age came flocking from their houses to see what had happened, and
they thronged the street and shouldered and jostled one another in
excitement and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared, and they fell
apart in two walls like the cloven Red Sea, and presently down this lane
the astrologer came striding and mumbling, and where he passed the lanes
surged back in packed masses, and fell silent with awe, and their eyes
stared and their breasts heaved, and several women fainted; and when he
was gone by the crowd swarmed together and followed him at a distance,
talking excitedly and asking questions and finding out the
facts. Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with
improvements--improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a
barrel, and made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the
last.

When the astrologer reached the market-square he went straight to a
juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the
air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd
and said: "This poor clown is ignorant of his art. Come forward and see
an expert perform."

So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them
whirling in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then
another and another, and soon--no one seeing whence he got them--adding,
adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so
swiftly that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as
hands; and such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the
air. The spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was
a shining and glinting and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms
and told the balls to go on spinning without his help--and they did it.
After a couple of minutes he said, "There, that will do," and the oval
broke and came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled
every whither. And wherever one of them came the people fell back in
dread, and no one would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at
the people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw
the tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money
to see a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they
should see the work of a master. With that he made a spring into the air
and lit firm on his feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length of
it back and forth on one foot, with his hands