mouth; this cleared his brain and
cured his headache. Then he rapped on the counter and shouted:--

"Hallo! Any one there?"

There was no answer. "I'd better go into the back parlour," he thought,
"and do my shopping there." He took a little run, put his right hand on
the counter and cleared it at a bound. Then he pushed the curtains aside
and peeped into the room. A sight met his eyes which completely dazzled
him. An orange tree, laden with blossoms and fruit, stood on a long
table covered with a Persian rug, and its shining leaves looked like the
leaves of a camellia. There were rows of cut-crystal glasses filled
with all the most beautiful scented flowers of the whole world, such as
jasmine, tuberoses, violets, lilies of the valley, roses, and lavender.
On one end of the table, half hidden by the orange tree, he saw two
delicate white hands and a pair of slender wrists under turned-up
sleeves, busy with a small distilling apparatus, made of silver. He did
not see the lady's face, and she, too, did not appear to see him. But
when he noticed that her dress was green and yellow, he knew at once
that she was a sorceress, for the caterpillar of the hawk-moth is green
and yellow, and it, too, knows how to bewitch the eye. The lower end of
its body looks as if it were its head and has a horn like a unicorn, so
that it frightens away its enemies with its mock face, while it feeds in
peace with that part of its body which looks like its hind quarter.

"I know that I'll have a bit of a tussle with her," thought Victor, "but
I'd better let her begin!" He was quite right, because if one wants to
make people talk, one has but to remain silent oneself.

"Are you the gentleman who is looking for a summer resort?" asked the
lady, coming towards him.

"That's me!" said Victor, merely in order to say something, for he had
never thought of looking for a summer resort in the winter time.

The lady seemed embarrassed, but she was as beautiful as sin, and cast a
bewitching glance at the pilot.

"It's no use trying to bewitch me, for I am engaged to a very nice
girl," he said, staring between her second and third finger in the
manner of a witch, when she wants to charm the judge.

The lady was young and beautiful from the waist upwards, but below
the waist she seemed very old; it was just as if she had been patched
together of two pieces which didn't match.

"Well, show me the summer resort," said the pilot.

"If you please, si