Strange as it may seem, the man who succumbs rarely if ever is
victorious in the long run. To disguise my sex and identity--for it was
_a priori_ almost impossible that the inhabitants of Wenus had never
heard of Pozzuoli--would guard me from the jellifying Mash-Glance of the
Wenuses. Arrayed in feminine garb I could remain immune to their
malignant influences.

With me, to think is to act; so I hastily ran upstairs, shaved off my
moustache, donned my wife's bicycle-skirt, threw her _sortie de bal_
round my shoulders, borrowed the cook's Sunday bonnet from the servants'
bedroom, and hastened back to my post of observation at the scullery
door.

Inserting a pipette through the keyhole and cautiously applying my eye,
I saw to my delight that the Crinoline had been elevated on a series of
steel rods about six feet high, and that the five Wenuses who had
descended in it were partaking of a light but sumptuous repast beneath
its iridescent canopy. They were seated round a tripod imbibing a brown
beverage from small vessels resembling the half of a hollow sphere, and
eating with incredible velocity a quantity of tiny round coloured
objects--closely related, as I subsequently had occasion to ascertain,
to the _Bellaria angelica_,--which they raised to their mouths with
astonishing and unerring aim in the complex Handling-Machines, or
Tenticklers, which form part of their wonderful organism.

Belonging as they undoubtedly do to the order of the Tunicates, their
exquisitely appropriate and elegant costume may be safely allowed to
speak for itself. It is enough, however, to note the curious fact that
there are no buttons in Wenus, and that their mechanical system is
remarkable, incredible as it may seem, for having developed the eye to