Master Flea by E. T. A. Hoffmann (drm ebook reader .txt) 📕

window in a very melancholy mood, and cursed his fate aloud, when a window was opened close by him, and a voice exclaimed, “What! do I see right? Is it you, George?” Mr. Pepusch was not a little astonished on perceiving the friend, with whom he had been most intimate during his residence at Madras. “The deuce!” he exclaimed, “that I should be so forgetful, so utterly stupid! I knew that you had got safely into harbour, and in Hamburg heard strange things of your way of living, and, when I had got here, never thought of paying you a visit. But he who has such wonderful things in his head as I have⁠—Well, it is lucky that accident brought you to me! You see I am under arrest, but you can immediately set me free, by answering for my being really the George Pepusch, whom you knew years ago, and not a thief nor a robber.”

“Why,” replied Peregrine, “I should be an excellent bail, being myself under arrest!”

He now related at large to his friend, how since his return to Frankfurt he had found himself deprived of both his parents, and had from that time led, amidst all the bustle of a city, a lonely joyless life, devoted to the memory of other days. To this George replied morosely, “Oh yes, I have heard of it, I have heard of the fools’ tricks you play, that you may waste life in a childish dream. You would be a hero of innocence, of childishness, and for this despise the just claims which society has upon you. You give imaginary family feasts, and bestow upon the poor the costly viands, the dear wines, which you have before served up to the dead. You give yourself Christmas boxes, and act as if you were a child, and then present to poor children these gifts, which are of the sort usually wasted in rich houses upon spoiled young ones. But you do not reflect that you are doing a scurvy benefit to the poor in tickling their gums with delicacies, that they may doubly feel their wretchedness, when afterwards they are compelled, by pressing hunger, to eat the vile bits that would be rejected by many a petted lapdog. Ha! how this alms-giving disgusts me, when I think that what you thus waste in a day would be sufficient to support them for months in a moderate manner. Then too you overload them with glittering gewgaws, when a common toy, presented by their fathers or mothers, gives them infinitely more pleasure. They eat themselves sick with your infernal marzipan, and with the knowledge of your splendid gifts, which in the end must be denied to them, you sow in their young minds the seeds of discontent and uneasiness. You are rich, full of youth, and yet withdraw yourself from all society, and thus frustrate the approaches of well-meaning minds. I will believe that the death of your parents may have shaken you, but if everyone who has suffered a real loss were to creep into his shell, by heavens! the whole world would be like a house of mourning, and I would not live in it. But, my friend! do you know that you are under the influence of the most determined egotism that ever lurked beneath a silly misanthropy? Go, go, Peregrine, I can no longer esteem you, no longer be your friend, if you do not change this way of life, and give up your abominable system of housekeeping.”

Peregrine snapped his fingers, and Master Flea instantly placed the microscopic glass in his eye. The thoughts of the angry Pepusch ran thus: “Is it not a pity that such a kind, understanding man should fall into these dangerous fancies, which at last will completely unnerve him, and deprive him of his best powers? But it is evident that his delicate mind, which is besides inclined to melancholy, could not endure the blow inflicted on him by the death of his parents, and he seeks for consolation in a mode of life which borders upon madness. He is lost if I do not save him. The more I esteem him, the harder I will attack him, and the stronger I will paint his folly.”

In these thoughts Peregrine saw that he had found his old friend unaltered, and, after Master Flea had taken the microscopic glass out of his eye, he said, “George, I will not contend with you as to what you say of my mode of life, for I know you mean it well with me, but I must tell you that it gives me real delight when I can make a day of festival to the poor, although in this I do not think of myself a detestable egotism, of which at least I feel unconscious. They are the flowers in my life, which else seems to me like a wild melancholy field of thistles.”

“What do you say of thistles?” interrupted George Pepusch hastily, “Why do you despise thistles, and place them in opposition to flowers? Are you so little versed in natural history as not to know that the most wonderful blossom in the world is that of the thistle, I mean the Cactus grandiflorus. And again, is not the thistle, Zeherit, the most beautiful Cactus under the sun? Peregrine, I have so long kept it from you, or rather was forced to keep it from you, because I myself had not the full conviction of it, but now learn, that I myself am the thistle, Zeherit, and will never give up my claims to the hand of the daughter of the worthy king, Sekakis, the heavenly Princess Gamaheh. I had found her, but in the same moment the diabolical watchmen seized me, and dragged me to prison.”

“How!” cried Peregrine, half petrified with astonishment, “are you too involved in the strangest of all histories?”

“What history?” asked Pepusch.

Peregrine did not hesitate to tell his friend, as he had before told Mr. Swammer,