ground we
quarrelled for many hours, till, having screamed ourselves hoarse, we
at last came to a compromise. My colleague consigned the princess to
me, in return for which I gave him an important glass, and this very
glass is the cause of our present determined hostility. He affirms that
I have treacherously purloined it--an impudent falsehood--and although
I really know that the glass was lost in the transferring, yet I can
declare, upon my honour and conscience, that I am not the cause of it,
nor have I any idea how it could have happened. In fact, the glass is
so small, that a grain of sand is about ten times larger. See, friend
Pepusch; now I have told you all in confidence, and now you know that
Doertje Elverdink is no other than the revivified Princess Gamaheh, and
must perceive that to such a high mysterious alliance a plain young man
like you can have no----."

"Stop!" interrupted George Pepusch, with a smile that was something
satanic:--"stop! one confidence is worth another, and, therefore,
I, on my side, will confide to you that I knew all that you have been
telling me much earlier and much better than you did. I cannot laugh
enough at your bigotry and your foolish pretensions. Know,--what you
might have known long ago if your knowledge had not been confined to
glass-grinding,--that I myself am the thistle, Zeherit, who stood where
the princess had laid her head, and of whom you have thought fit to be
silent through your whole history."

"Pepusch!" cried the flea-tamer, "are you in your senses? The thistle,
Zeherit, blooms in the distant Indies, in the beautiful valley, closed
in by lofty rocks, where at times the wisest magi of the earth are wont
to assemble: Lindhorst, the keeper of the records, can best inform you
about it. And you, whom I have seen running about half starved with
study and hunger, you pretend to be the thistle, Zeherit?"

"What a wise man you are, Leuwenhock!" said Pepusch, laughing: "Well,
think of my person what you will, but do not be absurd enough to deny
that, in the moment of the thistle Zeherit's feeling the sweet breath
of Gamaheh, he bloomed in glowing love and passion; and that, when he
touched the temples of the sleeping princess, she too dreamt sweetly of
love. Too late the Thistle perceived the Leech-Prince, whom he else had
killed with his thorns in a moment; but yet, with the help of the root,
Mandragora, he would have succeeded in recalling the princess to life,
if the