'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?'
'What do you suppose? An elf? Elves are never in love.' And Pluizer unexpectedly sat down on the ground at Johannes's feet with his leg crossed under him, staring at him with a villainous grin. Johannes was unutterably embarrassed and uncomfortable under his gaze, and wished he could escape or become invisible. But he could not even take his eyes off him. 'Only men fall in love, Johannes, d'ye hear! And so much the better, or there would be none left by this time. And you are in love like the best of them, although you are but a little fellow. Of whom are you thinking at this moment?'
'Of Robinetta,' whispered Johannes, hardly above his breath.
'Without whom do you think you could not live?' Johannes's lips moved silently: 'Robinetta.'
'Well then, youngster,' grinned Pluizer, 'what made you fancy that you could be an elf? Elves do not love the daughters of men.'
'But it was Windekind,' Johannes stammered out in his bewilderment. But Pluizer flew into a terrible rage and his bony fingers gripped Johannes by the ears.
'What folly is this? Would you try to frighten me with that whippersnapper thing? He is a greater simpleton than Wistik--much greater. He knows nothing at all. And what is worse, he does not exist in any sense, and never has existed. I only exist, do you understand? And if you do not believe me, I will let you feel what I am.' And he shook the hapless Johannes by the ears.