And I'm sitting in a cake!"
And he was.
He was sitting in a kingdom of chocolate and oranges, pomegranates and whipped cream, candied fruit, powdered sugar and jam, and he was sitting on a throne, just like the king of the colourful, sweet-smelling kingdom.
The cake was his throne.
He kept his eyes shut.
He was ready for anything, a terrible row, a scandal, anything at all.
But he never could have expected things to happen as they did.
"That's the end of the cake," the second pastrycook said sternly and sadly.
Then there was silence.
You could hear the bubbles bursting in the pan of boiling chocolate.
"What'll they do?" the balloon man wondered in terror, squeezing his eyes as tight as he could.
His heart jumped up and down like a penny in a piggy-bank.
"Fiddlesticks!" said the head pastrycook just as sternly. "They have finished the meat course upstairs.
The cake must be brought in in twenty minutes.
The coloured balloons and the stupid face of this flying idiot will be a wonderful decoration for a very special cake like this. Give me the whipped cream!" he ordered.
It was handed to him immediately.
Oh, what happened then!
Three pastrycooks and twenty kitchen-boys attacked the balloon man with a gusto that would have pleased the fattest of the Three Fat Men.
In a flash, the balloon man all but disappeared.
He sat there with his eyes shut, not knowing what he was beginning to look like.
He was covered all over with cream.
His head and his round face, that looked like a painted teapot, stuck out.
All the rest of him was hidden under a layer of thick white cream with a lovely tint of pale pink.
Now the balloon man looked like anything else in the world, except himself. The resemblance was gone, just as his straw slipper was gone.
A poet might think he was a snow-white swan. A gardener might think he was a marble statue. A laundress might think he was a pile of soapsuds. And a little boy might think he was a snowman.
On top of it all were the balloons.
This was a very unusual decoration, but, all in all, it was rather pretty.
"Well," said the head pastrycook and stepped back to look at his work, as an artist does.
Then his voice became as terrible as before and he shouted: "The candied fruit!"
The candied fruit appeared.
There were all kinds, all shapes, all sizes: bitter and sweet, and sour, triangles, circles, stars, crescents and rosebuds.
The kitchen-boys were doing their best.
No sooner had the head pastrycook clapped his hands three times, than the entire mountain of whipped cream that covered the cake was studded with candied fruit.
"That's enough!" he said. "I think we'd better put it in the oven for a few minutes to brown the frosting."
"In the oven! Why?
Which oven?
Me into the oven?!" the balloon man shuddered.
At that very moment one of the servants dashed into the kitchen.
"The cake!
The cake!" he shouted. "Immediately!
They're waiting for the cake upstairs."
"It's ready!" said the head pastrycook.
"Thank goodness!" The balloon man breathed a sigh of relief.
And he opened his eyes a tiny bit.
Six servants dressed in light-blue livery raised the huge platter on which he sat and carried him off.
He could hear the kitchen-boys laughing. They carried him up a wide staircase to the hall above.
As they entered the hall, the balloon man shut his eyes for a second.
It was noisy and merry there.
Many people were talking at once, there were bursts of laughter and applause.
To judge by the sound of it, the feast was a great success.