by Edgar Allan Poe
(1850)
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 the 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 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 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 war, and a flambeau, emitting
sweet odor, 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
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.