HOP-FROG
I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemedto live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and totell it well, was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened thathis seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers.They all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men,as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, orwhether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, Ihave never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a leanjoker is a rara avis in terris.
About the refinements, or, as he called them, the 'ghost' of wit, theking troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration forbreadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sakeof it. Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais''Gargantua' to the 'Zadig' of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practicaljokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones.
At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether goneout of fashion at court. Several of the great continental 'powers' stillretain their 'fools,' who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who wereexpected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment's notice,in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table.
Our king, as a matter of course, retained his 'fool.' The fact is, herequired something in the way of folly--if only to counterbalancethe heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers--not tomention himself.
His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. Hisvalue was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being alsoa dwarf and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days,as fools; and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get throughtheir days (days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without botha jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have alreadyobserved, your jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat,round, and unwieldy--so that it was no small source of self-gratulationwith our king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the fool's name), he possesseda triplicate treasure in one person.
I believe the name 'Hop-Frog' was not that given to the dwarf by hissponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consentof the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk asother men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort ofinterjectional gait--something between a leap and a wriggle--a movementthat afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, tothe king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and aconstitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, wasaccounted a capital figure.
But although Hop-Frog, through the distortion of his legs, couldmove only with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, theprodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon hisarms, by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabledhim to perform many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropeswere in question, or any thing else to climb. At such exercises hecertainly much more resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than afrog.
I am not able to say, with precision, from what country Hop-Frogoriginally came. It was from some barbarous region, however, thatno person ever heard of--a vast distance from the court of our king.Hop-Frog, and a young girl very little less dwarfish than himself(although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer), had beenforcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces,and sent as presents to the king, by one of his ever-victoriousgenerals.
Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that a closeintimacy arose between the two little captives. Indeed, they soon becamesworn friends. Hop-Frog, who, although he made a great deal of sport,was by no means popular, had it not in his power to render Trippettamany services; but she, on account of her grace and exquisite beauty(although a dwarf), was universally admired and petted; so she possessedmuch influence; and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for thebenefit of Hop-Frog.
On some grand state occasion--I forgot what--the king determined tohave a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind,occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippettawere sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was soinventive in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novelcharacters, and arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing couldbe done, it seems, without his assistance.
The night appointed for the fete had arrived. A gorgeous hall had beenfitted up, under Trippetta's eye, with every kind of device which couldpossibly give eclat to a masquerade. The whole court was in a fever ofexpectation. As for costumes and characters, it might well be supposedthat everybody had come to a decision on such points. Many had madeup their minds (as to what roles they should assume) a week, or even amonth, in advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecisionanywhere--except in the case of the king and his seven minsters. Whythey hesitated I never could tell, unless they did it by way of a joke.More probably, they found it difficult, on account of being so fat, tomake up their minds. At all events, time flew; and, as a last resortthey sent for Trippetta and Hop-Frog.
When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king they foundhim sitting at his wine with the seven members of his cabinet council;but the monarch appeared to be in a very ill humor. He knew thatHop-Frog was not fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost tomadness; and madness is no comfortable feeling. But the king loved hispractical jokes, and took pleasure in forcing Hop-Frog to drink and (asthe king called it) 'to be merry.'
”Come here, Hop-Frog,” said he, as the jester and his friend entered theroom; ”swallow this bumper to the health of your absent friends, [hereHop-Frog sighed,] and then let us have the benefit of your invention.We want characters--characters, man--something novel--out of the way. Weare wearied with this everlasting sameness. Come, drink! the wine willbrighten your wits.”
Hop-Frog endeavored, as usual, to get up a jest in reply to theseadvances from the king; but the effort was too much. It happened tobe the poor dwarf's birthday, and the command to drink to his 'absentfriends' forced the tears to his eyes. Many large, bitter drops fellinto the goblet as he took it, humbly, from the hand of the tyrant.
”Ah! ha! ha!” roared the latter, as the dwarf reluctantly drained thebeaker.--”See what a glass of good wine can do! Why, your eyes areshining already!”
