Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with improvements--improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a barrel, and made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the last.
When the astrologer reached the market-square he went straight to a juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd and said: "This poor clown is ignorant of his art.

Come forward and see an expert perform." So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them whirling in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then another and another, and soon--no one seeing whence he got them--adding, adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so swiftly that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as hands; and such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the air.

The spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was a shining and glinting and wonderful sight.

Then he folded his arms and told the balls to go on spinning without his help--and they did it.
After a couple of minutes he said, "There, that will do," and the oval broke and came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled every whither.

And wherever one of them came the people fell back in dread, and no one would touch it.