"Still more so at the cattle market, so I would recommend you to use your eyeglass while you are with us, for when once you have driven off your cattle I am no longer responsible."
"Thanks for the warning," said the manager.
Here the doctor interrupted the discussion.
"Come out, gentlemen," he cried, "in front of the kitchen, and see the sunrise."
The painter rushed forward, and began to sketch, but soon fell into utter despair.
"Why, this is absurd! What colour! dark blue ground, violet mist on the horizon, above it orange sky, and over that a long streak of rosy cloud. What, a purple glory announces the coming of the sun! A glowing fire is rising above the sharply defined horizon! Just like a burning pyramid, now like red hot iron! Yet not so dazzling that one cannot look at it with the naked eye. Now look, do! The sun is five-sided, the upper part grows egg-shaped! The lower contracts, the top flattens out, now it is quite like a mushroom! No, no, a Roman urn. This is absurd, it can't be painted. Now there comes a thin cloud which turns it into a blindfolded cupid, or a bearded deputy. No! If I painted the sun five-sided and with a moustache they would shut me up in an asylum."
The painter threw down his brushes.
"These Hungarians," he said, "must always have something out of the common. Here they are giving us a sunrise which is a reality, but at the same time an impossibility. That is not as it should be."
The doctor began to explain that this was only an optical delusion, like the fata morgana, and was due to the refraction of the rays through the differently heated strata of the atmosphere.
"All the same it is impossible," said the painter. "Why, I can't believe what I see."