Poor fellow! his large eyes gleamed, rather than shone; for the effectof wine on his excitable brain was not more powerful than instantaneous.He placed the goblet nervously on the table, and looked round upon thecompany with a half--insane stare. They all seemed highly amused at thesuccess of the king's 'joke.'
”And now to business,” said the prime minister, a very fat man.
”Yes,” said the King; ”Come lend us your assistance. Characters, my finefellow; we stand in need of characters--all of us--ha! ha! ha!” andas this was seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by theseven.
Hop-Frog also laughed although feebly and somewhat vacantly.
”Come, come,” said the king, impatiently, ”have you nothing to suggest?”
”I am endeavoring to think of something novel,” replied the dwarf,abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine.
”Endeavoring!” cried the tyrant, fiercely; ”what do you mean by that?Ah, I perceive. You are Sulky, and want more wine. Here, drink this!”and he poured out another goblet full and offered it to the cripple, whomerely gazed at it, gasping for breath.
”Drink, I say!” shouted the monster, ”or by the fiends-”
The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtierssmirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch's seat,and, falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.
The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder ather audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say--how mostbecomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering asyllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents ofthe brimming goblet in her face.
The poor girl got up the best she could, and, not daring even to sigh,resumed her position at the foot of the table.
There was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which thefalling of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been heard. It wasinterrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted grating sound whichseemed to come at once from every corner of the room.
”What--what--what are you making that noise for?” demanded the king,turning furiously to the dwarf.
The latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from hisintoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly into the tyrant's face,merely ejaculated:
”I--I? How could it have been me?”
”The sound appeared to come from without,” observed one of thecourtiers. ”I fancy it was the parrot at the window, whetting his billupon his cage-wires.”
”True,” replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion;”but, on the honor of a knight, I could have sworn that it was thegritting of this vagabond's teeth.”
Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to objectto any one's laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and veryrepulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallowas much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drainedanother bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered atonce, and with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.
”I cannot tell what was the association of idea,” observed he, verytranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his life, ”but justafter your majesty, had struck the girl and thrown the wine in herface--just after your majesty had done this, and while the parrot wasmaking that odd noise outside the window, there came into my mind acapital diversion--one of my own country frolics--often enactedamong us, at our masquerades: but here it will be new altogether.Unfortunately, however, it requires a company of eight persons and-”
”Here we are!” cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of thecoincidence; ”eight to a fraction--I and my seven ministers. Come! whatis the diversion?”
”We call it,” replied the cripple, ”the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs,and it really is excellent sport if well enacted.”
”We will enact it,” remarked the king, drawing himself up, and loweringhis eyelids.
”The beauty of the game,” continued Hop-Frog, ”lies in the fright itoccasions among the women.”
”Capital!” roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry.
”I will equip you as ourang-outangs,” proceeded the dwarf; ”leave allthat to me. The resemblance shall be so striking, that the company ofmasqueraders will take you for real beasts--and of course, they will beas much terrified as astonished.”
”Oh, this is exquisite!” exclaimed the king. ”Hop-Frog! I will make aman of you.”
”The chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion by theirjangling. You are supposed to have escaped, en masse, from your keepers.Your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade, byeight chained ourang-outangs, imagined to be real ones by most of thecompany; and rushing in with savage cries, among the crowd of delicatelyand gorgeously habited men and women. The contrast is inimitable!”
”It must be,” said the king: and the council arose hurriedly (as it wasgrowing late), to put in execution the scheme of Hop-Frog.
His mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very simple, buteffective enough for his purposes. The animals in question had, at theepoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilizedworld; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficientlybeast-like and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness tonature was thus thought to be secured.
The king and his ministers were first encased in tight-fitting stockinetshirts and drawers. They were then saturated with tar. At this stageof the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but thesuggestion was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced theeight, by ocular demonstration, that the hair of such a brute as theourang-outang was much more efficiently represented by flu. A thickcoating of the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar.A long chain was now procured. First, it was passed about the waist ofthe king, and tied, then about another of the party, and also tied;then about all successively, in the same manner. When this chainingarrangement was complete, and the party stood as far apart from eachother as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appearnatural, Hop-Frog passed the residue of the chain in two diameters,at right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted, at thepresent day, by those who capture Chimpanzees, or other large apes, inBorneo.
