Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

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 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 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, 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 on 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 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 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 honor 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 stockinet

  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 flu. 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, 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 counter-balance 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

  judgme
nt 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 war, and a

  flambeau, emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right hand of each of the

  Caryaides [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 impediments

  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 noiselessly 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-leaping, with the agility of a monkey,

  upon the kings 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 toward them, as though endeavoring to discover who they were.

  So thoroughly astonished was 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.

  ~~~ End of Text ~~~

  ======

  THE MAN OF THE CROWD.

  Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.

  _La Bruyère_.

  IT was well said of a certain German book that "_er lasst sich nicht

  lesen_" - it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets

  which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds,

  wringing the
hands of ghostly confessors and looking them piteously in the

  eyes -- die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of

  the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be

  revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burthen so

  heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus

  the essence of all crime is undivulged.

  Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at

  the large bow window of the D---- Coffee-House in London. For some months

  I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning

  strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely

  the converse of ennui - moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from

  the mental vision departs - the "PL> 0 BDT ,B­,L - and the intellect,

  electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the

  vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of

  Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure

  even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but

  inquisitive interest in every thing. With a cigar in my mouth and a

  newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the

  afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the

  promiscuous company in the room, and now in peering through the smoky

  panes into the street.

  This latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, and had

  been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the darkness came on,

  the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps were well

  lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past