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

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!"