The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was acircular room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the sun onlythrough a single window at top. At night (the season for which theapartment was especially designed) it was illuminated principally by alarge chandelier, depending by a chain from the centre of the sky-light,and lowered, or elevated, by means of a counter-balance as usual; but(in order not to look unsightly) this latter passed outside the cupolaand over the roof.
The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta'ssuperintendence; but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been guidedby the calmer judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his suggestion it wasthat, on this occasion, the chandelier was removed. Its waxen drippings(which, in weather so warm, it was quite impossible to prevent) wouldhave been seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who,on account of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expectedto keep from out its centre; that is to say, from under the chandelier.Additional sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of thewar, and a flambeau, emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right handof each of the Caryaides [Caryatides] that stood against the wall--somefifty or sixty altogether.
The eight ourang-outangs, taking Hop-Frog's advice, waited patientlyuntil midnight (when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders)before making their appearance. No sooner had the clock ceased striking,however, than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all together--for theimpediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall, and all tostumble as they entered.
The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and filled theheart of the king with glee. As had been anticipated, there were nota few of the guests who supposed the ferocious-looking creatures to bebeasts of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs. Manyof the women swooned with affright; and had not the king taken theprecaution to exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soonhave expiated their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rushwas made for the doors; but the king had ordered them to be lockedimmediately upon his entrance; and, at the dwarf's suggestion, the keyshad been deposited with him.
While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive onlyto his own safety (for, in fact, there was much real danger from thepressure of the excited crowd), the chain by which the chandelierordinarily hung, and which had been drawn up on its removal, might havebeen seen very gradually to descend, until its hooked extremity camewithin three feet of the floor.
Soon after this, the king and his seven friends having reeled about thehall in all directions, found themselves, at length, in its centre, and,of course, in immediate contact with the chain. While they were thussituated, the dwarf, who had followed noiselessly at their heels,inciting them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chainat the intersection of the two portions which crossed the circlediametrically and at right angles. Here, with the rapidity of thought,he inserted the hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend;and, in an instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier-chain wasdrawn so far upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as aninevitable consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in closeconnection, and face to face.
The masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure,from their alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as awell-contrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at thepredicament of the apes.
”Leave them to me!” now screamed Hop-Frog, his shrill voice makingitself easily heard through all the din. ”Leave them to me. I fancy Iknow them. If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell whothey are.”
Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to thewall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the Caryatides, he returned,as he went, to the centre of the room-leaping, with the agility of amonkey, upon the kings head, and thence clambered a few feet up thechain; holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs,and still screaming: ”I shall soon find out who they are!”
And now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsedwith laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle; when thechain flew violently up for about thirty feet--dragging with it thedismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and leaving them suspended inmid-air between the sky-light and the floor. Hop-Frog, clinging to thechain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect tothe eight maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continuedto thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discoverwho they were.
So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that adead silence, of about a minute's duration, ensued. It was broken byjust such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted theattention of the king and his councillors when the former threw the winein the face of Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could beno question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fang--liketeeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed atthe mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into theupturned countenances of the king and his seven companions.
”Ah, ha!” said at length the infuriated jester. ”Ah, ha! I begin to seewho these people are now!” Here, pretending to scrutinize the king moreclosely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him,and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than halfa minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid theshrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken,and without the power to render them the slightest assistance.
At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced thejester to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, ashe made this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, intosilence. The dwarf seized his opportunity, and once more spoke:
”I now see distinctly.” he said, ”what manner of people these maskersare. They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors,--a king whodoes not scruple to strike a defenceless girl and his seven councillorswho abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, thejester--and this is my last jest.”
Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to whichit adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speechbefore the work of vengeance was complete. The eight corpses swung intheir chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishablemass. The cripple hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to theceiling, and disappeared through the sky-light.
It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon,had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that,together, they effected their escape to their own country: for neitherwas seen again.