ught myself safe, and now comes the most
dangerous trial. What avail me the courage, the constancy of my noble
patron?--I surrender myself! All is over."

"Why," said Mr. Tyss, in a faint voice--"why do you lament so on my
nightcap, my dear master? Do you fancy that you alone have to complain?
that I myself am not in the unhappiest situation in the world? for my
whole mind seems broken up, and I neither know what to do, nor which
way to turn my thoughts. But do not fancy, my dear master, I am foolish
enough to venture near the rock upon which all my resolutions might be
shipwrecked. I shall take care not to follow Swammerdamm's invitation,
and to avoid seeing the alluring Doertje Elverdink."

"In reality," said Master Flea, after he had taken his old post, upon
the pillow, by Peregrine's ear,--"in reality I am not sure that I ought
not to advise you to go at once to Swammerdamm's, however destructive
it may appear to myself. It seems to me as if all the lines of your
horoscope were running quicker and quicker together, and you yourself
were upon the point of entering the red centre.--Well, let the dark
destiny have decreed what it will, I plainly perceive even a Master
Flea cannot escape such a conclusion, and it is as simple as useless to
expect my safety from you. Go then, take her hand, deliver me to
slavery, and, that all may happen as the stars will it, without any
interference, make no use of the microscopic glass."

"Formerly," said Peregrine,--"formerly, Master Flea, your heart seemed
stout, your mind firm, and now you have grown so fainthearted!--You may
be as wise as you will, but you have no good idea of human resolution,
and, at all events, rate it too meanly.--Once more--I will not break my
word to you, and that you may perceive how fixed my determination is,
of not seeing the little-one again, I will now rise and betake myself,
as I did yesterday, to the bookbinder's."

"Oh Peregrine!" cried Master Flea, "the will of man is a frail thing; a
passing air will break it. How immense is the abyss lying between what
man wills and what really happens! Many a life is only a constant
_willing_, and many a one, from pure volition, at last does not know
what he will. You _will_ not see Doertje Elverdink, and yet who will
answer for it that you do not see her in the very moment of your
declaring such a resolution?"

Strange enough, the very thing really happened which Master Flea had
prophesied.

Peregrine aros