though it bended under the passing of a strong wind: then the flames
burned high, and Manuel could see that he was grasping the throat of a
monstrous pig. He, who was familiar with pigs, could see that this was a
black pig, caked with dried curds of the Milky Way; its flesh was chill
to the touch, like dead flesh; and it had long tusks, which possessed
life of their own, and groped and writhed toward Manuel like fat white
worms.

Then Manuel said, as Helmas had directed: "Solomon's provision for one
day was thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal,
ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and a hundred sheep,
beside harts, and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl. But Elijah
the Tishbite was fed by ravens that brought him bread and flesh."

Again the tall flames guttered. Now Manuel was grasping a thick heatless
slab of crystal, like a mirror, wherein he could see himself quite
clearly. Just as he really was, he, who was not familiar with such
mirrors, could see Count Manuel, housed in a little wet dirt with old
inveterate stars adrift about him everywhither; and the spectacle was
enough to frighten anybody.

So Manuel said: "The elephant is the largest of all animals, and in
intelligence approaches the nearest to man. Its nostril is elongated,
and answers to the purpose of a hand. Its toes are undivided, and it
lives two hundred years. Africa breeds elephants, but India produces the
largest."

The mirror now had melted into a dark warm fluid which oozed between his
fingers, dripping to the ground. But Manuel held tightly to what
remained between his palms, and he felt, they say, that in the fluid was