The
servants received it as a matter of course, and opened it on the
required spot. The company, without ceremony, took their places upon
it; for myself, I looked again in amazement on the man, at the pocket,
at the carpet, which measured above twenty paces long and ten
in breadth, and rubbed my eyes, not knowing what to think of it,
especially as nobody saw anything extraordinary in it.
I would fain have had some explanation regarding the man, and have
asked who he was, but I knew not to whom to address myself, for I
was almost more afraid of the gentlemen's servants than of the served
gentlemen. At length I took courage, and stepped up to a young man who
appeared to me to be of less consideration than the rest, and who had
often stood alone. I begged him softly to tell me who the agreeable
man in the gray coat there was.
"He there, who looks like an end of thread that has escaped out of a
tailor's needle?"
"Yes, he who stands alone."
"I don't know him," he replied, and, as it seemed, in order to avoid
a longer conversation with me he turned away and spoke of indifferent
matters to another.
The sun began now to shine more powerfully, and to inconvenience the
ladies. The lovely Fanny addressed carelessly to the gray man, whom,
as far as I am aware, no one had yet spoken to, the trifling question,
"Whether he had not, perchance, also a tent by him?" He answered her
by an obeisance most profound, as if an unmerited honor were done
him, and had already his hand in his pocket, out of which I saw come
canvas, poles, cordage, iron-work--in short, everything which belongs
to the most splendid pleasure-tent.
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