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Hop-Frog
I never knew any one so keenly alive to a joke as the king
was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of
the joke kind, and to tell it well, was the surest road to his
favour. Thus it happened that his 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, or whether
there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I
have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a
lean joker is a rara avis in terris.
About the refinements, or, as he called them, the 'ghosts'
of wit, the king troubled himself very little. He had an
especial admiration for breadth in a jest, and would often put up
with length, for the sake of it. Over-niceties wearied him. He
would have preferred Rabelais's Gargantua to the Zadig of
Voltaire; and, upon the whole, practical jokes suited his taste
far better than verbal ones.
At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not
altogether gone out of fashion at court. Several of the great
continental 'powers' still retained their 'fools', who wore
motley, with caps and bells, and who were expected 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, he required something in the way of folly--if only to
counterbalance the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were
his ministers--not to mention himself.
His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool,
however. His value was trebled in the eyes of the king by the
fact of his being also a 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 through their days (days are
rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both a jester to
laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already
observed, your jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
are fat, round, and unwieldy--so that it was no small source of
self-gratulation with our king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the
fool's name) he possessed a triplicate treasure in one person.
I believe the name 'Hop-Frog' was not given to the dwarf by
his sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by
general consent of the seven ministers, on account of his
inability to walk as other men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only
get along by a sort of interjectional gait--something between a
leap and a wriggle--a movement that afforded illimitable
amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for
(notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a
constitutional swelling of the <p 255> head) the king, by his
whole court, was accounted a capital figure.
But although Hop-Frog, through the distortion of his legs,
could move only with great pain and difficulty along a road or
floor, the prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have
bestowed upon his arms, by way of compensation for deficiency in
the lower limbs, enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful
dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question, or anything
else to climb. At such exercises he certainly much more
resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog.
I am not able to say, with precision, from what country Hop-
Frog originally came. It was from some barbarous region,
however, that no 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 been forcibly carried off from their
respective homes in adjoining provinces, and sent as presents to
the king, by one of his ever-victorious generals.
Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that
a close intimacy arose between the two little captives. Indeed,
they soon became sworn 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 Trippetta many services; but she, on account of
her grace and exquisite beauty (although a dwarf), was
universally admired and petted: so she possessed much influence;
and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for the benefit
of Hop-Frog.
On some grand state occasion--I forget what--the king
determined to have a masquerade; and whenever a masquerade, or
anything of that kind, occurred at our court, then the talents
both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta were sure to be called in play.
Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive in the way of getting up
pageants, suggesting novel characters and arranging costume for
masked balls, that nothing could be done, it seems, without his
assistance.
The night appointed for the fete had arrived. A gorgeous
hall had been fitted up, under Trippetta's eye, with every kind
of device which could possibly give eclat to a masquerade. The
whole court was in a fever of expectation. As for costumes and
characters, it might well be supposed that everybody had come to
a decision on such points. Many had made up their minds as to
what roles they should assume, a week, or even a month, in
advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecision
anywhere--except in the case of the king and his seven ministers.
Why they 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, to make up their minds. At all events, time flew;
and, as a last resource, they sent for Trippetta and Hop-Frog.
When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king,
they found him sitting at his wine with the seven members of his
cabinet council; but the monarch appeared to be in a very ill
humour. He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine; for it
excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no
comfortable thing. But the king loved his practical jokes, and
took pleasure in forcing Hop-Frog to drink and (as the king
called it) 'to be merry'.
'Come here, Hop-Frog,' said he, as the jester and his friend
entered the room: 'swallow this bumper to the health of your
absent friends' (here Hop-Frog sighed), 'and then let us have the
benefit of your invention. We want characters--characters, man--
something novel--out of the way. We are wearied with this
everlasting sameness. Come, drink! the wine will brighten your
wits.'
Hop-Frog endeavoured, as usual, to get up a jest in reply to
these advances from the king; but the effort was too much. It
happened to be the poor dwarf's birthday, and the command to
drink to his 'absent friends' forced the tears to his eyes. Many
large, bitter drops fell into the goblet as he took it, humbly,
from the hand of the tyrant.
