Her coursers never
stopped till they came to the foot of a brazen tower, that had neither
doors nor windows, in which lived an old enchantress, who had locked
herself up there with seventeen thousand husbands. It had but one single
vent for air, which was a small chimney grated over, through which it
was scarce possible to put one's hand. Pissimissi, who was very
impatient, ordered her coursers to fly with her up to the top of the
chimney, which, as they were the most docile creatures in the world,
they immediately did; but unluckily the fore paw of the elephant
lighting on the top of the chimney, broke down the grate by its weight,
but at the same time stopped up the passage so entirely, that all the
enchantress's husbands were stifled for want of air. As it was a
collection she had made with great care and cost, it is easy to imagine
her vexation and rage. She raised a storm of thunder and lightning that
lasted eight hundred and four years; and having conjured up an army of
two thousand devils, she ordered them to flay the elephant alive, and
dress it for her supper with anchovy sauce. Nothing could have saved the
poor beast, if, struggling to get loose from the chimney, he had not
happily broken wind, which it seems is a great preservative against
devils. They all flew a thousand ways, and in their hurry carried away
half the brazen tower, by which means the elephant, the car, the
ladybird, and Pissimissi got loose; but in their fall tumbled through
the roof of an apothecary's shop, and broke all his bottles of physic.
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