house seemed to appear and disappear like a shadow.
Round about we saw stakes which looked like gibbets. My friend tried
to persuade me that they were only stakes for storks' nests. We were
about a hundred feet away from the house. Along a wall we saw a wooden
pipe which seemed bathed in blood, but my friend assured me it was
only red paint. It was a little house enclosed by a paling; the doors
and windows were shut.

"Don't go in," I said. "There is yet time. There is something uncanny
in that house; take care what you are doing. Look up; I have never
seen such a black sky."

My friend did not hear me; he pressed on courageously, and I followed.
Instead of going toward the door, he took a short cut. Behind us we heard
a ferocious barking of dogs. We broke into a run, crossed a thicket of
underbrush, jumped over a low wall, and knocked at a little door.

"There is yet time!" I exclaimed.

"It is too late," answered my friend.

The door opened, but nobody was to be seen. We mounted a winding
staircase and entered a room. Oh pleasant surprise! The hermit, the
sorcerer, was a merry, courteous young man, and the diabolical house
was a villa full of comfort and warmth, sparkling with light, the
dwelling of a sybarite--a real fairy palace to which our host retired
some months in the year to study and to make experiments on the
fertilization of the dunes. How delightful it was to look at the cold
desert without through a window draped with curtains and decorated
with flower-pots! We went into the dining-room and sat down at a table
glittering with silver and glass, in the midst of which, surrounded by
gilded and blazoned bottles, was a hot dinner fit for a prince. The
snow was beating against the windows, the sea was moaning, the wind
blew furiously round the house, which seemed like a ship in a terrible
storm. We drank to the fertilization of the dunes, to the victors of
Achen, to the prosperity of the colonies, to the memory of Nino Bixio,
to the elves. Nevertheless, I was still a little uneasy. Our host when
he needed the servant touched a hidden spring; to tell the coachman to
get the carriage ready he spoke some words into a hole in the wall;
and these tricks did not please me.

"Tell me," I said, "tell me that this house really exists; promise me
that it is not all a joke and that it will not disappear, leaving
nothing but a hole in the ground and a smell of sulphur in the air.
Assure me that you say your prayers