Hop
Frog
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 éclat 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 Orangutans, 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 orangutans," 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 orangutans 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 orangutan 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 orangutans, taking Hop-Frog's advice, waited patiently until
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 orangutans. 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 orangutans 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 orangutans, 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 orangutans,
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 councilors 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 orangutans 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-councilors, -a king who does not scruple to
strike a defenseless girl and his seven councilors 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.
***Use
Margin notes and selective Highlighting to make this story easier to
understand.