Page:Specimens of German Romance (Volume 2).djvu/59

 voice—"Is it you, good Pepusch?—Ah! it is all over with me—clean over with me—I am a lost man! Pepusch, I begin to believe that you really meant it well with me, and that I have not done wisely in making light of your warnings."

Upon Pepusch's quietly asking what had happened, the flea-tamer turned himself round with his arm-chair to the wall, held both his hands before his face, and cried out piteously to Pepusch to take up a glass and examine the marble slab. Already, with the naked eye, Pepusch observed that the little soldiers, &c. lay there as if dead,—that nothing stirred any longer. The dexterous fleas appeared also to have taken another shape. But now, by means of the glass, Pepusch soon discovered that not a single flea was there, but what he had taken for them were nothing more than black pepper-corns and fruit-seeds that stood in their uniforms.

"I know not," began the flea-tamer, quite melancholy and overwhelmed,—"I know not what evil spirit struck me with blindness, that