‘Are you not ashamed of yourselves,’ he cried out, ‘great lasses likeyou, to run about the country after a lad?’
So he plucked the youngest girl by the sleeve to stop her, but, behold!no sooner had he touched her than he could not leave hold, and _he_ hadto march after the golden goose!
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‘Oh, sir, oh, sir!’ cried the Beadle (who was a long, thin-legged man,like a heron), and he ran up, caught hold of the Vicar by his gown, andthere he stuck.
The Vicar cried for help to the rest of his company, so first theCurates, then the Organist, then the man with the violin, then thecornet-player, and, lastly, all the wicked little choir-boys, rushed tohold the Vicar back, but they were all caught, and had all to run afterJohnny, while Johnny just followed his goose!
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Pilgrims came to do him honour from all the country round, and, as SaintCalixtus was famous for curing lame people, they made a very singularprocession.
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The maimed and the halt and the blind were there, humpbacks by thedozen, cripples by the score, men with wooden legs, men with ironhooks instead of hands, men with wry necks--in short, they were a funnyspectacle.
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They would not have been funny, but very pitiful, if they had reallybeen lame and blind, but the truth is that they were all persons whomthe good Saint had cured, and now they were only making believe, for oneday in the year, to suffer from their old complaints. But, to tell thetruth, they looked so odd that the images of the other Saints in thechapel were set, on that day, with their faces to the wall, for fearthey should break out laughing.
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When the High Mass had been sung, all the worthy cripples threw awaytheir sham humps, and bandages, and wooden legs, and they laughed, anddanced, and skipped, and revelled, so that it was a pleasure to see somany people enjoying themselves.
CHAPTER X.
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OW you must be told that the King of that country had a daughter _aslovely as the day,_ who had never laughed in all her life!
She was as sad and sorry as the mournful Bell that rings for a death,and so they called her the _Passing Belle_; it was a sort of joke. *
* The French country people call the Passing Bell La Dolente, and this unhappy Princess they named La Belle Dolente. If any child cannot understand this, she may consult her nice French grammar, and her French and English dictionary, and turn it over in her mind till next Christmas.
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Now, as she was an only child, the ‘Passing Belle had been spoiled fromher very cradle. Cakes, toys, diversions, such as playing at funerals,had been lavished on her, but she never, never smiled.
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They tried her with Punch and Judy, they tried her with pantomimes, theytook her to the play, but there never came a smile on the pale lips ofthe Passing Belle.
She would not have laughed for a King’s ransom; nay, if you had orderedher off to instant execution, and laid her head on the block, you couldnot have wrung a smile from her!
The King, who had a strong sense of humour, was in despair. Finally hehad a proclamation printed:--
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WHOEVER CAN MAKE
THE
PRINCESS
GIGGLE
SHALL WIN HER FOR
HIS BRIDE.
Cambrinus R.
But nobody came!
Every one thought it was hopeless to get a laugh from the Passing Belle.Then the King, who was a very religious man, determined to take her tothe shrine of Saint Calixtus. Of course, if the Saint could make hersmile, she would become a nun, and perhaps, in the long run, would havebeen as solemn and _lugubrious_ as ever.
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CHAPTER XI.
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LL the Court came, and all the Court nearly died with laughing at theprocession of the halt, and lame, and blind. ‘Go it, ye cripples,’ criedhis Majesty, in convulsions of merriment! Some of the people were likeX’s, and some like Y’s, and some like Z’s, and plenty of K’s and S’s,all the cross letters were there, all the letters but straight uprightI. Meanwhile the courtiers held their sides and screamed, and the tearscame into their eyes; but the Princess yawned like a pretty little troutout of water! She did not see what there was to laugh at!
Besides, if she _had_ laughed, perhaps they would have made her marry aman with a hump upon his back, or two wooden legs and a glass eye.
The fun was over, the King got up, the courtiers all rose, when pastcame Johnny and the golden goose and all his company.
Now when the Princess beheld our Johnny, and the landlord’s threedaughters, and the fat Vicar, and the thin Beadle, and the two Curates,and the Organist, the violin-player, the man with the comet, and all thewicked little choir-boys, all stuck fast together, and all treading oneach other’s heels, she fell into such convulsions of laughter that shedropped into the Queen’s arms, and chuckled till she was nearly dead.
The King, wild with delight, threw his royal arms around the neck of ourJohnny, shouting, ‘Take her, you dog; she is yours, my bonny boy!’ andall the courtiers, falling on each other’s breasts, cried=
````Hooray, hooray,
````She’s laughed to-day!=
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But our Johnny moved on, quite grave, to the altar of Saint Calixtus,and there he laid the golden goose, after which all the people whofollowed him were able to get free. The charm was broken.
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Next day was the marriage. They ate a whole flock of roast geese fromHergnies, and they drank two vats of the local beer. In short, merriertimes never were, in all the merry country of Flanders, where the beeris so excellent.
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CHAPTER XII.
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FTER the King died, Johnny succeeded to the vacant throne, and theChronicles report that he did not govern less wisely than othermonarchs, prime ministers, and politicians generally, before or since.
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The people of his own good town of Valenciennes had a statue made ofJohnny Nut, in walnut-wood, and a statue of his wife, and there theystand on a tower, and strike time on the big clock; so you see thisstory is quite true. Do not you believe any learned man who tells youthat Johnny is the Sun, and that the Goose is the Sun, and that thePassing Belle is the Moon, or nonsense of that kind, which, my dearchildren, is _too common!_
MORAL.
I think the Moral is that we should always be kind to animals,respectful to Old Age, and, above all, that we should be _EasilyAmused._
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Johnny Nut and the Golden Goose Page 2