The foehn and the sun must have awakened the spirits of spring way up in the heights.

[T]he crew however stand it tolerable well, each being cloathed with a Fearnought jacket, a pair of trowsers of the same and a large cap made of canvas & baize, these together with an additional glass of brandy every morning enables them to bear the cold without flinshing.

And the least successful, for he is frustrated in his pursuit by the auctioneeress, by Rosa, the conservator to whom she entrusts the vase, by Nikki, the promiscuous kleptomaniac who moves in with Rosa, by a raucous assortment of dealers, thieves, and fences — and not least by the ingenious vase itself, which, once locked within a safe, “deformed and dedesigned in the dark, emerging as the dullest Wedgwood I could imagine” (16).

acad