"Oh, yes--one of my best friends, and I have a great many of them. But I know about the little key, without the help of Wistik. I know a great deal more than Wistik. Wistik is a good enough fellow, but stupid--uncommonly stupid. Not I--far from it!" And Pluizer tapped his big head with his lean little hand in a very pert way. "Do you know, Johannes," he continued, "a great defect in Wistik? But you never must tell him, for he would be very angry." "Well, what is it?" asked Johannes. "He does not exist. That is a great shortcoming, but he will not admit it. And he says of me that I do not exist--but that is a lie. _I_ not exist? The _mischief_--I do!" And Pluizer, thrusting the little butterflies into his pocket, suddenly threw himself over, and stood on his head in front of Johannes. Then he made a very ugly grimace, and stuck out his long tongue. Johannes, who did not yet feel quite at his ease alone with this remarkable creature, at the close of the day, in the lonely dunes, was quaking now, with fear. "This is a most charming way of seeing the world," said Pluizer, still standing on his head. "If you like, I will teach you to do it. Everything looks much clearer and more life-like." And he sprawled his spindle legs out in the air, and whirled around on his hands. As the red afterglow fell upon his inverted face, Johannes thought it frightful; the small eyes blinked in the light, and showed the whites on the wrong side. "You see, this way the clouds look like the floor, and the ground the cover, of the world. You can maintain that as well as the contrary. There is no above nor below, however. Those clouds would make a fine promenade." Johannes looked at the long clouds. He thought they appeared like a plowed field, with blood welling up from the red furrows. And over the sea the splendor was streaming from the gates of that grotto in the clouds. "Could one get there, and go in?" he asked. "Nonsense!" said Pluizer, landing suddenly on his feet again, to the great relief of Johannes. "Nonsense! If you were there, it would be precisely as it is here--and the beauty of it would then appear still a little farther off. In those beautiful clouds there, it is misty, grizzly, and cold." "I do not believe you," said Johannes. "Now I can very well see that you are a human being." "Oh, come! Not believe me, dear boy, because I am a human being! And what particular thing do you take yourself for?" "Oh, Pluizer! Am I too a human being?" "What did you suppose? An elf? Elves do not fall in love." And Pluizer suddenly dropped down exactly in front of Johannes--his legs crossed under him--grinning straight into his face. Johannes felt indescribably distressed and perplexed under this scrutiny, and would have liked to hide, or make himself invisible. Still he could not even turn his eyes away.