In a moment the room was filled with a perfume--I use the word advisedly!--of a kind which no pen could adequately describe. Never did I come across anything of the sort before--it was astounding. Most of the people had been standing up; there and then they most of them sat down again--they had to. I noticed the General drop back on to his chair with a kind of gasp. Folks looked at each other with startled faces; they looked at me; they looked at the lecturer--that bottle fiend; they looked about them dumbly, as if in search of something--speech was impossible while that bottle remained unstoppered. Their countenances were transfigured--it is really no exaggeration to say that they turned most of the colours of the rainbow. Some crammed their handkerchiefs into their mouths; some pinched their nostrils between their fingers; some clapped their hands to the pits of their stomachs. Nothing they could do was the slightest protection against the mephitic vapours which issued from that unstoppered bottle. It was a moving spectacle to see those people all bent double--especially if you regarded it from the point of view of the host, and remembered that you had invited them to an evening party. At last--it seemed a long at last to me, but I suppose, after all, it could only have been a second or two--at last those against the door began to shuffle through it--when they were once through they never stopped till they had rushed downstairs and were out into the street. Others followed, a tottering crew, so that by degrees the room was emptied, and finally--a happy finally!--my guests, my wife, and I stood, a shivering crowd, on the windblown pavement. At this point the demon Steingard came out on the landing and shouted to us, so that we heard him in the street. "Did I not say de dird bottle would make you ill? Very well den--is it not true? Has it not routed you--like a flock of sheep? Just so would it rout an army. Not all de armies of all de nations would stand against dat bottle when it was unstobbered. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you will return I will bass on to a fresh branch of my subject--or, rather, I will commence my subject brober, and I will show you dings combared to which that bottle is as noding--noding at all. You shall see if I am lying." That frightful threat finished it; settled the affair out of hand; concluded it at once. Nothing thereafter could have persuaded my guests to stand upon the order of their going. They went at once--before the party had had a chance of starting. It was worse than a catastrophe--it was a cataclysm. I can only trust that such a disaster is unparalleled in the history of festive gatherings. I had not the heart to attempt to stay their going. I was too demoralised, both physically and mentally. The impression made upon me by that third bottle was an enduring one.