known Place
de something or other in some foreign town.

At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a
prosperous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street
behind. In the wall there was one large French window, probably the
window of a large coffee-room; and outside this window, almost literally
overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed balcony, big enough
to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did contain a dining-table, or
more strictly a breakfast-table; and round the breakfast-table, glowing
in the sunlight and evident to the street, were a group of noisy and
talkative men, all dressed in the insolence of fashion, with white
waistcoats and expensive button-holes. Some of their jokes could almost
be heard across the square. Then the grave Secretary gave his unnatural
smile, and Syme knew that this boisterous breakfast party was the secret
conclave of the European Dynamiters.

Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he had
not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large
to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of
the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme
had seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must break
down the balcony of stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact
that he was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This man was
planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved
deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seen
from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood
out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to
scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw
him all the other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become
dwarfish. They were still sitting there as before with their flowers and
frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining five
children to tea.

As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waiter
came out smiling with every tooth in his head.

"The gentlemen are up there, sare," he said. "They do talk and they do
laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze king."

And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much pleased
with the singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs.

The two men mounted the stairs in silence.

Syme had never thoug