"Hans Phaall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

to his entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. His feet, of course,
could not be seen at all, although a horny substance of suspicious
nature was occasionally protruded through a rent in the bottom of
the car, or to speak more properly, in the top of the hat. His hands
were enormously large. His hair was extremely gray, and collected in a
cue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory;
his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although
wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any
kind or character there was not a semblance to be discovered upon
any portion of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a
loose surtout of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match,
fastened with silver buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright
yellow material; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of
his head; and, to complete his equipment, a blood-red silk
handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a dainty
manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent
dimensions.
Having descended, as I said before, to about one hundred feet from
the surface of the earth, the little old gentleman was suddenly seized
with a fit of trepidation, and appeared disinclined to make any nearer
approach to terra firma. Throwing out, therefore, a quantity of sand
from a canvas bag, which, he lifted with great difficulty, he became
stationary in an instant. He then proceeded, in a hurried and agitated
manner, to extract from a side-pocket in his surtout a large morocco
pocket-book. This he poised suspiciously in his hand, then eyed it
with an air of extreme surprise, and was evidently astonished at its
weight. He at length opened it, and drawing there from a huge letter
sealed with red sealing-wax and tied carefully with red tape, let it
fall precisely at the feet of the burgomaster, Superbus Von
Underduk. His Excellency stooped to take it up. But the aeronaut,
still greatly discomposed, and having apparently no farther business
to detain him in Rotterdam, began at this moment to make busy
preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge a
portion of ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen bags
which he threw out, one after another, without taking the trouble to
empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately
upon the back of the burgomaster, and rolled him over and over no less
than one-and-twenty times, in the face of every man in Rotterdam. It
is not to be supposed, however, that the great Underduk suffered
this impertinence on the part of the little old man to pass off with
impunity. It is said, on the contrary, that during each and every
one of his one-and twenty circumvolutions he emitted no less than
one-and-twenty distinct and furious whiffs from his pipe, to which
he held fast the whole time with all his might, and to which he
intends holding fast until the day of his death.
In the meantime the balloon arose like a lark, and, soaring far away
above the city, at length drifted quietly behind a cloud similar to
that from which it had so oddly emerged, and was thus lost forever
to the wondering eyes of the good citiezns of Rotterdam. All attention
was now directed to the letter, the descent of which, and the