'Well, what is it?' said Johannes.
'He does not exist. That is a great defect, but he does not admit it. And he says the same of me, that I do not exist. But that is a lie. I not exist, indeed! What next, I wonder?'
And Pluizer put the butterflies into his satchel, and suddenly turning a somersault stood before Johannes on his head. Then, with a hideous grin, he stuck out a vile long tongue. Johannes, who did not feel at all at his ease alone with this strange being in the growing dusk on the deserted sand-hills, now fairly quaked with fear.
'This is a delightful manner of surveying the world,' said Pluizer, still upside down. 'If you like I will teach you to do it. You see everything much clearer, and more life-like.' And he flourished his little legs in the air and waltzed round on his hands. As the red light fell on his inverted face Johannes thought it perfectly horrible; those little eyes twinkled in the glow and showed the whites at the lower edge where it is not generally visible.
'You see, in this position the clouds seem to be the ground and the earth the top of the world. It is just as easy to maintain that as the converse. There is really no above or below. A very pretty place to walk on those clouds must be!'
Johannes looked up at the long stretches of cloud. They looked to him like a ploughed land, with red furrows, as though blood welled up from it. Just over the pool yawned the gate of the cloud-grotto.
'Can any one go there and enter in?' he asked.
'What nonsense!' said Pluizer, suddenly standing on his feet again, to Johannes's great relief, 'Nonsense! If you were there you would find it just the same as here, and it would look as beautiful as that further on again. But in those lovely clouds it is all foggy and grey and cold.'
'I do not believe you,' cried Johannes. 'Now I see you really are a man.'
'Come, come! You do not believe me, my little friend, because I am a man? And what sort of creature are you then, I should like to know?'