The room became full of buzzing
voices and cigarette smoke. Each of the assembled company argued and
persuaded separately, and everyone shouted nonsense.

Majkowska leaned with her elbows upon the table and, beating time
with a knife against a bottle of champagne, sang gayly.

The directress argued loudly with Mimi. Topolski was silent and
drank to himself alone. Wawrzecki was relating various funny
anecdotes to Janina, while Glogowski, Glas, and Kotlicki were
engaged in a controversy about the public.

Janina laughed and bickered with Wawrzecki, but already the wine had
taken such an effect upon her that she hardly knew what she was
doing. The room whirled around with her and the candles elongated
themselves to the size of torches. Once she would feel a mad desire
to dance, then again to launch bottles like ducks into the large
mirrors which appeared to be water to her; or again, she tried hard
to understand what Glogowski was just then saying. Glogowski, all
flushed and tipsy, with disheveled hair and with his necktie on his
back, was shouting, waving his hands, striking his fist against
Glas's stomach instead of the table.

Glogowski shouted on: "To the dogs with the public's judgment! I
tell you the play is bad! And if the audience applauded it and you
now praise it, that is the best proof that I am right. There were a
thousand of you; it is so hard for a thousand people to agree upon
the truth. The individual alone is a thinking man, but the multitude
is an ignorant herd that knows nothing."

"The multitude is a great man, proclaims an old proverb," whispered
Kotlicki sententiously.

"It proclaims nonsense! The multitude is nothing but a big noise, a
big illusion, a big hallucination," retorted Glogowski.

"Master, you seem to be devilishly sure of yourself."

"Dilettante, I merely know myself."

"By ginger! so many crazes in such a weak box!" whispered Glas,
feeling Glogowski's chest.

"Genius does not abide in meat. A fat man is merely a fat animal. A
lofty soul abhors fat. A healthy stomach and normality denote merely
the average mortal and the average mortal is nothing but a boor."

"And such paradoxes are merely chaff."

"For asses and pseudo-intelligentsia."

"Dixit, brother! The Rhenish speaks through your lips."

"Begin all over again!" interrupted Glas, grabbing them both around
the neck.

"If it is to drink, good; if it is to talk, I'll say good night!"
yelled Kotlicki.

"Then let us