“Hop-Frog”
© 1849
by
Edgar Allan Poe
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 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.
