No More Learning

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.




THE MAN OF THE CROWD.

Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir etre seul.

_La Bruyere_.

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 [Greek phrase]--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.