The two Bolsheviki, Leo Puppsky and Isidore Wildkatz, had been relegated to the foot of the table where they sat hunched up and scowling about them until noodle soup presently preoccupied them.
I do not know which one of my guests was the noisiest: the Tsar of all the Bulgars sucked up his soup with the distressingly acute sound of a sick horse drinking; the Princess Pudelstoff lapped and slobbered and wheezed in her slopping plate; but the technique of the Bolsheviki was simple and more effective, being reduced to a primitive, incessant gobbling noise, followed by patient and persistent scraping.
Behind my chair stood Raoul as extemporary butler; Thusis and Clelia in spotless caps and aprons sped lightly hither and thither; while from the depths of the kitchen, Josephine Vannis fed us all with the most delectable dinner which I think I ever tasted.
Ordinary wine being included on my bill of fare, the Tsar guzzled it while his sly eye of a wild pig roved about reading labels on the various bottles of more expensive wine ordered by the others.
The Bolsheviki, having plenty of the Russian people's money, demanded "bowcoo tchimpagne"; King Tino drank goblets of a rather heavy claret; his wife sipped only bottled water, while her cold, steely eyes glittered from guest to guest.
I conversed politely when spoken to; otherwise I made no effort. The Prussian admiral worked his bushy eyebrows and his coarse, fan-shaped beard while munching, but whether in hostility to me or because he was built that way, I did not know, and did not care.
He and Baron von Bummelzug sat all hunched up side by side, gobbling in their whiskers and exchanging Teutonic grunts which seemed to be their substitute for human conversation. Herr Secretary Gizzler, factotum to the Baron, and seated with the Bolsheviki, devastated his plate and seized ravenously upon anything eatable in his vicinity, which presently elicited a chattering protest from Puppsky; and a quarrel rapidly developed until squelched by General Count von Dungheim.
"Silence!" he said angrily: "you make so much noise that it is impossible to hear oneself eat!"
The Princess Pudelstoff nodded violently, balancing a knifeful of mashed potato before committing it to its dreadful destiny:
"They act," she said in English, "like they was never to a high-toned dinner. It's them two Bolsheviks that ain't had a square meal since Hindy licked the Rooshians at the Missouri Lakes."