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"Isn't he a sea-faring man, your landlord?" queried he, and there was not a trace of suppressed irony in his voice; "I seem to remember he was." "Sea-faring man? Excuse me, it must be the brother you know; this man is namely J. A. Happolati, the agent." I thought this would finish him; but he willingly fell in with everything I said.
The old fellow answered quite gently and meekly to each of my assertions, and sought for words as if he feared to offend and perhaps make me furious. "Hell and fire, man! Do you imagine that I am sitting here stuffing you chock-full of lies?" I roared furiously. "Perhaps you don't even believe that a man of the name of Happolati exists!
It was more than king here, or about the same as Sultan, if he knew what that meant, but Happolati had managed the whole thing, and was never at a loss. And I related about his daughter Ylajali, a fairy, a princess, who had three hundred slaves, and who reclined on a couch of yellow roses.
This disappointed me a little; I had expected to see him utterly bewildered by my inventions. I searched my brain for a couple of desperate lies, went the whole hog, hinted that Happolati had been Minister of State for nine years in Persia. "You perhaps have no conception of what it means to be Minister of State in Persia?" I asked.
"In No. 2, I think you said," continued the man, without noticing my disturbance. "There was a time I knew every person in No. 2; what is your landlord's name?" I quickly found a name to get rid of him; invented one on the spur of the moment, and blurted it out to stop my tormentor. "Happolati!" said I. "Happolati, ay!" nodded the man; and he never missed a syllable of this difficult name.
"Johannn Arendt Happolati!" repeated the man, a little astonished at my vehemence; and with that he grew silent. "You should see his wife!" I said, beside myself. "A fatter creature ... Eh? what? Perhaps you don't even believe she is really fat?" Well, indeed he did not see his way to deny that such a man might perhaps have a rather stout wife.
The little goblin's unsuspecting simplicity made me foolhardy; I would stuff him recklessly full of lies; rout him out o' field grandly, and stop his mouth from sheer amazement. Had he heard of the electric psalm-book that Happolati had invented? "What? Elec " "With electric letters that could give light in the dark! a perfectly extraordinary enterprise.
I got annoyed; an inward exasperation surged up in me against this creature whom nothing had the power to disturb and nothing render suspicious. I therefore replied shortly, "I know nothing about that! I know absolutely nothing whatever about that! Let me inform you once for all that his name is Johann Arendt Happolati, if you go by his own initials."
I was entirely absorbed in stories of my own which floated in singular visions across my mental eye. The blood flew to my head, and I roared with laughter. At this moment the little man seemed about to go. He stretched himself, and in order not to break off too abruptly, added: "He is said to own much property, this Happolati?"
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