The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

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"You have betrayed yourself. You called yourself Solon," cried Zonela.
"Was it a dream?"

"I do not know," answered Solon; "but since that night I have been a
poet."

"A poet?" screamed the little organ-girl,--"a real poet, who makes
verses which every one reads and every one talks of?"

"The people call me a poet," answered Solon, with a sad smile. "They do
not know me by the name of Solon, for I write under an assumed title;
but they praise me, and repeat my songs. But, Zonela, I can't sing this
load off of my back, can I?"

"Oh, bother the hump!" said Zonela, jumping up suddenly. "You're a poet,
and that's enough, isn't it? I'm so glad you're a poet, Solon! You must
repeat all your best things to me, won't you?"

Solon nodded assent.

"You don't ask me," he said, "who was the little girl that the hunchback
loved."

Zonela's face flushed crimson. She turned suddenly away, and ran into a
dark corner of the room. In a moment she returned with an old hand-organ
in her arms.

"Play, Solon, play!" she cried. "I am so glad that I want to dance.
Furbelow, come and dance in honor of Solon the Poet."

It was her confession. Solon's eyes flamed, as if his brain had suddenly
ignited. He said nothing; but a triumphant smile broke over his
countenance. Zonela, the twilight of whose cheeks was still rosy with
the setting blush, caught the lazy Furbelow by his little paws; Solon
turned the crank of the organ, which wheezed out as merry a polka as
its asthma would allow, and the girl and the monkey commenced their
fantastic dance. They had taken but a few steps when the door suddenly
opened, and the tall figure of the Wondersmith appeared on the
threshold. His face was convulsed with rage, and the black snake that
quivered on his upper lip seemed to rear itself as if about to spring
upon the hunchback.

IV

THE MANIKINS AND THE MINOS.

The four gypsies left Herr Hippe's house cautiously, and directed their
steps towards Mr. Pippel's bird-shop. Golosh Street was asleep. Nothing
was stirring in that tenebrous slum, save a dog that savagely gnawed a
bone which lay on a dust-heap, tantalizing him with the flavor of food
without its substance. As the gypsies moved stealthily along in the
darkness, they had a sinister and murderous air that would not have
failed to attract the attention of the policeman of the quarter, if
that worthy had not at the moment been comfortably ensconced in the
neighboring "Rainbow" bar-room, listening to the improvisations of that
talented vocalist, Mr. Harrison, who was making impromptu verses on
every possible subject, to the accompaniment of a cithern which was
played by a sad little Italian in a large cloak, to whom the host of the
"Rainbow" gave so many toddies and a dollar for his nightly performance.

Mr. Pippel's shop was but a short distance from the Wondersmith's house.
A few moments, therefore, brought the gypsy party to the door, when, by
aid of a key which Herr Hippe produced, they silently slipped into the
entry. Here the Wondersmith took a dark-lantern from under his cloak,
removed the cap that shrouded the light, and led the way into the shop,
which was separated from the entry only by a glass door, that yielded,
like the outer one, to a key which Hippe took from his pocket. The four
gypsies now entered the shop and closed the door behind them.

It was a little world of birds. On every side, whether in large or small
cages, one beheld balls of various-colored feathers standing on one leg
and breathing peacefully. Love-birds, nestling shoulder to shoulder,
with their heads tucked under their wings and all their feathers puffed
out, so that they looked like globes of malachite; English bullfinches,
with ashen-colored backs, in which their black heads were buried, and
corselets of a rosy down; Java sparrows, fat and sleek and cleanly;
troupials, so glossy and splendid in plumage that they looked as if they
were dressed in the celebrated armor of the Black Prince, which was jet,
richly damascened with gold; a cock of the rock, gleaming, a ball of
tawny fire, like a setting sun; the Campanero of Brazil, white as snow,
with his dilatable tolling-tube hanging from his head, placid and
silent;--these, with a humbler crowd of linnets, canaries, robins,
mocking-birds, and phoebes, slumbered calmly in their little cages, that
were hung so thickly on the wall as not to leave an inch of it visible.

"Splendid little morsels, all of them!" exclaimed Monsieur Kerplonne.
"Ah we are going to have a rare beating!" "So Pippel does not sleep in
his shop," said the English gypsy, Oaksmith.

"No. The fellow lives somewhere up one of the avenues," answered Madame
Filomel. "He came, the other evening, to consult me about his fortune. I
did not tell him," she added, with a laugh, "that he was going to have
so distinguished a sporting party on his premises."

"Come," said the Wondersmith, producing the box of manikins, "get ready
with souls, Madame Filomel. I am impatient to see my little men letting
out lives for the first time."

Just at the moment that the Wondersmith uttered this sentence, the four
gypsies were startled by a hoarse voice issuing from a corner of the
room, and propounding in the most guttural tones the intemperate query
of "What'll you take?" This sottish invitation had scarce been given,
when a second extremely thick voice replied from an opposite corner,
in accents so rough that they seemed to issue from a throat torn and
furrowed by the liquid lava of many bar-rooms, "Brandy and water."

