s Gamaheh, and with this
recollection recurred all that Master Flea had told him of the little
syren. He bethought himself that a Princess, the daughter of a mighty
king, could not possibly care about his love, and therefore all her
pretended affection must be a mere trick, by which the dissembler hoped
to regain possession of Master Flea. With this consideration a cold
ice-stream seemed to rush through his veins, which, if it did not quite
extinguish, at least damped, the love-flames.

Peregrine gently freed himself from the arms of the little one, who had
lovingly embraced him, and said with downcast eyes, "Oh, heavens! you
are the daughter of the mighty King Sekakis, the beautiful Gamaheh.
Your pardon, princess, if a feeling, which I could not master, hurried
me into folly, into madness. But yourself, lady,--"

"What are you saying, my fair friend?" interrupted Doertje Elverdink; "I
the daughter of a mighty king? I a princess? I am your Alina, who will
love you to distraction, if you,--but how is this?--Alina, the queen of
Golconda? she is already with you; I have spoken with her--a good kind
woman, but she has grown old, and is no longer so handsome as in the
time of her marriage with the French general. Woe is me! I am not the
right one; I never ruled in Golconda. Woe is me!"

The little one had closed her eyes, and began to totter. Peregrine
conveyed her to a sofa.

"Gamaheh!" she went on, speaking in a state of somnambulism, "Gamaheh,
do you say? Gamaheh, the daughter of King Sekakis? Yes, I recollect, in
Famagusta!--I was indeed a beautiful tulip--Yet no, even then I felt
desire and love in my breast.--Still, still on that point!"

She was silent, and seemed to be falling into a perfect slumber.
Peregrine undertook the perilous enterprise of placing her in a more
convenient position, but, as he gently embraced her, a concealed pin
prickled him sharply in the finger. According to his custom he snapt
his fingers, and Master Flea, taking it for the concerted signal,
immediately placed the microscopic glass in his eye.

Now, as usual, Peregrine saw behind the tunicle of the eyes the strange
interweaving of nerves and veins, which pierced deep into the brain.
But with these were twined bright silver threads, a hundred times
thinner than the thinnest spider's web, and it was these very threads
that confused him, for they seemed to be endless, branching out into a
something, indistinguishable even by the microsco