"What dreadful creatures they are," thought Victor, "they think
of nothing but blowing their own trumpets"; and to while away the
time he took up a book which lay on the counter. As he had learned
to use his eyes, he saw at a glance that it opened at page 240 and
that chapter 51 began at the top of the left-hand side, and had
for a motto a verse written by Coleridge, the gist of which struck
him like a flash of lightning. With burning cheeks and bated breath
he read ... I'll tell you what he read later on, but I may admit
at once that it had nothing whatever to do with snails.

Victor liked the shop and sat down at a little distance from
the cash-box, the immediate vicinity of which is never without a
certain risk. He began to ponder over all the queer animals which
went down to the sea as he did; he was sure that they could not
find it too warm at the bottom of the sea and yet they perspired;
and whenever they perspired chalk, it immediately became a new
house. They wriggled like worms, some to the right and some to the
left; it was clear that they had to wriggle in some direction and,
of course, they could not all turn to the same side.

All at once a voice came from the other side of the green curtain
which separated the shop from the back parlour.

"Yes, we know all that," shouted the voice, "but what we don't
know is this: the cockle of the ear belongs to the species of the
Helix, and the little bones near the drum are exactly like the
animal in Limnaeus stagnalis, and that's printed in a book."

Victor, who realised at once that the voice belonged to a thought-reader,