Bruno innocently asks what happens to the people who are too heavy - a question which Mein Herr doesn't answer.

He also explains that his people practise selective breeding (ie, eugenics) with the eventual aim of making them lighter than air.

'That is a minor matter,' Mein Herr carelessly replied. If a fire breaks out, the taps are turned, and in one minute the theatre is flooded, up to the very roof! Thus the fire is extinguished.'

Mein Herr explains why, in his country, the only place you can drown is a theatre.Aliens Speaking English: Played with for Mein Herr.Airport Novel: Lady Muriel discusses the Victorian equivalent: 'the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty'.The sort-of-real world plot involves a romance slightly complicated by a third party and oddly unaffected by the presence of a visitor from another planet/plane called Mein Herr, who is for some reason German-accented.

The Elf-land plot involves the King standing down, for obscure reasons, in favour of his Most Definitely Not a Villain brother and 'Sub-Warden', and his chancellor, leaving his two kids, the titular Sylvie and Bruno, as Heart Warming Orphans. One of the lesser-known works of Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno runs two parallel plots, one in something like the real world and one in Elf-land, both accessed by the First-Person Peripheral Narrator. First stanza of 'The Mad Gardener's Song'

Sylvie and bruno by lewis carroll