"Well, what about supper; is it ready?" asked Réginard, losing interest in the eagles for the moment.
It was, and that satisfied Réginard; but Arafrantz was not so easily put off.
"Can we at least get a balcony on via Amrotto?" he insisted, for so was named the central thoroughfare on which the Carnival reached its height.
"Impossible!" cried Orlando. "There was a single balcony left on that street this morning, and it got rented to a Wainrider. I can, however, offer their Excellencies a wheelbarrow drawn by an Orc, at twelve teleporni."
"Do so," said Arafrantz. As they waited, Orlando told the visitors a rather boring tale of Luigi Vanya, a renegade Elda (vanditto) who went around killing and kidnapping people and stealing their mallorno fruits. An hour later, a cicerone, seeing Arafrantz's face glued to the window, cried: "Your Excellency! Must I approach the chariot to the vault of heaven?"
As accustomed as Arafrantz was to Lottolorian emphasis, it was a few minutes before he had excogitated an interpretation of this inquiry: Arafrantz was the Excellency; the wheelbarrow was the chariot; and the hotel was the vault of heaven. All the panegyric genius of the nation was summed up in one sentence.
