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