"Hollo! who's here?" muttered Herr Hippe, flashing the light of his
lantern round the shop.

Oaksmith turned up his coat-cuffs, as if to be ready for a fight; Madame
Filomel glided, or rather rolled, towards the door; while Kerplonne put
his hand into his pocket, as if to assure himself that his supernumerary
optic was all right.

"What'll you take?" croaked the voice in the corner, once more.

"Brandy and water," rapidly replied the second voice in the other
corner. And then, as if by a concerted movement, a series of bibular
invitations and acceptances were rolled backwards and forwards with a
volubility of utterance that threw Patter _versus_ Clatter into the
shade.

"What the Devil can it be?" muttered the Wondersmith, flashing his
lantern here and there. "Ah! it is those Minos."

So saying, he stopped under one of the wicker cages that hung high up
on the wall, and raised the lantern above his head, so as to throw the
light upon that particular cage. The hospitable individual who had
been extending all these hoarse invitations to partake of intoxicating
beverages was an inhabitant of the cage. It was a large Mino-bird, who
now stood perched on his cross-bar, with his yellowish orange bill
sloped slightly over his shoulder, and his white eye cocked knowingly
upon the Wondersmith. The respondent voice in the other corner came
from another Mino-bird, who sat in the dusk in a similar cage, also
attentively watching the Wondersmith. These Mino-birds, I may remark, in
passing, have a singular aptitude for acquiring phrases.

"What'll you take?" repeated the Mino, cocking his other eye upon Herr
Hippe.

"_Mon Dieu!_ what a bird!" exclaimed the little Frenchman. "He is, in
truth, polite."

"I don't know what I'll take," said Hippe, as if replying to the
Mino-bird; "but I know what you'll get, old fellow! Filomel, open the
cage-doors, and give me the bottle."

Filomel opened, one after another, the doors of the numberless little
cages, thereby arousing from slumber their feathered occupants, who
opened their beaks, and stretched their claws, and stared with great
surprise at the lantern and the midnight visitors.

By this time the Wondersmith had performed the mysterious manipulations
with the bottle, and the manikins were once more in full motion,
swarming out of their box, sword and dagger in hand, with their little
black eyes glittering fiercely, and their white teeth shining. The
little creatures seemed to scent their prey. The gypsies stood in
the centre of the shop, watching the proceedings eagerly, while the
Liliputians made in a body towards the wall and commenced climbing from
cage to cage. Then was heard a tremendous fluttering of wings, and
faint, despairing "quirks" echoed on all sides. In almost every cage
there was a fierce manikin thrusting his sword or dagger vigorously into
the body of some unhappy bird. It recalled the antique legend of the
battles of the Pygmies and the Cranes. The poor love-birds lay with
their emerald feathers dabbled in their hearts' blood, shoulder to
shoulder in death as in life. Canaries gasped at the bottom of their
cages, while the water in their little glass fountains ran red. The
bullfinches wore an unnatural crimson on their breasts. The mocking-bird
lay on his back, kicking spasmodically, in the last agonies, with a tiny
sword-thrust cleaving his melodious throat in twain, so that from the
instrument which used to gush with wondrous music only scarlet drops of
blood now trickled. The manikins were ruthless. Their faces were ten
times wickeder than ever, as they roamed from cage to cage, slaughtering
with a fury that seemed entirely unappeasable. Presently the feathery
rustlings became fewer and fainter, and the little pipings of despair
died away; and in every cage lay a poor murdered minstrel, with the song
that abode within him forever quenched;--in every cage but two, and
those two were high up on the wall; and in each glared a pair of wild,
white eyes; and an orange beak, tough as steel, pointed threateningly
down. With the needles which they grasped as swords all wet and warm
with blood, and their beadlike eyes flashing in the light of the
lantern, the Liliputian assassins swarmed up the cages in two separate
bodies, until they reached the wickets of the habitations in which the
Minos abode. Mino saw them coming,--had listened attentively to the
many death-struggles of his comrades, and had, in fact, smelt a rat.
Accordingly he was ready for the manikins. There he stood at the
barbican of his castle, with formidable beak couched like a lance. The
manikins made a gallant charge. "What'll you take?" was rattled out
by the Mino, in a deep bass, as with one plunge of his sharp bill he
scattered the ranks of the enemy, and sent three of them flying to the
floor, where they lay with broken limbs. But the manikins were brave
automata, and again they closed and charged the gallant Mino. Again the
wicked white eyes of the bird gleamed, and again the orange bill dealt
destruction. Everything seemed to be going on swimmingly for Mino, when
he found himself attacked in the rear by two treacherous manikins, who
had stolen upon him from behind, through the lattice-work of the cage.
Quick as lightning the Mino turned to repel this assault, but all too
late; two slender quivering threads of steel crossed in his poor body,
and he staggered into a corner of the cage. His white eyes closed, then
opened; a shiver passed over his body, beginning at his shoulder-tips
and dying off in the extreme tips of the wings; he gasped as if for air,
and then, with a convulsive shudder, which ruffled all his feathers,
croaked out feebly his little speech, "What'll you take?" Instantly
from the opposite corner came the old response, still feebler than the
question,--a mere gurgle, as it were, of "Brandy and water." Then all
was silent. The Mino-birds were dead.

