te lies, went the whole hog,
hinted that Happolati had been Minister of State for nine years in
Persia. "You perhaps have no conception of what it means to be Minister
of State in Persia?" I asked. It was more than king here, or about the
same as Sultan, if he knew what that meant, but Happolati had managed
the whole thing, and was never at a loss. And I related about his
daughter Ylajali, a fairy, a princess, who had three hundred slaves,
and who reclined on a couch of yellow roses. She was the loveliest
creature I had ever seen; I had, may the Lord strike me, never seen her
match for looks in my life!

"So--o; was she so lovely?" remarked the old fellow, with an absent
air, as he gazed at the ground.

"Lovely? She was beauteous, she was sinfully fascinating. Eyes like raw
silk, arms of amber! Just one glance from her was as seductive as a
kiss; and when she called me, her voice darted like a wine-ray right
into my soul's phosphor. And why shouldn't she be so beautiful?" Did he
imagine she was a messenger or something in the fire brigade? She was
simply a Heaven's wonder, I could just inform him, a fairy tale.

"Yes, to be sure!" said he, not a little bewildered. His quiet bored
me; I was excited by the sound of my own voice and spoke in utter
seriousness; the stolen archives, treaties with some foreign power or
other, no longer occupied my thoughts; the little flat bundle of paper
lay on the seat between us, and I had no longer the smallest desire to
examine it or see what it contained. I was entirely absorbed in stories
of my own which floated in singular visions across my mental eye. The
blood flew to my head, and I roared with laughter.

At this moment the little man seemed about to go. He stretched himself,
and in order not to break off too abruptly, added: "He is said to own
much property, this Happolati?"

How dared this bleary-eyed, disgusting old man toss about the rare name
I had invented as if it were a common name stuck up over every
huckster-shop in the town? He never stumbled over a letter or forgot a
syllable. The name had bitten fast in his brain and struck root on the
instant. I got annoyed; an inward exasperation surged up in me against
this creature whom nothing had the power to disturb and nothing render
suspicious.

I therefore replied shortly, "I know nothing about that! I know
absolutely nothing whatever about that! Let me inform you once for all
that his name is Johann Arendt Happolati, i