The Emperor said: "Stop your prudent interference with him; let him answer as he pleases."
And immediately he said to him: "This is the way we placed it," and laid the flea under the melkoscope. "Look for yourself," said he, "there is nothing to be seen."
The left-handed man replies: "In that manner it is impossible to see anything, Your Majesty, because our work is far more secret, in comparison with such proportions."
The Emperor asked: "But how, then, must one do it?"
"It is necessary," says he, "to bring only one of its feet, in detail, under the melkoscope, and to scrutinize separately every heel wherewith it walks."
"Really, you don't say so," says the Emperor. "That is very powerfully small."
"It cannot be helped," replies the left-handed man, "if our work is only to be observed thus; and then all the marvel of it will be displayed."
They placed it as the left-handed man directed, and no sooner had the Emperor peeped through the upper glass, than he fairly beamed all over, took the left-handed man just as he was—unkempt, dusty, unwashed—into his arms, embraced him, and kissed him, and then turned to all the courtiers and said: "Do you see? I knew better than any one else that my Russians would not fail me. Please to look, for these rascals have shod the English flea with horse-shoes!"