Master Flea, E. T. A. Hoffmann [ebook voice reader .TXT] 📗

cause for their St. Vitus’ dance than their looking at each other through their glasses, they might have been taken for maniacs, just escaped from the madhouse. For the rest, it was a very pretty sight.

Swammerdam at last succeeded in driving Leeuwenhoek from his post by the door⁠—which he had maintained with obstinate bravery⁠—and thus carrying on the war in the remoter parts of the ground. George Pepusch saw the opportunity, pressed against the unoccupied door, that was neither barred nor bolted, and slipped into the chamber, but in the next moment he rushed out, exclaiming, “She has fled! Fled!” and then hurried out of the house with the rapidity of lightning.

Both Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam were seriously wounded, for both hopped and danced about after a mad fashion, and with their howlings and cryings made a music to it that seemed like the shrieks of the damned in hell. Peregrine knew not how to set about separating them, and thus ending a contest, which was as ludicrous as it was terrific. At last the combatants perceived that the door stood wide open, forgot their duel and their pains, put their destructive weapons into their pockets, and rushed into the chamber.

Mr. Tyss took it grievously to heart that the fair one had fled from his house, and wished the abominable Leeuwenhoek at the devil, when the voice of Alina was heard upon the stairs. She was laughing aloud, and muttered between, “What strange things one does see! Wonderful! incredible!”

“What?” cried Peregrine dejectedly, “what wonder has happened now?”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Tyss!” exclaimed the old woman, “only come upstairs directly, and go into your chamber.”

And she opened the room-door with a cunning titter. On entering, O wonder! O joy! the little Dörtje Elverdink tripped up to him, in her dress of tissue, as he had before seen her at Mr. Swammer’s.

“At length I see you again!” lisped the little one, and contrived to nestle up so closely to Peregrine, that he could not help embracing her most tenderly in spite of all his good resolutions. His senses seemed ecstacied by love and joy.

It has often happened to a man that in the height of his transports he has hit his nose somewhat roughly, and, being suddenly awakened out of his heaven by the earthly pain, has tumbled down again into the vulgar world. Just so it chanced with our Mr. Tyss. In stooping down to kiss Dörtje’s sweet mouth, he gave his nose, of goodly dimensions, a hard blow against the diadem of shining brilliants, which the little one wore in her raven locks. The pain of the blow upon the sharp points of the stone brought him sufficiently to himself to perceive the diadem. The diadem reminded him of the Princess Gamaheh, and with this recollection recurred all that Master Flea had told him of the little siren. He bethought himself that a Princess, the daughter of a mighty king, could not possibly care about his love, and therefore all her pretended affection must be a mere trick, by which the dissembler hoped to regain possession of Master Flea. With this consideration a cold ice stream seemed to rush through his veins, which, if it did not quite extinguish, at least damped, the love flames.

Peregrine gently freed himself from the arms of the little one, who had lovingly embraced him, and said with downcast eyes, “Oh, heavens! you are the daughter of the mighty King Sekakis, the beautiful Gamaheh. Your pardon, princess, if a feeling, which I could not master, hurried me into folly, into madness. But yourself, lady⁠—”

“What are you saying, my fair friend?” interrupted Dörtje Elverdink; “I the daughter of a mighty king? I a princess? I am your Alina, who will love you to distraction, if you⁠—but how is this? Alina, the queen of Golconda? she is already with you; I have spoken with her⁠—a good kind woman, but she has grown old, and is no longer so handsome as in the time of her marriage with the French general. Woe is me! I am not the right one; I never ruled in Golconda. Woe is me!”

The little one had closed her eyes, and began to totter. Peregrine conveyed her to a sofa.

“Gamaheh!” she went on, speaking in a state of somnambulism, “Gamaheh, do you say? Gamaheh, the daughter of King Sekakis? Yes, I recollect, in Famagusta! I was indeed a beautiful tulip⁠—Yet no, even then I felt desire and love in my breast. Still, still on that point⁠ ⁠…”

She was silent, and seemed to be falling into a perfect slumber. Peregrine undertook the perilous enterprise of placing her in a more convenient position, but, as he gently embraced her, a concealed pin prickled him sharply in the finger. According to his custom he snapt his fingers, and Master Flea, taking it for the concerted signal, immediately placed the microscopic glass in his eye.

Now, as usual, Peregrine saw behind the tunicle of the eyes the strange interweaving of nerves and veins, which pierced deep into the brain. But with these were twined bright silver threads, a hundred times thinner than the thinnest spider’s web, and it was these very threads that confused him, for they seemed to be endless, branching out into something indistinguishable even by the microscopic eye; perhaps they were thoughts of a sublimer kind, the others of a sort more easily comprehended. Then he observed flowers, strangely blended, which took the shape of men, then again men, who dissolved as it were into the earth, and peeped forth again as stones and metals. Amongst these all manner of beasts were in motion, who underwent innumerable changes, and spoke strange languages. No one appearance answered to the other, and in the plaintive sounds of sorrow that filled the air, there was a dissonance, corresponding with that of the images. But it was this very dissonance that ennobled still more the deep fundamental harmony, which broke out triumphantly, and united all that seemed irreconcileable.

“Do not puzzle yourself,” whispered Master Flea, “do not puzzle