It was in the afternoon of a beautiful summer day, and Mr. Munchausen had come up from the simmering city of Cimmeria to spend a day or two with Diavolo and Angelica and their venerable parents. They had all had dinner, and were now out on the back piazza² overlooking the magnificent river Styx, which flowed from the mountains to the sea, condescending³ on its way thither⁴ to look in upon countless⁵ insignificant⁶ towns which had grown up on its banks, among which was the one in which Diavolo and Angelica had been born and lived all their lives. Mr. Munchausen was lying comfortably in a hammock, collecting his thoughts.  
Angelica was somewhat depressed⁷, but Diavolo was jubilant and all because in the course of a walk they had had that morning Diavolo had killed a snake.
 
“It was fine sport,” said Diavolo. “He was lying there in the sun, and I took a stick and put him out of his misery⁸ in two minutes.”
 
 Here Diavolo illustrated⁹ the process by whacking¹¹ the Baron¹² over his waist-coat with a small malacca stick he carried.
 
“Well, I didn’t like it,” said Angelica. “I don’t care for snakes, but somehow or other it seems to me we’d ought to have left him alone. He wasn’t hurting anybody off there. If he’d come walking on our place, that would have been one thing, but we went walking where he was, and he had as much right to take a sun-bath there as we had.”
 
“That’s true enough,” put in Mr. Munchausen, resolved after Diavolo’s whack¹⁰, to side against him. “You’ve just about hit it, Angelica. It wasn’t polite of you in the first place, to disturb his snakeship in his nap, and having done so, I can’t see why Diavolo wanted to kill him.”
 
“Oh, pshaw!” said Diavolo, airily. “What’s snakes good for except to kill? I’ll kill ’em every chance I get. They aren’t any good.”
 
“All right,” said Mr. Munchausen, quietly. “I suppose you know all about it; but I know a thing or two about snakes myself that do not exactly agree with what you say. They are some good  sometimes, and, as a matter of fact, as a general rule, they are less apt to attack you without reason than you are to attack them. A snake is rather inclined to mind its own business unless he finds it necessary to do otherwise. Occasionally too you’ll find a snake with a truly amiable¹³ character. I’ll never forget my old pet Wriggletto, for instance, and as long as I remember him I can’t help having a warm corner for snakes in my heart.”
 
Here Mr. Munchausen paused and puffed¹⁴ thoughtfully on his cigar as a far-away half-affectionate look came into his eye.
 
“Who was Wriggletto?” asked Diavolo, transferring a half dollar from Mr. Munchausen’s pocket to his own.
 
“Who was he?” cried Mr. Munchausen. “You don’t mean to say that I have never told you about Wriggletto, my pet boa-constrictor, do you?”
 
“You never told me,” said Angelica. “But I’m not everybody. Maybe you’ve told some other little Imps¹⁵.”
 
“No, indeed!” said Mr. Munchausen. “You two are the only little Imps I tell stories to, and as  far as I am concerned, while I admit you are not everybody you are somebody and that’s more than everybody is. Wriggletto was a boa-constrictor I once knew in South America, and he was without exception, the most remarkable¹⁶ bit of a serpent I ever met. Genial¹⁷, kind, intelligent, grateful and useful, and, after I’d had him a year or two, wonderfully well educated. He could write with himself as well as you or I can with a pen. There’s a recommendation for you. Few men are all that—and few boa-constrictors either, as far as that goes. I admit Wriggletto was an exception to the general run of serpents, but he was all that I claim for him, nevertheless.”
 
“What kind of a snake did you say he was?” asked Diavolo.
 
“A boa-constrictor,” said Mr. Munchausen, “and I knew him from his childhood. I first encountered Wriggletto about ten miles out of Para on the river Amazon. He was being swallowed by a larger boa-constrictor, and I saved his life by catching¹⁸ hold of his tail and pulling him out just as the other was getting ready to give the  last gulp¹⁹ which would have taken Wriggletto in completely, and placed him beyond all hope of ever being saved.”
 
“What was the other boa doing while you were saving Wriggletto?” asked Diavolo, who was fond always of hearing both sides to every question, and whose father, therefore, hoped he might some day grow up to be a great judge, or at least serve with distinction upon a jury.
 
“He couldn’t do anything,” returned Mr. Munchausen. “He was powerless as long as Wriggletto’s head stuck in his throat and just before I got the smaller snake extracted I killed the other one by cutting off his tail behind his ears. It was not a very dangerous rescue on my part as long as Wriggletto was likely to be grateful. I must confess for a minute I was afraid he might not comprehend all I had done for him, and it was just possible he might attack me, but the hug he gave me when he found himself free once more was reassuring²⁰. He wound himself gracefully²¹ around my body, squeezed me gently and then slid off into the road again, as much as to say ‘Thank you, sir.  You’re a brick.’ After that there was nothing Wriggletto would not do for me. He followed me everywhere I went from that time on. He seemed to learn all in an instant that there were hundreds of little things to be done about the house of an old bachelor like myself which a willing serpent could do, and he made it his business to do those things: like picking up my collars from the floor, and............