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

bitterly deceived, how can it be otherwise than that distrust, hatred, jealousy, vindictiveness would nestle firmly in the soul, destroying every trace of that human principle, which shows itself in benevolence and gentle confidence. No, your friendly face, your smooth words, shall not deceive me⁠—you, who in your inmost heart are concealing perhaps unmerited hate against me: I will hold you for my friend, I will do you as much good as I can, I will open my soul to you, because it gratifies me, and the bitter feeling of the moment, if you should deceive me, is little in comparison with the joys of a past dream. Even too the real friends, who truly mean you well⁠—how changeable is the mind of man! May not an evil coincidence of circumstances, a misinclination growing out of the whims of chance, create transitory hatred in the bosom of the dearest friends? The unlucky glass shows the thoughts, distrust immediately occupies the mind, and in unjust wrath I push from me the real friend, and this poison goes on, eating deeper and deeper into the roots of life, till I am at variance with everything, even with myself. No; it is rank impiety to wish for an equality with the Eternal Power, who sees through the heart of man, because he is its master. Away, away with the unlucky gift!”

He caught up the little box, which held the magic glass, and was on the point of dashing it against the floor with all his might, when suddenly Master Flea stood before him on the counterpane: he was in his microscopic form, and looked extremely graceful and handsome, in a glittering scale-breastplate, and highly-polished golden boots.

“Hold!” he cried; “hold, most respected friend; do not commit an absurdity. You would sooner annihilate a sun-moat than fling this little indestructible glass but a foot from you, while I am near. For the rest, though you were not aware of it, I was sitting, as usual, in the folds of your neckcloth, when you were at the honest bookbinder’s, and therefore heard and saw all that passed. Just so I have been a party to your present edifying soliloquy, and have learned several things from it. In the first place, you have shown the purity of your mind in all its glory, whence I infer that the decisive moment is fast approaching. Then too I have found that in regard to the microscopic glass, I was in a great error. Believe me, my honoured friend, although I have not the pleasure to be a man, as you are, but only a flea⁠—no simple one, indeed, but a graduate⁠—still I thoroughly understand human beings, amongst whom I so constantly live. Most frequently their actions appear to me very ridiculous, and even childish. Do not take it ill, my friend; I speak it only as Master Flea. You are right. It would be a bad thing, and could not possibly lead to any good, if a man were able to spy thus, without ceremony, into the brains of his neighbours; still to the careless, lively flea this quality of the microscopic glass is not in the least dangerous.

“Most honoured friend, and as fortune soon will have it, most happy friend⁠—you know that my people are of a reckless, merry disposition, and one might say that they consisted of mere youthful springalds. With this I can, for my part, boast of a peculiar sort of wisdom, which in general is wanting to you children of men⁠—that is, I never do anything out of season. To bite is the principal business of my life, but I always bite in the right time and right place; lay that to your heart, my worthy friend.

“I will now back from your hands, and faithfully preserve the gift, intended for you, and which neither that preparation of a man, called Swammerdam, nor Leeuwenhoek, who wears himself out with petty envy, could possess. And now, my honoured Mr. Tyss, resign yourself to slumber. You will soon fall into a dreamy delirium, in which the great moment will reveal itself. At the right time I shall be with you again.”

Master Flea disappeared, and the brilliance, which he had spread, faded away in the darkness of the chamber, the curtains of which were closely drawn.

It fell out as Master Flea had said.

Peregrine fancied that he was lying on the banks of a murmuring wood stream, and heard the sighing of the wind, the whispering of the leaves, and the humming of a thousand insects that buzzed about him. Then it seemed as if strange voices were audible, plainer and still plainer, so that at last Peregrine thought he could make out words. But it was only a confused and stunning hubbub that reached his ear.

At length these words were pronounced by a solemn, hollow voice, that sounded clearer and clearer⁠—

“Unhappy king, Sekakis, thou who didst despise the intelligence of nature, who, blinded by the evil spells of a crafty demon, didst look upon the false Teraphim, instead of the real spirit!

“In that fate-fraught spot at Famagusta, buried in the deep mine of the earth, lay the talisman, but, when you destroyed yourself, there was no principle to rekindle its frozen powers. In vain you sacrificed your daughter, the beautiful Gamaheh; in vain was the amorous despair of the Thistle, Zeherit, but at the same time impotent and inoperative was the blood-thirst of the Leech-Prince. Even the awkward Genius, Thetel, was obliged to let go his sweet prey, for so mighty still, O king, Sekakis, was thy half-extinct idea, that thou couldst return the lost one to the primal element, from which she sprang.

“And ye, insane anatomists of nature, that ever the unhappy one should have fallen into your hands, when you discovered her in the petal of a tulip! That you should have tormented her with your detestable experiments, presuming, in your childish arrogance, that you could effect that by your wretched arts, which could only happen by