which, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed to
defend. On this subject we had long and animated discussions -- he
maintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters, -- I
contending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute spontaneity-
that is to say, without apparent traces of suggestion -- had in itself the
unmistakable elements of truth, and was entitled to as much respect as
that intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius.
The fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had occurred
to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had in it so
much of the portentous character, that I might well have been excused for
regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time so confounded
and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could make up my mind
to communicate the circumstances to my friend.
Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at an
open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a view
of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been denuded
by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its trees. My
thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to the gloom
and desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes from the page,
they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an object -- upon some
living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its way
from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense forest
below. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my own sanity -- or
at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes passed before I
succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor in a dream. Yet
when I described the monster (which I distinctly saw, and calmly surveyed
through the whole period of its progress), my readers, I fear, will feel
more difficulty in being convinced of these points than even I did myself.
Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the
large trees near which it passed -- the few giants of the forest which had
escaped the fury of the land-slide -- I concluded it to be far larger than
any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because the
shape of the monster suggested the idea- the hull of one of our
seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the general
outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a
proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as the
body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an immense
quantity of black shaggy hair- more than could have been supplied by the
coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this hair downwardly
and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those of the wild
boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending forward, parallel
with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff, thirty
or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in shape a
perfect prism, -- it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the rays of the
declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the apex to the
earth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings- each wing nearly
one hundred yards in length -- one pair being placed above the other, and
all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale apparently some ten or
twelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper and lower tiers of
wings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief peculiarity of this
horrible thing was the representation of a Death's Head, which covered
nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was as accurately traced
in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body, as if it had been
there carefully designed by an artist. While I regarded the terrific
animal, and more especially the appearance on its breast, with a feeling
or horror and awe -- with a sentiment of forthcoming evil, which I found
it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I perceived the huge
jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand themselves, and
from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so expressive of wo, that it
struck upon my nerves like a knell and as the monster disappeared at the
foot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, to the floor.
Upon recovering, my first impulse, of course, was to inform my friend of
what I had seen and heard -- and I can scarcely explain what feeling of
repugnance it was which, in the end, operated to prevent me.
At length, one evening, some three or four days after the occurrence, we
were sitting together in the room in which I had seen the apparition -- I
occupying the same seat at the same window, and he lounging on a sofa near
at hand. The association of the place and time impelled me to give him an
account of the phenomenon. He heard me to the end -- at first laughed
heartily -- and then lapsed into an excessively grave demeanor, as if my
insanity was a thing beyond suspicion. At this instant I again had a
distinct view of the monster- to which, with a shout of absolute terror, I
now directed his attention. He looked eagerly -- but maintained that he
saw nothing- although I designated minutely the course of the creature, as
it made its way down the naked face of the hill.
I was now immeasurably alarmed, for I considered the vision either as an
omen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. I
threw myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried my
face in my hands. When I uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no longer
apparent.
My host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his demeanor,
and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the conformation of the
visionary creature. When I had fully satisfied him on this head, he sighed
deeply, as if relieved of some intolerable burden, and went on to talk,
with what I thought a cruel calmness, of various points of speculative
philosophy, which had heretofore formed subject of discussion between us.
I remember his insisting very especially (among other things) upon the
idea that the principle source of error in all human investigations lay in
the liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the
importance of an object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its
propinquity. "To estimate properly, for example," he said, "the influence
to be exercised on mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of
Democracy, the distance of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly
be accomplished should not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet can
you tell me one writer on the subject of government who has ever thought
this particular branch of the subject worthy of discussion at all?"
He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth one
of the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then to
exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine
print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening t
he
book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before.
"But for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the monster,
I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you what it was.
In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account of the genus
Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera, of the class
of Insecta -- or insects. The account runs thus:
"'Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation of
the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and
downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair;
antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed, The
Death's -- headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar, at
times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia of
death which it wears upon its corslet.'"
He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing himself
accurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment of beholding
"the monster."
"Ah, here it is," he presently exclaimed -- "it is reascending the face of
the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be. Still,
it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it, -- for the
fact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some spider has
wrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the sixteenth of an
inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth of an inch
distant from the pupil of my eye."
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
HOP-FROG
I NEVER knew anyone 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 favor. 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 'ghost' 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' '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
retain 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 that given to the dwarf by his
sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of
the several 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 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 any thing 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 forgot what -- the king determined to
have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind,
occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta
were sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive
in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and
arranging costumes, 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 t
he king and his seven minsters. 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 resort 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 humor. He knew that Hop-Frog was not
fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and
madness is no comfortable feeling. 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 endeavored, 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!" 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
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 149