The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

But they had only just come to the very last room, and there stood the workmen in their jackets and aprons, holding a tray with nothing on it.

The sovereign suddenly got surprised that they were offering him an empty tray.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he asks. And the English masters reply:

“This is our humble offering to Your Majesty.”

“What is it?”

“Here,” they say, “kindly notice this little speck.”

The sovereign looked and saw that there was, in fact, the tiniest little speck lying on the silver tray.

The workmen say:

“Kindly lick your finger and place it on your palm.”

“What do I need this little speck for?”

“It is not a speck,” they reply, “it is a nymphosoria.”

“Is it alive?”

“By no means alive,” they reply. “It is the likeness of a flea, fashioned by us of pure English steel, and inside there is a wind-up mechanism and a spring. Kindly turn the little key: it will begin at once to do a danser

.”

The sovereign became curious and asked:

“But where is the little key?”

And the Englishmen say:

“The key is here before your eyes.”

“Why, then,” says the sovereign, “do I not see it?”

“Because,” they reply, “for that you need a meagroscope.”

They gave him a meagroscope, and the sovereign saw that there was indeed a little key lying on the tray next to the flea.

“Kindly take it on your palm,” they say. “It has a little winding hole in its belly. Turn the key seven times and it will start to danser …”

With difficulty the sovereign got hold of this little key and with difficulty pinched it between his fingers, and with the other hand he pinched the flea, and as soon as he put in the key, he felt the flea move its feelers, then its legs, and then it suddenly hopped and with one leap broke into a danser, with two veritations to one side, then to the other, and thus in three veritations it danced out a whole quandrille.

The sovereign ordered that the Englishmen be given a million at once, in whatever money they liked—silver five-kopeck coins or small banknotes.

The Englishmen asked to be paid in silver, because they had no clue about banknotes; and then at once they produced another of their ruses: they had offered the flea as a gift, but they had not brought its case; and neither the flea nor the key could be kept without the case, lest they get lost and be thrown away with the litter. And the case for the flea was made of a solid diamond nut and had a little place hollowed out in the middle. They had not brought it, because, they said, the case belonged to the state treasury, and there were strict rules about state property, even for a sovereign—it could not be given away.

Platov was very angry, because, he said:

“What’s all this skullduggery! They made a gift and got a million for it, and it’s still not enough! A thing,” he said, “always comes with its case.”

But the sovereign says:

“Leave off, please, it’s not your affair—don’t spoil the politics on me. They have their ways.” And he asks: “What’s the price of the nut that the flea is kept in?”

The Englishmen asked another five thousand for it.

The sovereign Alexander Pavlovich said, “Pay it,” lowered the flea into the nut, and the key along with it, and so as not to lose the nut, he put it into his gold snuffbox, and ordered the snuffbox to be placed in his traveling chest, which was all inlaid with mutter-of-pearl and fish bone. As for the English masters, the sovereign dismissed them with honor, saying: “You are the foremost masters in the whole world, and my people can do nothing up against you.”

They were very pleased with that, and Platov could say nothing against the sovereign’s words. He only took the meagroscope, without speaking, and dropped it into his pocket, because “it comes with it,” he said, “and you’ve taken a lot of money from us as it is.”

The sovereign did not know of it until their arrival in Russia, and they left very soon, because military affairs made the sovereign melancholy, and he wanted to have a spiritual confession in Taganrog with the priest Fedot.^* There was very little pleasant talk between him and Platov on the way, because they were having quite different thoughts: the sovereign considered that the Englishmen had no equals in craftsmanship, while Platov argued that ours could make anything shown to them, only they lacked useful education. And he put it to the sovereign that the English masters had entirely different rules of life, learning, and provisioning, and each man of them had all the absolute circumstances before him, and consequently an entirely different understanding.