'Ah! ha! ha! ha!' roared the latter, as the dwarf
reluctantly drained the beaker. 'See what a glass of good wine
can do! Why, your eyes are shining already!'
Poor fellow! his large eyes gleamed rather than shone, for
the effect of wine on his excitable brain was not more powerful
than instantaneous. He placed the goblet nervously on the table,
and looked round upon the company with a half-insane stare. They
all seemed highly amused at the success of the king's 'joke'.
'And now to business,' said the prime minister, a very fat
man.
'Yes,' said the king; 'come, Hop-Frog, lend us your
assistance. Characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need of
characters--all of us--ha! ha! ha!' and as this was seriously
meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven.
Hop-Frog also laughed, although feebly and somewhat
vacantly.
'Come, come,' said the king, impatiently, 'have you nothing
to suggest?'
'I am endeavouring to think of something novel,' replied the
dwarf, abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine.
'Endeavouring!' 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 gobletful and
offered it to the cripple, who merely 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
courtiers smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the
monarch's seat, and, falling to her knees before him, implored
him to spare her friend.
The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder
at her audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say--
how most becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without
uttering a syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw
the contents of the brimming goblet in her face.
The poor girl got up as 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 the falling of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been
heard. It was interrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted
grating sound which seemed 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
his intoxication, 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
the courtiers. 'I fancy it was the parrot at the window,
whetting his bill upon his cage-wires.'
'True,' replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the
suggestion; 'but, on the honour of a knight, I could have sworn
that it was the gritting of this vagabond's teeth.'
Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a
joker to object to any one's laughing), and displayed a set of
large, powerful, and very repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed
his perfect willingness to swallow as much wine as desired. The
monarch was pacified; and having drained another bumper with no
very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered at once, and with
spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.
'I cannot tell what was the association of idea,' observed
he, very tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his
life, 'but just after your majesty had struck the girl and thrown
the wine in her face--just after your majesty had done this, and
while the parrot was making that odd noise outside the window,
there came into my mind a capital diversion--one of my own
country frolics--often enacted among 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 the coincidence; 'eight to a fraction--I and my
seven ministers. Come! what is 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 lowering his eyelids.
'The beauty of the game,' continued Hop-Frog, 'lies in the
fright it occasions among the women.'
'Capital!' roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry.
'I will equip you as ourang-outangs,' proceeded the dwarf;
'leave all that to me. The resemblance shall be so striking that
the company of masqueraders will take you for real beasts--and,
of course, they will be as much terrified as astonished.'
'Oh, this is exquisite!' exclaimed the king. 'Hop-Frog! I
will make a man of you.'
'The chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion
by their jangling. You are supposed to have escaped, en masse,
from your keepers. Your majesty cannot conceive the effect
produced, at a masquerade, by eight chained ourang-outangs,
imagined to be real ones by most of the company, and rushing in
with savage cries among the crowd of delicately and gorgeously
habited men and women. The contrast is inimitable.'
'It must be,' said the king: and the council arose hurriedly
(as it was growing late), to put in execution the scheme of Hop-
Frog.
His mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very
simple, but effective enough for his purposes. The animals in
question had, at the epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in
any part of the civilized world; and as the imitations made by
the dwarf were sufficiently beast-like and more than sufficiently
hideous, their truthfulness to nature was thus thought to be
secured.
The king and his ministers were first encased in tight-
fitting stockinette shirts and drawers. They were then saturated
with tar. At this stage of the process, some one of the party
suggested feathers; but the suggestion was at once overruled by
the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by ocular demonstration,
that the hair of such a brute as the ourang-outang was much more
efficiently represented by flax. A thick coating of the latter
was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. A long chain
was now procured. First, it was passed about the waist of the
king, and tied; then about another of the party, and also tied,
then about all successively, and in the same manner. When this
chaining arrangement was complete, and the party stood as far
apart from each other as possible, they formed a circle; and to
make all things appear natural, Hop-Frog passed the residue of
the chain, in two diameters, at right angles, across the circle,
after the fashion adopted, at the present day, by those who
capture Chimpanzees, or other large apes, in Borneo.
