house. For this he
needed the permission of his kind host, which he now requested.

Involuntarily Peregrine inquired who the lady was, without reflecting
that this in fact was the best question he could ask to get a clue to
the strange mystery.

"It is just and proper," replied Swammer, "that the landlord should
know whom he is lodging in his house. Learn then, my respected Mr.
Tyss, that the damsel, who has taken refuge with me, is no other than
the fair Hollandress, Doertje Elverdink, niece of the celebrated
Leuwenhock, who, as you know, gives here the wonderful microscopic
exhibitions. Leuwenhock was once my friend, but I must acknowledge that
he is a hard man, and uses my god-daughter cruelly. A violent affair,
which took place yesterday, compelled the maiden to flight, and it
seems natural enough that she should seek help and refuge with me."

"Doertje Elverdink!" said Peregrine, half
dreaming;--"Leuwenhock!--perhaps a descendant of the naturalist, Antony
Leuwenhock, who made the celebrated microscopes."

"That our Leuwenhock," replied Swammer, smiling, "is a descendant of
that celebrated man, I cannot exactly say, seeing that he is the
celebrated man himself; and it is a mere fable that he was buried about
two hundred years ago at Delft. Believe it, my dear Mr. Tyss, or else
you might doubt that I am the renowned Swammerdamm, although, for the
sake of shortness and that I may not have to answer the questions of
every curious blockhead, I call myself Swammer. Every one maintains
that I died in the year 1680, but you see, Mr. Tyss, that I stand
before you alive and hearty; and that _I_ am really _I_, I can prove
even to the dullest, from my Biblia Naturae. You believe me, my worthy
Mr. Tyss?"

"Since a short time--" said Mr. Tyss, in a tone that showed his mental
perplexity, "since a short time I have experienced so many wonders,
that I should be in perpetual doubt, if the whole had not been a
manifest subject of the senses. But now I believe every thing, however
wild and fantastic. It may be that you are the dead John Swammerdamm,
and, therefore, as a dead-alive, know more than other common men; but
as to the flight of Doertje Elverdink, or the Princess Gamaheh, or
however else the lady may be called, you are in a monstrous error. Hear
how the matter really happened."

Peregrine now related, quite calmly, the adventure he had with the
lady, her entrance into Lemmerhirt's room, up to her reception with Mr.
S