Even the live tourist animal was
nowhere in evidence. We had something to eat in a long, narrow room at
one end of a long, narrow table, which, to my tired perception and to my
sleepy eyes, seemed as if it would tilt up like a see saw plank, since
there was no one at the other end to balance it against our two dusty
and travel-stained figures. Then we hastened up stairs to bed in a room
smelling of pine planks, and I was fast asleep before my head touched
the pillow.
In the morning my tutor (he was a student of the Cracow University) woke
me up early, and as we were dressing remarked: "There seems to be a lot
of people staying in this hotel. I have heard a noise of talking up
till eleven o'clock." This statement surprised me; I had heard no noise
whatever, having slept like a top.
We went down-stairs into the long and narrow dining-room with its long
and narrow table. There were two rows of plates on it. At one of the
many curtained windows stood a tall, bony man with a bald head set off
by a bunch of black hair above each ear, and with a long, black beard.
He glanced up from the paper he was reading and seemed genuinely
astonished at our intrusion. By and by more men came in.
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