The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The meagroscope was brought instantly, and the sovereign took the flea and put it under the glass, first back up, then side up, then belly up—in short, they turned it all ways, but there was nothing to be seen. But the sovereign did not lose his faith here either, and only said:

“Bring the gunsmith who is downstairs here to me at once.”

Platov reported:

“He ought to be smartened up a bit—he’s wearing what he was taken in, and he looks pretty vile now.”

The sovereign says:

“Never mind—bring him as he is.”

Platov says:

“Now come yourself, you such-and-such, and answer before the eyes of the sovereign.”

And Lefty replies:

“Well, so I’ll go as I am and answer.”

He went wearing what he had on: some sort of boots, one trouser leg tucked in, the other hanging out, and his coat is old, the hooks all gone and the collar torn off, but—never mind—he’s not embarrassed.

“What of it?” he thinks. “If it pleases the sovereign to see me, I must go; and if I have no dokyment, it’s not my fault, and I’ll tell how come it happened.”

When Lefty entered and bowed, the sovereign said to him at once:

“What does it mean, brother, that we’ve looked at it this way and that, and put it under the meagroscope, and haven’t found anything remarkable?”

And Lefty says:

“Was Your Majesty so good as to look in the right way?”

The courtiers wag their heads at him, as if to say “That’s no way to speak!” but he doesn’t understand how it’s done at court, with flattery and cunning, but speaks simply.

The sovereign says:

“Don’t complicate things for him—let him answer as he can.”

And he clarified at once:

“We,” he says, “put it this way.” And he put the flea under the meagroscope. “Look for yourself,” he says, “there’s nothing to see.”

Lefty replies:

“That way, Your Majesty, it’s impossible to see anything, because on that scale our work is quite hidden.”

The sovereign asked:

“How should we look?”

“Only one leg should be put under the meagroscope,” he said, “and each foot it walks on should be examined separately.”

“Mercy,” says the sovereign, “that’s mighty small indeed!”

“No help for it,” Lefty replies, “since that’s the only way our work can be seen: and then the whole astonishment will show itself.”

They put it the way Lefty said, and as soon as the sovereign looked through the upper glass, he beamed all over, took Lefty just as he was—disheveled, covered with dust, unwashed—embraced and kissed him, then turned to his courtiers and said:

“You see, I know better than anyone that my Russians won’t let me down. Look, if you please: the rogues have shod the English flea in little horseshoes!”

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They all went up to look: the flea was indeed shod on each foot with real little horseshoes, but Lefty said that that was still not the most astonishing thing.

“If,” he said, “there was a better meagroscope, one that magnifies five million times, then,” he said, “you’d see that each shoe has a master’s name on it—of which Russian master made that shoe.”

“And is your name there?” asked the sovereign.

“By no means,” Lefty replied, “mine is the only one that’s not.”

“Why so?”

“Because,” he says, “I worked on something smaller than these shoes: I fashioned the nails that hold the shoes on. No meagroscope can see that.”

The sovereign asked:

“Where did you get a meagroscope with which you could produce this astonishment?”

And Lefty replied:

“We’re poor people and from poverty we don’t own a meagroscope, but we’ve got well-aimed eyes.”

Here the other courtiers, seeing that Lefty’s case had come off well, began to kiss him, and Platov gave him a hundred roubles and said:

“Forgive me, brother, for yanking your hair.”

Lefty replies:

“God forgives—it’s not the first time my head’s caught it.”

And he said no more, nor did he have time to talk with anyone, because the sovereign ordered at once that the shod nymphosoria be packed up and sent back to England—as a sort of present, so that they would understand there that for us this was nothing astonishing. And the sovereign ordered that the flea be carried by a special courier, who had learned all the languages, and that Lefty go with him, so that he himself could show the English his work and what good masters we have in Tula.

Platov made the sign of the cross over him.

“May a blessing be upon you,” he said, “and I’ll send you some of my vodka for the road. Don’t drink too little, don’t drink too much, drink middlingly.”

And so he did—he sent it.

And Count Nestlebroad¹¹ ordered that Lefty be washed in the Tulyakovsky public baths, have his hair cut at a barber shop, and be put in the dress kaftan of a court choirboy, so that it would look as if he had some sort of rank.

Once he was shaped up in this fashion, they gave him some tea with Platov’s vodka, drew in his belt as tightly as possible, so that his innards wouldn’t get shaken up, and took him to London. From then on with Lefty it was all foreign sights.

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