“Miferino!”
“You ought to promise me not to go out at night or I shall be obliged to make you an iron house and shut you up for a hundred years. Just think, if I lose you the first person who finds you will burn you up without giving you time to say, ‘Ouch!’”
He promised. But a few days later he was gone again.
A Change of Residence
CHAPTER XIII A CHANGE OF RESIDENCE
This time I was sure I should never find him. I went three whole days without seeing him. Every evening I shook my clothes, uselessly repeating my search. I would have given ten years of my life, and paid a large sum of money, to have found him. I blamed myself for not having looked thoroughly; perhaps I had left him on the ground among the coarse Chinese mats of the house in which I had passed the night.
On the third evening, having a little spare time, I started to develop some instantaneous photographs that I had taken during the journey.
To my immense surprise Fiam appeared in every picture, or rather his shadow, thrown across each landscape. It was evident that Fiam was shut up inside of the camera. I opened it and called inside: “Fiam!” holding it near my ear.