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

language of it was unintelligible to all the guests, yet their tone and manner showed they were engaged in a dispute, which grew warmer and warmer. On a sudden they had taken their present form and began these mad tricks, which continually attracted more spectators.

“The man who flies up and down so admirably,” exclaimed one of the spectators, “is the clockmaker Degen, of Vienna⁠—he who invented the flying machine, with which he is constantly contriving to tumble down upon his nose.”

“No,” replied another, “that is not the clockmaker. I should rather fancy that it was the Little Tailor of Sachsenhausen, if I did not know that the poor thing was burnt.”

I know not whether my readers are acquainted with the Little Tailor of Sachsenhausen? Here it is.

History of the Little Tailor of Sachsenhausen

It happened that a pious little tailor at Sachsenhausen was coming out of church one Sunday with his wife, in all his best attire. The air was raw, the little tailor had taken nothing over night but a soft boiled egg and a few pickled gerkins, and in the morning a cup of coffee. Moreover he had been singing most vehemently in the church, and hence he began to feel in a piteous plight, and to long for a dram. As he had worked hard through the week, and had been particularly kind to his better half, making her a very pretty gown out of the pieces cabbaged from his customers, she consented to his going into the apothecary’s and getting himself a dram, which he did accordingly. The awkward apprentice, who was alone in the shop, made a mistake, and took down a bottle which, instead of a dram, contained inflammable gas, wherewith balloons are filled. Of this the apprentice poured out a full glass, and the tailor, putting it at once to his mouth, swallowed off the gas as an agreeable reviver. It made him, however, feel very strangely⁠—as if he had got a pair of wings on his shoulders, or as if someone were playing at football with him, for he felt himself compelled to jump up and down in the shop, and with every moment the impetus increased.

“Eh! Gemini! Gemini!” he cried, “What a nimble dancer I have grown!”

The apothecary’s apprentice stood with his mouth gaping wide from pure wonder, when it chanced that someone opened the door so hastily, that the opposite window flew open also. A strong current of air poured in, caught up the little tailor, and away he sailed through the window, since when he has not been seen. But it happened some time after, that the people of Sachsenhausen observed in the air a fireball, which lighted the whole country with its brightness, and then, being extinguished, fell to earth. All were eager to know what had dropped, and ran to the place, but found nothing more than a little heap of ashes, but with this the tongue of a shoe-buckle, a little piece of yellow satin with flowers, and something black, which to look at was like the horn-top of a walking stick. All were in deep council how such things could fall down from heaven in a fireball, when the wife of the departed tailor came up, and, on seeing these things, wrung her hands, took on most piteously, and cried out, “Ah, woe! that is my husband’s buckle! Ah, woe! that is my husband’s Sunday waistcoat! Ah, woe! that is my husband’s cane-top!” A very learned man, however, has declared that the cane-top was no cane-top, but a meteoric ball, or an abortive globe.

Thus was made known to the people of Sachsenhausen and to all the world that the poor little tailor⁠—to whom the apothecary’s apprentice had given inflammable gas instead of a dram⁠—was burnt in the air, and had fallen to earth, as a meteoric ball, or an abortive globe.

The taverner was at length impatient that the odd guest did not cease making himself now larger now smaller, without paying him any attention, and held the flask of Burgundy, which he had ordered, close to his nose. The stranger caught fast hold of it immediately, and did not let go till he had drained the last drop; then he sank as if fainting into an armchair, and could scarcely move himself.

The guests observed with astonishment that he swelled more and more during the drinking, and now appeared quite thick and shapeless. The fly-work of the other seemed also to be at a stand; he was about to sit down, panting and breathless, but, perceiving how his adversary lay there, half dead, he flew suddenly upon him, and began to belabour him soundly with his fists. The host, however, pulled him off, and declared that he would turn him out of the house, if he did not keep quiet. If they both wished to show their juggler’s tricks, they were welcome to do so, but without quarrelling and fighting like blackguards.

The flying gentleman seemed to take it somewhat ill that the host should suppose he was a juggler. He protested that he was nothing less than a vagabond, who went about playing off legerdemain tricks; he had formerly been ballet master to a celebrated king, but now practised in private as an amateur, and was called⁠—as his functions required he should be⁠—Legénie. If, in his just indignation at the abominable fellow there, he had sprung somewhat higher than was fitting, that was his own business, and concerned no one else.

The host on his part opined, that all this did not justify any fisticuffs; to which the amateur replied that mine host did not know the malicious fellow, or he would willingly allow his back to be drubbed black and blue. He had formerly been a French customhouse officer, and now gained a livelihood by bloodletting, cupping, and shaving, and was called Monsieur Leech, a nuisance to everybody, by his awkwardness, stupidity, and gluttony. It was not enough that the scoundrel, wherever he met him, whisked away