Master Flea by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Although we are wholly deficient in any certain information respecting the result of the battle in Leeuwenhoek's chamber, yet we cannot suppose otherwise than that the microscopists, with the help of George Pepusch, had obtained a complete victory over the hostile confederates: it had else been impossible that the old Swammer had returned so friendly and contented as he really did. With the same glad face, Swammer, or rather Mr. Jan Swammerdam, came the following morning to Peregrine, who was still in bed and earnestly conversing with his protégé, Master Flea. Upon seeing this visitor, Peregrine did not fail putting the microscopic glass into the pupil of his eye.

After many long and tedious excuses for his early visit, Swammerdam at last took his place on the bed, positively refusing to let Peregrine rise and put on his dressing gown. In the strangest phrases he thanked his landlord for the great civilities he had experienced, which, it seems, consisted in his having been received as a lodger, and also in that Mr. Tyss had allowed his household to be increased by the addition of a young female, who was sometimes too loud and vivacious. But the greatest favour shown by Mr. Peregrine, and not without some self-sacrifice, was in his having effected a reconciliation between him (Swammerdam) and his old friend, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. In fact, as Swammerdam went on to say, both hearts had inclined to each other at the moment when they were attacked by the Amateur and the barber and had to protect Dörtje Elverdink from those monsters. The serious reconciliation of the microscopists had soon after followed.