"Good! Conjure up an Italian landscape, with marble cottages and stone pines, out of this dreadful granite paysage!"
"I am certainly no juggler, but if you challenge me I promise you by your birthday, in three weeks to transform this fresh piece of nature, whose equal you may search after through all Europe, to a treeless, scorched cabbage landscape to your taste."
"Well! Let us wager! And if after three weeks I lose, what then?"
"Then I win—but what?"
"We will see then!"
"We will see! But will you attend to my duty during that time?"
"Your duty! What is that? To lie on the sofa and smoke cigarettes?"
"Yes, if you can as I attend to my duty on the sofa,—with pleasure. But you cannot do that and now you shall learn the reason and meaning of my stay on this skerry! But first take a glass of wine with your wurst!"
He poured a glass of the dark red Chianti wine and passed it to the girl who emptied it at a draught.
"You know," began the commissioner, "that my official commission here at this fishing port is to teach the population how to fish."