The company would fain have reclined upon the sward on the slope of the hill, opposite to the outstretched landscape, had they not feared the dampness of the earth.  “It were divine,” observed one of the party, “had we but a Turkey carpet to spread here.”  The wish was scarcely expressed when the man in the gray coat had his hand in his pocket, and was busied in drawing thence, with a modest and even humble deportment, a rich Turkey carpet interwoven with gold.  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.  The young gentlemen helped to expand it, and it covered the whole extent of the carpet, and nobody found anything remarkable in it.

I had already become uneasy, nay, horrified at heart, but how completely so, as, at the very next wish expressed, I saw him yet pull out of his pocket three roadsters—­I tell thee, three beautiful great black horses, with saddle and caparison.  Bethink thee! for God’s sake!—­three saddled horses, still out of the same pocket from which already a pocket-book, a telescope, an embroidered carpet, twenty paces long and ten broad, a pleasure-tent of equal dimensions, and all the requisite poles and irons, had come forth!  If I did not protest to thee that I saw it myself with my own eyes, thou couldst not possibly believe it.

Embarrassed and obsequious as the man himself appeared to be, little as was the attention which had been bestowed upon him, yet to me his grisly aspect, from which I could not turn my eyes, became so fearful that I could bear it no longer.