"There was once a man," he said, "with a nose so long that it reached half way round his head, and thus the point was continually behind him. This not unnaturally caused him a great deal of trouble, but in the end was the means of his good fortune, as you shall hear. For once, as he sat reading, he felt something on the end of his nose, and turning round his head he saw a fly sitting on the point of it."
"Saw a fly on the point!" interrupted King Jollimon. "What do you take me for, that you thus try to impose such stories on me? Can a man see what is behind him?"
"Certainly, if he turns round," answered the traveler, quite unmoved.
"If he turns round!" repeated the king, in a rage, "can one see the back of his head? I have turned round, but I never could see my back."
"That is because your majesty always looks away from it," replied the other. "If you would turn round and look toward the back of your head, you would undoubtedly see it."
"Do you presume to dispute with me?" screamed his majesty, getting very red in the face. He felt sure he was right, but he could not answer the traveler's argument. "Do you presume to dispute with me?" he repeated. "Get out of my sight, and if one of you three vagabonds, with your trumpery stories, is found in all the kingdom of Jolliland by sunset to-morrow, I'll have every man of you beheaded three times over. A man see his back, indeed!"
And thus it happened that the tale of "The Crooked-Nosed Philosopher" was never concluded, which was the greater pity, since, if the end was like the beginning, it must have been a very marvelous tale.