Seventh Adventure explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Appearance vs. Reality

  Peregrine sees through Swammerdam's friendly facade to his greed for the talisman; Gamaheh's beauty hides a lifeless, menacing quality; the corpse-like tableau contrasts with the seeming vitality of the characters.

• Love and Obsession

  Pepusch's jealous rage over Dörtje; Peregrine's lust for Dörtje contrasted with his pure love for Rose; the narrator explicitly distinguishes between lust and heavenly love.

• Identity and Transformation

  Swammerdam is now called Mr. Jan Swammerdam; Peregrine's feelings transform from desire to love; Master Flea's absence and note signal a shift in his role.

Characters to notice

• Peregrine Tyss

  Host to Swammerdam; sees through Swammerdam's greed for the talisman; feels cold dread toward Gamaheh; falls in love with Rose Lemmerhirt; returns home to find the strange corpse-like tableau.

• Master Flea

  Sits on Peregrine's pillow, mocks Swammerdam's delusion; rejoices at Peregrine's victory; leaves a note and the microscopic glass, stating he is busy in Peregrine's service.

• Jan Swammerdam

  Visits Peregrine, claims reconciliation with Leeuwenhoek and interpretation of the horoscope; secretly covets the talisman; later sits corpse-like with the others.

• George Pepusch

  Confronts Peregrine in jealous rage over Dörtje; storms out after Gamaheh intervenes; later sits stiff and corpse-like.

• Dörtje Elverdink

  Dressed in silver tissue, claims Peregrine as hers; Peregrine feels a cold shudder and suspects something lifeless in her; later found sitting stiff and corpse-like.

• Princess Gamaheh

  Master Flea claims the microscopists' revival of her is a failure; she intervenes between Pepusch and Peregrine, drawing Peregrine onto her lap.

• Rose Lemmerhirt

  Young girl at the bookbinder's, described as pure and innocent; Peregrine feels heavenly love for her; she gilded the Ariosto.

• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

  Reconciled with Swammerdam; later sits stiff and corpse-like with the others.

Key passages

• “The shortsighted fool! He still fancies that the Princess, Gamaheh, was restored to life by him. A pretty life, indeed, is that to which the awkwardness of the two microscopists has condemned the poor thing!”

  Master Flea mocks Swammerdam's belief that he revived Princess Gamaheh, suggesting the microscopists' clumsy efforts have only trapped her in a miserable existence.

  Master Flea reveals the failure of the microscopists' experiment, undermining Swammerdam's claims.

• “Do not ask of me to kill the snake which you have been nourishing in your breast for your own torment; learn too, I gave you no alms, I made you no sacrifice, in giving up the fair one, and with her, perhaps, the greatest blessing of my life. Other and higher duties, an irrevocable promise, compelled me to it.”

  Peregrine tells Pepusch that his jealousy is self-inflicted, and that he did not sacrifice Dörtje out of charity but was bound by a higher obligation.

  Peregrine defends his renunciation of Dörtje, attributing it to duty rather than generosity.

• “When Peregrine gazed on the gentle beauty, it seemed to him as if he had been hitherto lying in bonds, which a benevolent power had loosened, and the angel of light stood before him.”

  Seeing Rose Lemmerhirt, Peregrine feels as if he has been freed from chains and now beholds a radiant angel.

  Peregrine's encounter with Rose marks a transformative moment of pure love.