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 learnt 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 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.