The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place,
was a circular room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the
sun only through a single window at top. At night (the season
for which the apartment was especially designed), it was
illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending by a
chain from the centre of the sky-light, and lowered, or elevated,
by means of a counterbalance as usual; but (in order not to look
unsightly) this latter passed outside the cupola and over the
roof.
The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta's
superintendence; but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been
guided by the calmer judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his
suggestion it was that, on this occasion, the chandelier was
removed. Its waxen drippings (which, in weather so warm, it was
quite impossible to prevent) would have been seriously
detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on account of
the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to
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 the way; and a flambeau, emitting sweet odour, was
placed in the right hand of each of the Caryatides that stood
against the wall--some fifty or sixty altogether.
The eight ourang-outangs, taking Hop-Frog's advice, waited
patiently until 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 the impediment of their chains
caused most of the party to fall, and all to stumble as they
entered.
The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and
filled the heart of the king with glee. As had been anticipated,
there were not a few of the guests who supposed the ferocious-
looking creatures to be beasts of some kind in reality, if not
precisely ourang-outangs. Many of the women swooned with
affright; and had not the king taken the precaution to exclude
all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated
their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rush was made
for the doors; but the king had ordered them to be locked
immediately upon his entrance; and, at the dwarf's suggestion,
the keys had been deposited with him.
While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader
attentive only to his own safety (for, in fact, there was much
real danger from the pressure of the excited crowd), the chain by
which the chandelier ordinarily hung, and which had been drawn up
on its removal, might have been seen very gradually to descend,
until its hooked extremity came within three feet of the floor.
Soon after this, the king and his seven friends, having
reeled about the hall in all directions, found themselves, at
length, in its centre, and, of course, in immediate contact with
the chain. While they were thus situated, the dwarf, who had
followed closely at their heels, inciting them to keep up the
commotion, took hold of their own chain at the intersection of
the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically 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 was
drawn so far upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as an
inevitable consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in
close connection, 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 a well-contrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of
laughter at the predicament of the apes.
'Leave them to me!' now screamed Hop-Frog, his shrill voice
making itself easily heard through all the din. 'Leave them to
me. I fancy I know them. If I can only get a good look at them,
I can soon tell who they are.'
Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to
get to the wall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the
Caryatides, he returned, as he went, to the centre of the room--
leaped, with the agility of a monkey, upon the king's head--and
thence clambered a few feet up the chain--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
convulsed with laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill
whistle; when the chain flew violently up for about thirty feet--
dragging with it the dismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and
leaving them suspended in mid-air between the sky-light and the
floor. Hop-Frog, clinging to the chain as it rose, still
maintained his relative position in respect to the eight maskers,
and still (as if nothing were the matter) continued to thrust his
torch down towards them, as though endeavouring to discover who
they were.
So thoroughly astonished were the whole company at this
ascent, that a dead silence, of about a minute's duration,
ensued. It was broken by just such a low, harsh, grating sound,
as had before attracted the attention of the king and his
councillors, when the former threw the wine in the face of
Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could be no
question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fang-
like teeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he
foamed at the mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal
rage, into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven
companions.
'Ah, ha!' said at length the infuriated jester. 'Ah, ha! I
begin to see who these people are, now!' Here, pretending to
scrutinize the king more closely, he held the flambeau to the
flaxen coat which enveloped him, and which instantly burst into a
sheet of vivid flame. In less than half a minute the whole eight
ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks 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 the jester to climb higher up the chain, to be out of
their reach; and as he made this movement, the crowd again sank,
for a brief instant, into silence. The dwarf seized his
opportunity, and once more spoke:
'I now see distinctly,' he said, 'what manner of people
these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy-
councillors--a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless
girl, and his seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. As
for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester--and this is my last
jest.'
Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the
tar to which it adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of
his brief speech before the work of vengeance was complete. The
eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous,
and indistinguishable mass. The cripple hurled his torch at
them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, 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 neither was seen again.