A cold shudder ran through Peregrine, when he perceived, from Swammerdamm's thoughts, that all was true which he had spoken. Overpowered by the strangest and the most opposite feelings, he sank back upon his pillow and closed his eyes. The microscopist pressed him to come down himself, and hear from Dörtje's mouth, from George's, the present state of things, and then took his leave with as much ceremony as he had entered. Master Flea, who sate the whole time quietly on the pillow, suddenly leaped up to the top of Peregrine's nightcap. There he raised himself up on his long hind-legs, wrung his hands, stretched them imploringly to Heaven, and cried out in a voice half stifled with tears, "Woe to poor me! I already thought myself safe, and now comes the most dangerous trial. What avail me the courage, the constancy of my noble patron?--I surrender myself! All is over." "Why," said Mr. Tyss, in a faint voice--"why do you lament so on my nightcap, my dear master? Do you fancy that you alone have to complain? that I myself am not in the unhappiest situation in the world? for my whole mind seems broken up, and I neither know what to do, nor which way to turn my thoughts. But do not fancy, my dear master, I am foolish enough to venture near the rock upon which all my resolutions might be shipwrecked. I shall take care not to follow Swammerdamm's invitation, and to avoid seeing the alluring Dörtje Elverdink." "In reality," said Master Flea, after he had taken his old post, upon the pillow, by Peregrine's ear,--"in reality I am not sure that I ought not to advise you to go at once to Swammerdamm's, however destructive it may appear to myself. It seems to me as if all the lines of your horoscope were running quicker and quicker together, and you yourself were upon the point of entering the red centre.--Well, let the dark destiny have decreed what it will, I plainly perceive even a Master Flea cannot escape such a conclusion, and it is as simple as useless to expect my safety from you. Go then, take her hand, deliver me to slavery, and, that all may happen as the stars will it, without any interference, make no use of the microscopic glass." "Formerly," said Peregrine,--"formerly, Master Flea, your heart seemed stout, your mind firm, and now you have grown so fainthearted!--You may be as wise as you will, but you have no good idea of human resolution, and, at all events, rate it too meanly.--Once more--I will not break my word to you, and that you may perceive how fixed my determination is, of not seeing the little-one again, I will now rise and betake myself, as I did yesterday, to the bookbinder's."