Ten people started to bring Prakovsky. They said that he was playing durak in the third drawing room, with Father Krudz and a lawyer.
In the meantime they kept right on brewing and cooking in the kitchen. Prettily dressed, flirtatious peasant girls in high Spanish leather boots and gay kerchiefs, brought in platters and drinks. By the banquet table, which extended from one end of the long room to the other, beside which the three fiddlers were playing—the feasting guests drifted to and fro, and every once in a while resounded the words of an eloquent toast. Of this toast, the fat Zahrada—who had learned to speak a little while tramping over Hungary—understood a few words.
Now a pale, thin young man, who had a large wart between his eyes, got up, lifted his glass and drank a toast to the distinguished, nobly born Martin Folkinházy, and praised all his children and his children’s children. Zahrada meditated:
“That man with the big wart must be an ass. It’s only safe to praise one’s ancestors—they are the only ones one can be proud of in Hungary.”
Now he began to praise their great, great grand children, closing with the brilliant prophecy:
“I hope the Almighty will be good enough to let them die sooner or later.”
The man at end of the table, deeply affected, nodded his head, and the whole company touched glasses, whereupon he jumped to his feet and bowed and offered his arm to an old lady, who wore white powdered hair, a violet silk dress, led her to Safranyik, and bent and whispered something in his ear. Safranyik declared that they both smelled of the grave. Hereupon Safranyik signalled his two companions, and they began to play a minuet of long ago.
The two ancient figures began to hop about, then to walk with dignity, to bow and make regal reverences, and to dream lovingly of the past. That was something ridiculous, and at the same time elegant and distinguished. Long ostrich feathers trembled and coquetted upon the lofty headdress of the old woman, while the old man carried his hat under his arm, and his thin, wiry little body, bent and waved with the lightness and grace of a sparrow that poises itself for flight. Once, the old, old lady dropped her golden, glittering fan. Zahrada jumped and picked it up and tried to offer it to her, but just then the old lady made a courtly gesture with her hand and chirruped like a little bird (she did not have a single tooth in her mouth!): “Be so kind, sir, as to keep it a little while.”
Then they floated on again in the gayety of the dance—God knows—alone—where. Zahrada kept the fan, but no one came to fetch it. The young woman who wore the butterfly cap was so overcome by the fiery dance, that she took off the jeweled cap and put it on the head of tall Zajczek. But his head was so little, that it hung as if on a broom stick. Naturally everyone began to laugh—and the orgy grew wilder and more unrestrained.
For a moment the dancing was interrupted. A fat old man whose coat was fastened with garnet buttons, exclaimed: “What manners—the fiddlers three have not been asked to eat or drink!” Then began such running this way and that. The peasant girls in the red morocco shoes brought in a little table, and loaded it with food. Potted hare, roast sucking pig, cakes, tarts, pastries of Crizsnócz, and brandy from Rigy.