Master Flea

Master Flea by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Peregrine Tyss, a wealthy, reclusive thirty-six-year-old Frankfurt am Main bachelor who has never gotten over the early death of his parents, still marks family anniversaries and Christmas alone with his ugly old servant Alina, then gives his purchased toys away to poor children. On one such Christmas Eve, delivering gifts to the bookbinder Lemmerhirt's family, he is accosted by a dazzling, oddly dressed little stranger who calls herself Alina, kisses him, and begs him to carry her home. She turns out to have taken refuge with Peregrine's reclusive lodger, old Mr. Swammer, who claims she is a runaway princess and his former ward. That night a tiny flea-sized creature appears on Peregrine's bed and identifies himself as Master Flea, ruler of a flea people, who begs protection from his enemies. He explains that he loves the beautiful Princess Gamaheh, daughter of King Sekakis, who was kissed to death by the Leech-Prince in Famagusta, revived by the magicians Swammerdam and Leeuwenhoek from a tulip petal, and finally restored to full life only by Master Flea's own bite — a bite that must be periodically repeated or she will wither. Master Flea was captured and enslaved by the showman Leeuwenhoek, who exhibited educated fleas, until Peregrine unknowingly sheltered him in an empty toy box. The mysterious lady is this same Gamaheh, now also going by the name Dörtje Elverdink, Leeuwenhoek's "niece," and she is desperate to recapture Master Flea. Peregrine promises never to surrender him, sealed with a bite on the thumb, and in return receives a microscopic glass that, placed in his eye, lets him see people's true thoughts behind their spoken words. Meanwhile the reader learns of Peregrine's melancholy friend George Pepusch, who believes himself to be the reincarnated Thistle Zeherit, once in love with Gamaheh in Famagusta, and who has pursued Dörtje/Gamaheh from Berlin to the Hague to Frankfurt, jealous of Leeuwenhoek's guardianship. Leeuwenhoek tells Pepusch the mythic history of Sekakis, Gamaheh, the Leech-Prince, the genius Thetel, and the rival magicians Swammerdam and Leeuwenhoek, who quarreled over possession of the revived princess and a missing magic glass. Peregrine, arrested briefly on suspicion connected to Dörtje's disappearance, is bailed out by Pepusch, whom he in turn frees. Leeuwenhoek confronts Swammerdam and duels him with telescopes in Peregrine's house over Dörtje/Gamaheh, while Pepusch snatches her away mid-fight. Using his new microscopic glass in society, Peregrine discovers the gulf between people's polite words and selfish thoughts, and Master Flea, delighted, encourages him to keep circulating rather than brood at home. Dörtje returns to Peregrine's house, feigns mortal illness unless Master Flea is surrendered, and nearly seduces Peregrine into betrayal before he refuses at the last moment; Pepusch bursts in and carries her off again. Later, in a tavern, Pepusch — in a manic episode — battles two grotesque suitors of Gamaheh, the "Ballet Master Legénie" (the genius Thetel) and the barber-Douanier "Leech" (the Leech-Prince), before Peregrine calms him. Leeuwenhoek, using astrology and a fabricated tale about a rabbi's inherited gift of reading souls, tells Peregrine that he himself carries a sleeping talisman, once King Sekakis's carbuncle, tied to Gamaheh's fate, though Peregrine's microscopic thought-reading exposes Leeuwenhoek's claims as largely invented to manipulate him. Swammerdam, likewise scheming to control Peregrine's supposed talisman, later reports that he and Leeuwenhoek have reconciled and now both wish Peregrine to marry Dörtje, believing this is what Peregrine's horoscope demands; Pepusch supposedly has renounced his own claim. Despite intense temptation, and despite Dörtje's tears and coquetry, Peregrine — bolstered by Master Flea's anxious pleading — persists in refusing her hand for George Pepusch's sake. Wandering afterward to Lemmerhirt's shop to settle a bill, Peregrine meets the bookbinder's gentle daughter Rose, recently returned home, and is overwhelmed by a pure, uncomplicated love utterly unlike his feverish passion for Dörtje. Rose confesses her own love for him, dismissing rumors that sorcery surrounds his household, and the two become engaged with her parents' joyful blessing. That night, tempted to use the microscopic glass to test Rose's sincerity, Peregrine recoils in shame at the thought of violating her innocent mind, and resolves that the glass is an unholy gift that corrupts trust between people. As he moves to destroy it, Master Flea reappears in his full miniature form, in armor and golden boots, to dissuade him, praising Peregrine's proven purity of heart and beginning to explain that he has learned, from having secretly witnessed the scene at the bookbinder's, that his earlier fears about the glass were mistaken.

By E.T.A. Hoffmann · First published 1806 · Genre: Fantasy, Gothic Fiction, Adventure · 7 chapters · 54,661 words

First lines

Once upon a time -- But what author will venture to begin his tale so nowadays? Obsolete! tedious! Such is the cry of the gentle, or rather ungentle reader, who wishes to be plunged at once, in medias res, according to the wise advice of the old Roman poet. He feels as if some long-winded talker of a guest, who had just entered, was spreading himself out, and clearing his voice to begin an endless discourse, and he angrily closes the book which he had but just opened. The present editor, indeed, of the wonderful tale of Master Flea, thinks this beginning a very good beginning, not to say the best for every history, on which account the most excellent storytellers that are, namely, nurses, old women, etc. have at all times made use of it, but as every author writes chiefly to be read, he -- that is, the aforesaid editor -- will not at any rate deprive the kind reader of the pleasure of actually being his reader. He tells him therefore at once, without more circumlocution, that this same Peregrine Tyss, of whose strange adventures this history is to treat, had never, on any Christmas evening, felt his heart so throb with anxious joyful expectation, as precisely on that with which begins the narration of his adventures.

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Fantasy · Fairy Tale · German Literature · Romanticism · Satire · Social Commentary · Animal Fiction · Comedy · Adventure · Travel · Exoticism · Cultural Critique

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