“When may I learn to fly, papa? When may I have my little airship?”
“Do you see—even that you would regard as a toy!”
Three days later Toker’s guests were all assembled in the Rose-Palace at Lucerne. Not quite all, indeed, whom he had invited had responded to his invitation; still, only a few stars from the firmament of living celebrities had failed him. If it was a great privilege for the public to see gathered together in one spot such a multitude of famous men and women, and to hear them, it was for these guests themselves a still greater pleasure to meet their brethren and sisters of genius under one roof. Especially did the week that preceded the formal exercises offer the most delightful opportunity for quiet, intimate intercourse among those who had been in the habit of coming for several years. Many close friendships had already been formed. No one who had once been a guest at the Rose-Palace, however abounding in thoughts and experiences in his own right, departed from the place without having been enriched in many respects, without having gained a general deepening of knowledge and a broadening of the mental horizon. All kept throughout the year a delightful memory of the Rose-Days; an invitation to be present was a lofty object of ambition to those who had not as yet been guests there.
John A. Toker felt his heart swell with the most joyful pride as he joined the circle of his guests. Was it not the most noble assembly of kingly personages that the world possessed? At brilliant court festivities there might, indeed, be as many Excellencies, Highnesses, and Majesties gathered together, but the majority of these title-bearers would have sunk into oblivion in the next generation, while the names and works of the majority of Toker’s Rose-Court would be handed down to coming centuries.
In the hall of one of the first-class hotels at Lucerne at tea-time, chattering groups are scattered about in various corners and window-embrasures, separated from one another by potted plants and by pillars and screens which divide the immense room with its niches and bay-windows into practically small private parlors. The sofas and wide armchairs of light-green straw are decked with cushions covered with pale flowered silk and stuffed with eiderdown.
The larger and smaller groups and the solitary persons sitting here and there, drinking tea, had evidently come from all parts of the world. Although a certain international uniformity causes people to be differentiated rather by the classes to which they belong than by their nationalities, still there are certain indications by which one can tell with some certainty by the external appearance whether the persons met with are English or French, Germans or Americans, Slavs or Italians. In this great hall you could also see some specimens of quite exotic nationalities, for several Japanese and an East Indian Rajah were present.
Two men, sitting at a small table on which the waiter had just set a service of various liqueurs, were amusing themselves in guessing what country this or that person, seated near them or passing by, came from.
“See, that family with the three tall daughters, the haughty mother, and the papa reading the newspaper, is certainly English.”
“That was not difficult to detect since that gigantic newspaper is the ‘Times.’”
“That pretty little lady there, decked with tassels and ribbons, and at the same time flirting with the three men talking with her so vivaciously, must be a Parisian.”