"Edgar Allen Poe - The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

their sauer-kraut, but then they were proud of their clocks.

All people who hold sinecure offices are held in more or less
respect, and as the belfry -- man of Vondervotteimittiss has the most
perfect of sinecures, he is the most perfectly respected of any man
in the world. He is the chief dignitary of the borough, and the very
pigs look up to him with a sentiment of reverence. His coat-tail is
very far longer -- his pipe, his shoe -- buckles, his eyes, and his
stomach, very far bigger -- than those of any other old gentleman in
the village; and as to his chin, it is not only double, but triple.

I have thus painted the happy estate of Vondervotteimittiss: alas,
that so fair a picture should ever experience a reverse!

There has been long a saying among the wisest inhabitants, that "no
good can come from over the hills"; and it really seemed that the
words had in them something of the spirit of prophecy. It wanted five
minutes of noon, on the day before yesterday, when there appeared a
very odd-looking object on the summit of the ridge of the eastward.
Such an occurrence, of course, attracted universal attention, and
every little old gentleman who sat in a leather-bottomed arm-chair
turned one of his eyes with a stare of dismay upon the phenomenon,
still keeping the other upon the clock in the steeple.

By the time that it wanted only three minutes to noon, the droll
object in question was perceived to be a very diminutive
foreign-looking young man. He descended the hills at a great rate, so
that every body had soon a good look at him. He was really the most
finicky little personage that had ever been seen in
Vondervotteimittiss. His countenance was of a dark snuff-color, and
he had a long hooked nose, pea eyes, a wide mouth, and an excellent
set of teeth, which latter he seemed anxious of displaying, as he was
grinning from ear to ear. What with mustachios and whiskers, there
was none of the rest of his face to be seen. His head was uncovered,
and his hair neatly done up in papillotes. His dress was a
tight-fitting swallow-tailed black coat (from one of whose pockets
dangled a vast length of white handkerchief), black kerseymere
knee-breeches, black stockings, and stumpy-looking pumps, with huge
bunches of black satin ribbon for bows. Under one arm he carried a
huge chapeau-de-bras, and under the other a fiddle nearly five times
as big as himself. In his left hand was a gold snuff-box, from which,
as he capered down the hill, cutting all manner of fantastic steps,
he took snuff incessantly with an air of the greatest possible
self-satisfaction. God bless me! -- here was a sight for the honest
burghers of Vondervotteimittiss!

To speak plainly, the fellow had, in spite of his grinning, an
audacious and sinister kind of face; and as he curvetted right into
the village, the old stumpy appearance of his pumps excited no little
suspicion; and many a burgher who beheld him that day would have