Page:Specimens of German Romance (Volume 2).djvu/58

 hideous creatures filled the whole room. The race of beetles, spiders, leeches, gnats, magnified to excess, stretched out their probosces, crawled upon their long hairy legs, or fluttered their long wings. A more hideous spectacle Pepusch had never seen. He was even beginning to be sensible himself of horror, when something rough suddenly flew in his face, and he saw himself enveloped in a thick cloud of meal dust. His terror immediately left him, for he at once perceived that the rough thing could be nothing else than the round powdered wig of the flea-tamer—which, in fact, it was.

By the time Pepusch had rubbed the powder from his eyes, the disgusting population of insects had vanished. The flea-tamer sate in his arm-chair quite exhausted.

"Leuwenhock!"—exclaimed Pepusch to him—"Leuwenhock, do you see now what comes of your trickeries? You have again been forced to have recourse to your vassals to keep the people's hands off you—Is it not so?"

"Is it you?" said the naturalist, in a faint