No More Learning

"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.