"Yes, but the wind can't turn the knob on your door!" he insisted, his eyes of a wild pig roving nervously about my room. "I don't like such things, and I want you to come and look under my bed."
"Very well," said I, "let us go and look under your bed, Monsieur Itchenuff."
The Tzar of all the Bulgars was not an agreeable spectacle in his night-shirt and enormous bare feet. His visage was pasty, his eyes had a frightened, stealthy restlessness like a wild thing's that hears and scents an enemy but has not yet perceived him.
So wabbly was the lighted candle in his large fat hand, that I was afraid he'd set fire to his night-shirt, and relieved him of it.
"We have our own dynamo here," said I. "Why didn't you turn on the electric light by your bed?"
"It wouldn't work," he replied. "Do you suppose somebody has c-c-cut the wire?"
"Who?"
"God knows! Everybody has enemies, I suppose. You wouldn't believe it, Monsieur, if you knew me well, but even I am affected by enemies."
"Impossible!" said I, looking at him askance as he waddled along bare-footed beside me.
"Nevertheless, I assure you," he complained in a voice unctuous with virtuous self-pity, "I, who have never harmed a fly, Monsieur, have secret enemies who would d-destroy me."