A glance into the hall at once betrayed to the young Pepusch the cause of this horror, which had driven away the people. All within was alive, and a loathsome medley of the most hideous creatures filled the whole room. The race of beetles, spiders, leeches, gnats, magnified to excess, stretched out their probosces, crawled upon their long hairy legs, or fluttered their long wings. A more hideous spectacle Pepusch had never seen. He was even beginning to be sensible himself of horror, when something rough suddenly flew in his face, and he saw himself enveloped in a thick cloud of meal dust. His terror immediately left him, for he at once perceived that the rough thing could be nothing else than the round powdered wig of the flea-tamer--which, in fact, it was. By the time Pepusch had rubbed the powder from his eyes, the disgusting population of insects had vanished. The flea-tamer sate in his arm-chair quite exhausted. "Leuwenhock!"--exclaimed Pepusch to him--"Leuwenhock, do you see now what comes of your trickeries? You have again been forced to have recourse to your vassals to keep the people's hands off you--Is it not so?" "Is it you?" said the naturalist, in a faint voice--"Is it you, good Pepusch?--Ah! it is all over with me--clean over with me--I am a lost man! Pepusch, I begin to believe that you really meant it well with me, and that I have not done wisely in making light of your warnings." Upon Pepusch's quietly asking what had happened, the flea-tamer turned himself round with his arm-chair to the wall, held both his hands before his face, and cried out piteously to Pepusch to take up a glass and examine the marble slab. Already, with the naked eye, Pepusch observed that the little soldiers, &c. lay there as if dead,--that nothing stirred any longer. The dexterous fleas appeared also to have taken another shape. But now, by means of the glass, Pepusch soon discovered that not a single flea was there, but what he had taken for them were nothing more than black pepper-corns and fruit-seeds that stood in their uniforms. "I know not," began the flea-tamer, quite melancholy and overwhelmed,-- "I know not what evil spirit struck me with blindness, that I did not perceive the desertion of my army till the people were at the table and prepared for the spectacle. You may imagine, Pepusch, how, on seeing themselves deceived, the visitors first murmured, and then blazed out into fury. They accused me of the vilest deceit, and, as they grew hotter and hotter, and would no longer listen to any excuses, they were falling upon me to take their own revenge. What could I do better, to shun a load of blows, than immediately set the great microscope into motion, and envelope the people in a cloud of insects, at which they were terrified, as is natural to them?"