The wonderful flea, of burnished English steel, remained in Alexander
Pavlovitch's casket beneath the fish's bone until he died in Taganrog,
he having given it to Priest Feodot to transmit to the Empress later,
when she should have grown calm. The Empress Alexandra Alexyevna
looked at the flea's variations, and burst out laughing, but she did
not occupy herself with it.
"My state is now that of a widow," said she, "and no sort of amusement
is seductive to me;" and on her return to Petrograd, she gave this
marvel and all the other treasures in the inheritance to the new
Emperor.
The Emperor Nikolai Pavlovitch also paid no heed to the flea at first,
because there was a disturbance at his accession to the throne. But
later on, one day, he began to inspect the casket which had come to him
from his brother, and from it he drew forth the snuff-box, and from the
snuff-box the diamond as big as a walnut, and in it he found the steel
flea, which had not been wound up for a long time, and therefore did
not work, but lay as though petrified.
The Emperor gazed at it and marvelled. "What sort of a nonsensical
trifle is this? and why did my brother preserve it so carefully?"
The courtiers wanted to fling it away, but the Emperor said: "No, this
has some meaning."
They summoned a chemist from the apothecary's shop at the Anitchkoff
Bridge, who was accustomed to weigh out poisons on the tiniest of
scales, and showed it to him; and he immediately took the flea, and
placed it on his tongue, and said: "I feel a chill, as from some strong
metal." And then he bit it gently with his teeth, and announced: "You
may say what you please, this is not a real flea, but a nymfozoria, and
'tis made of metal, and the work is not ours, not Russian."
The Emperor ordered that they should instantly find out whence came
this thing, and what was the meaning of it.
They flew to look in the archives and lists, but nothing was recorded
in the archives. They began to question first one person and then
another--no one knew anything about it. But, happily, that Cossack of
the Don, Platoff, was still alive, and even still reclining on his
couch of vexation and smoking his pipe. When he heard the uproar in the
palace, he rose immediately from his couch, flung away his pipe, and
presented himself before the Emperor in all his Orders.