The main character is a painter who likes to bet at the horse racing, an undertaking where he employs his supernatural skills to make the most of by way of getting into contact with metaphysical forces of the hippodrome.
Wandering along the hippodrome like a sleepwalker he finds himself in stables. It is in the stables that he meets up a jockey who hands him a horse cloth (from his night dream) and asks to paint it. The dyer foretells that he is to win the first place. As the horse cloth is unusual, the painter makes spells over it, prepares alchemical solutions. The water boiling in painting pots,the horse race starts+