"Hop-Frog..." - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

1850
HOP-FROG OR THE EIGHT CHAINED OURANG-OUTANGS
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.