"Go to der teuffel, ten!" roared the Angel of the Odd.
In pronouncing these words he drew a sharp knife across the guide-rope by which I was
suspended, and as we then happened to be precisely over my own house (which, during
my peregrinations, had been handsomely rebuilt), it so occurred that I tumbled headlong
down the ample chimney and alit upon the dining-room hearth.
Upon coming to my senses (for the fall had very thoroughly stunned me) I found it about
four o'clock in the morning. I lay outstretched where I had fallen from the balloon. My
head groveled in the ashes of an extinguished fire, while my feet reposed upon the wreck
of a small table, overthrown, and amid the fragments of a miscellaneous dessert,
intermingled with a newspaper, some broken glasses and shattered bottles, and an empty
jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwässer. Thus revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.
