"Oh, yes, 'Mercy, mercy,'" retorted the Baron, with a sneer. "Very well, then, this time, but mind----" Here his countenance again assumed a ferocious expression. "Ha! ha!" he cried. "You thought to outwit me by taking opium to deaden my bite. Fool! know it was _I_ who made you buy that opium; not to make you _sleep_, but to _awaken_ your dull senses to such a pitch that the gross material clay that clogs your vision might be, as it were, doffed for a moment, and that your keener eyesight might be able to grasp my form a degree nearer resembling that which I bore in the flesh, thereby in a measure removing the barrier between our beings; and each, as it were, meeting on neutral ground, to the end that you should know my pleasure and obey my commands. It was I who caused you to catch that toothache, by inspiring you to go to the theatre. It was I who so ordained the distribution of the tickets that that ticket near the door should fall to your lot, where I knew you would take cold in the tooth, being subject to the toothache. I then, by my subtle arts, caused you to buy that bottle of opium and bring it here with you. I then worried you by continual biting, till I forced you to seek comfort in that opium bottle, and now that your usually obtuse senses are raised to that abnormal state necessary to converse with beings of my order, listen, and give ear to what I have to say." "Awful being, say on," I muttered. "You must know, then," he continued, "that my spirit inhabits by day the body of the present Baron who bears my name, though at night I am compelled to assume the ignoble shape of a flea. At this present moment my descendant lies in his bed lifeless. My spirit will animate his clay to-morrow. Call upon him early, and you will learn from him what I have not time to discuss with you now, as it is now daybreak and my power is on the wane. Farewell." So saying, he gradually decreased in size, losing every moment more and more of the _human_ element that he had assumed, and growing more and more into the likeness of a flea the smaller he grew, till he returned to the size he appeared when I first saw him, and then vanished mysteriously. The exciting effects of the opium had worn off, but they had given place to a feeling of deep depression. My head felt too heavy for me, and ached terribly; my eyeballs were as if weighed down by lead. I could not sleep comfortably, and I was too lazy to get up. I loathed my own existence, and hated everybody and everything around me. Thoughts of suicide haunted me, and I had a momentary thought of emptying the whole of the remaining contents of the bottle down my throat, and so put an end to my misery for ever. But then I bethought me of the Baron; it might be the means of invoking again the "Phantom Flea."