut ... and then El Greco could not have put Earth in a frame!
hat year we were all Romans, and I have to tell you that I look awful in a toga and short sword, but not nearly as awful as the Greek.
You go to one of the big schools and naturally you turn out for the Class Reunion. Why not? There's money there, and good fellowship, and money, and the chance of a business contact that will do you some good. And money.
Well, I wasn't that fortunate—and you can say that again because it's the story of my life: I wasn't that fortunate.
I didn't go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale. I didn't even go to Columbia, U.C.L.A. or the University of Chicago. What I went to was Old Ugly. Don't lie to me—you never heard of Old Ugly, not even if I tell you it's Oglethorpe A. & M. There were fifty-eight of us in my graduating class—that's 1940—and exactly thirty turned up for the tenth reunion.
Wouldn't that turn your stomach? Only thirty Old Grads with enough loyalty and school feeling to show up for that tenth reunion and parade around in Roman togas and drink themselves silly and renew old school ties. And, out of that thirty, the ones that we all really wanted to see for sentimental reasons—I refer to Feinbarger of Feinbarger Shipping, Schroop of the S.S.K. Studios in Hollywood, Dixon of the National City Bank and so on—they didn't show up at all. It was terribly disappointing to all of us, especially to me.
In fact, at the feast that evening, I found myself sitting next to El Greco. There simply wasn't anyone else there. You understand that I don't refer to that Spanish painter—I believe he's dead, as a matter of fact. I mean Theobald Greco, the one we called the Greek.
introduced myself and he looked at me blearily through thick glasses. Hampstead? Hampstead?