f 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 any
thing 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
Swammerdamm, nor Leuwenhock, 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
p