The forehead was flat, and retired from the
temples in two separate peaks, that appeared to run up nearly to the
back of his head; the nose was at once hooked and flat, like the bill of
a parrot; the mouth was wide; the lips thin and compressed, with
unpleasant lines at the corners; the chin and jaw square and massive;
the neck resembling that of a bull; the ears were unusually large, and
stuck out at the sides; the complexion was florid, with two pouches
under the eyes, which seemed to drag the eyes down and give them a
bloodshot appearance. A deep line in the cheeks, extending from each
wing of the nose to the corners of the mouth, gave to the countenance a
look of cynical disdain, and completed a portrait at once characteristic
and revolting. The costume was early Elizabethan, and the arms of the
Baron, together with his name and his age--forty-six--when the portrait
was taken, were depicted with the date in the corner of the picture. For
a while I sat musing. "Fit spirit," I muttered, "to inhabit the form of
a flea! Heartless, worthless, bloodthirsty." I gazed at the portrait
with feelings of horror and disgust. The eyes seemed to answer my
expression with a look of anger. I was unable to judge of the merits of the picture as a work of art,
being little versed in such matters; but of one thing I am certain, that
the painter had endeavoured to imitate as truthfully as it lay in his
power all the leading characteristics of the Baron's physiognomy without
any attempt at flattery. As I mused it grew late; it was now just upon midnight. I finished
undressing and climbed into my bed, a high old-fashioned four-poster
with heavy embroidered curtains. The Baron still scowled at me from the
mantelpiece, but, without returning his gaze, I set to work diligently
to search for the flea. I drew back the top sheet slowly until the whole
bed was uncovered. I shook the blankets and counterpane and looked under
the pillow, but all in vain, not a glimpse of a flea was visible. It was
a clean, well-aired bed, so, feeling now rather sleepy, I covered myself
up with the bed-clothes and blew out the light, with every prospect of
a good night's rest before me. But, alas! how soon was I undeceived. Hardly had I gone off into my first sleep, when I was suddenly awoke
from a delicious dream with a sharp, sudden pang, like a stab or the
tooth of some venomous reptile in the fleshy part of my thigh. I started
up in horror, hardly able to restrain a slight shriek. The night was
dark and stormy, the winds howled without, and the old mansion shook
from its foundations. "The Phantom Flea!" I muttered, horrified, and
reached out my hand for my tinder-box; but before I was able to strike a
light, I experienced a second sharp stinging pain in the small of the
back, then another in the calf of my leg. By this time I had succeeded
in striking a light. Some scorpion, I thought. So, lighting my candle, I
commenced a rigid search. At length I caught sight of the vile insect. There it was, sure enough,
a flea, and no mistake about it, but what a monster! It must have been
the size of a coffee bean. What legs! How it hopped from one side of the
bed to the other! Well, gentlemen, I used my utmost endeavours to capture it; and here let
me add that I am generally rather expert at that sort of game, having
had some practice in my time; but, would you believe it, gentlemen, it
foiled all my best endeavours, although I kept it in sight all the time. I was a full hour and a half engaged in this undignified chase. The
"Phantom Flea" defied me to the last. What was I to do? I couldn't sit
up all night hunting a flea, and yet to get any sleep with such a
monster in the bed was equally impossible. Suddenly I recollected that I
had a small bottle of opium in my waistcoat pocket, which I had
purchased the day before to relieve a toothache that I had caught from
sitting in the theatre at one end of a row of stalls, close to the door,
which kept continually opening and shutting. I rose and searched for the
bottle, and swallowed more, perhaps, than under ordinary circumstances
would have been good for me, got into bed again, and blew out the light. The first sensation I experienced was that of a deliciously gradual
dropping off to sleep, but the keenness of my senses was increased a
hundred-fold. My memory and my imagination bordered on the abnormal. Every event in my life, from the cradle up to the present moment, rose
before my mind in microscopic detail. The room was dark; nevertheless, my eye, grown accustomed to the light,
and sharpened by the effects of the opium, enabled me to discover every
object in the room distinctly. There was the bed, the counterpane, every
little tuft worked on it with painful distinctness. There was the
texture of the sheets; every fibre of the blankets, and last, but not
least, the "Phantom Flea" hopping about and around me, and biting me
here and there at his pleasure. The opium in some measure relieved the
severity of the bite, though the latter was still painful enough to
prevent me from going off to sleep altogether. The sensation of delirium
(for I can call it nothing else) caused by the opium seemed to
increase. The room appeared to grow lighter and lighter, till it seemed
to glow with a phosphoric glare. My sight, hearing, and other senses grew rapidly more and more acute. Everything around me seemed to swell and dilate into proportions
positively enormous. I felt myself grow larger, the bed grew larger, the
room grew larger, the picture grew larger, and the _flea_ grew larger. Larger and larger swelled the bed; larger, _larger_, and ever larger
grew the flea, till it attained the proportions of a horse. I noticed
that the larger it grew, the less like a flea and more human it became. At length it appeared to stop growing, and to decrease, if anything. It
had now assumed the size of a man, and a form almost human. There it
stood at the foot of my bed, with its arms folded on its breast, and its
eye steadily fixed upon mine. How shall I describe the horror of my
situation--feeling my eyes rivetted on that hideous face with a
preternatural fascination? To remove them was impossible. Yet to gaze on
it further was death. I can describe my feelings to nothing else than
the sensation of gradually turning into stone. I felt life fast ebbing
from me. My head whirled, I gasped for breath. I tried to speak, to
implore for mercy, but my voice was gone. I felt my last moment had
come. The remorseless flea seemed conscious of my agony, and gloated on my
sufferings, for he never took his stony eye off me all the while. Unable
to move, and bathed in a profuse perspiration, I must have died in
another instant from sheer agony and terror, had I not by a supernatural
effort gathered up my last dying energies, and burst out in a loud,
despairing yell that seemed to pierce the walls of the whole house. I
felt the spell broken for the time.