The Paladin was gone only a couple of minutes; he found out at
once that a trick had been played on him, so he came back. When
he approached the door he heard No‰l ranting in there and
recognized the state of the case; so he remained near the door but
out of sight, and heard the performance through to the end. The
applause No‰l got when he finished was wonderful; and they kept
it up and kept it up, clapping their hands like mad, and shouting to
him to do it over again.
But No‰l was clever. He knew the very best background for a
poem of deep and refined sentiment and pathetic melancholy was
one where great and satisfying merriment had prepared the spirit
for the powerful contrast.
So he paused until all was quiet, then his face grew grave and
assumed an impressive aspect, and at once all faces sobered in
sympathy and took on a look of wondering and expectant interest.
Now he began in a low but distinct voice the opening verses of
The Rose. As he breathed the rhythmic measures forth, and one
gracious line after another fell upon those enchanted ears in that
deep hush, one could catch, on every hand, half-audible
ejaculations of “How lovely–how beautiful–how exquisite!”
By this time the Paladin, who had gone away for a moment with
the opening of the poem, was back again, and had stepped within
the door. He stood there now, resting his great frame against the
wall and gazing toward the reciter like one entranced. When No‰l
got to the second part, and that heart-breaking refrain began to
melt and move all listeners, the Paladin began to wipe away tears
with the back of first one hand and then the other. The next time
the refrain was repe3ated he got to snuffling, and sort of half
sobbing, and went to wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his
doublet. He was so conspicuous that he embarrassed No‰l a little,
and also had an ill effect upon the audience. With the next
repetition he broke quite down and began to cry like a calf, which
ruined all the effect and started many to the audience to laughing.
Then he went on from bad to worse, until I never saw such a
spectacle; for he fetched out a towel from under his doublet and
began to swab his eyes with it and let go the most infernal
bellowings mixed up with sobbings and groanings and retchings
and barkings and coughings and snortings and screamings and
howlings–and he tdwisted himself about on his heels and
squirmed this way and that, still pouring out that brutal clamor and
flourishing his towel in the air and swabbing again and wringing it
out. Hear? You couldn’t hear yourself think. No‰l was wholly
drowned out and silenced, and those people were laughing the very
lungs out of themselves. It was the most degrading sight that ever
was. Now I heard the clankety-clank that plate-armor makes when
the man that is in it is running, and then alongside my head there
burst out the most inhuman explosion of laughter that ever rent the
drum of a person’s ear, and I looked, and it was La Hire; and the
stood there with his gauntlets on his hips and his head tilted back
and his jaws spread to that degree to let out his hurricanes and his
thunders that it amounted to indecent exposure, for you could see
everything that was in him. Only one thing more and worse could
happen, and it happened: at the other door I saw the flurry and
bustle and bowings and scrapings of officials and flunkeys which
means that some great personage is coming–then Joan of Arc
stepped in, and the house rose! Yes, and tried to shut its
indecorous mouth and make itself grave and proper; but when it
saw the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked God for this mercy
and the earthquake that followed.
Such things make a life of bitterness, and I do not wish to dwell
upon them. The effect of the poem was spoiled.
Chapter 16 The Finding of the Dwarf
THIS EPISODE disagreed with me and I was not able to leave my