"They spill blood like Christians," said the Wondersmith, gazing fondly
on the manikins. "They will be famous assassins."

V.

TIED UP.

Herr Hippe stood in the doorway, scowling. His eyes seemed to scorch the
poor hunchback, whose form, physically inferior, crouched before that
baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself,
as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the
attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the
crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonela, she was
frozen in the attitude of motion;--a dancing nymph in colored marble;
agility stunned; elasticity petrified.

Furbelow, astonished at this sudden change, and catching, with all the
mysterious rapidity of instinct peculiar to the lower animals, at
the enigmatical character of the situation, turned his pleading,
melancholy eyes from one to another of the motionless three, as if
begging that his humble intellect (pardon me, naturalists, for the
use of this word "intellect" in the matter of a monkey!) should
be enlightened as speedily as possible. Not receiving the desired
information, he, after the manner of trained animals, returned to his
muttons; in other words, he conceived that this unusual entrance, and
consequent dramatic _tableau_, meant "shop." He therefore dropped
Zonela's hand and pattered on his velvety little feet over towards the
grim figure of the Wondersmith, holding out his poor little paw for
the customary copper. He had but one idea drilled into him,--soulless
creature that he was,--and that was, alms, But I have seen creatures
that professed to have souls, and that would have been indignant, if
you had denied them immortality, who took to the soliciting of alms as
naturally as if beggary had been the original sin, and was regularly
born with them, and never baptized out of them. I will give these
Bandits of the Order of Charity this credit, however, that they knew
the best highways and the richest founts of benevolence,--unlike to
Furbelow, who, unreasoning and undiscriminating, begged from the first
person that was near. Furbelow, owing to this intellectual inferiority
to the before-mentioned Alsatians, frequently got more kicks than
coppers, and the present supplication which he indulged in towards the
Wondersmith was a terrible confirmation of the rule. The reply to the
extended pleading paw was what might be called a double-barrelled kick,
--a kick to be represented by the power of two when the foot touched the
object, multiplied by four when the entire leg formed an angle of 45 deg.
with the spinal column. The long, nervous leg of the Wondersmith caught
the little creature in the centre of the body, doubled up his brown,
hairy form, till he looked like a fur driving-glove, and sent him
whizzing across the room into a far corner, where he dropped senseless
and flaccid.

This vengeance which Herr Hippe executed upon Furbelow seemed to have
operated as a sort of escape-valve, and he found voice. He hissed out
the question, "Who are you?" to the hunchback; and in listening to that
essence of sibillation, it really seemed as if it proceeded from the
serpent that curled upon his upper lip.

"Who are you? Deformed dog, who are you? What do you here?"

"My name is Solon," answered the fearless head of the hunchback, while
the frail, cowardly body shivered and trembled inch by inch into a
corner.

"So you come to visit my daughter in the night-time, when I am away?"
continued the Wondersmith, with a sneering tone that dropped from his
snake-wreathed mouth like poison. "You are a brave and gallant lover,
are you not? Where did you win that Order of the Curse of God that
decorates your shoulders? The women turn their heads and look after you
in the street, when you pass, do they not? lost in admiration of that
symmetrical figure, those graceful limbs, that neck pliant as the stem
that moors the lotus! Elegant, conquering, Christian cripple, what do
you here in my daughter's room?"

Can you imagine Jove, limitless in power and wrath, hurling from his
vast grasp mountain after mountain upon the struggling Enceladus,--and
picture the Titan sinking, sinking, deeper and deeper into the earth,
crushed and dying, with nothing visible through the superincumbent
masses of Pelion and Ossa, but a gigantic head and two flaming eyes,
that, despite the death which is creeping through each vein, still flash
back defiance to the divine enemy? Well, Solon and Herr Hippe presented
such a picture, seen through the wrong end of a telescope,--reduced in
proportion, but alike in action. Solon's feeble body seemed to sink into
utter annihilation beneath the horrible taunts that his enemy hurled at
him, while the large, brave brow and unconquered eyes still sent forth a
magnetic resistance.

Suddenly the poor hunchback felt his arm grasped. A thrill seemed to run
through his entire body. A warm atmosphere, invigorating and full of
delicious odor, surrounded him. It appeared as if invisible bandages
were twisted all about his limbs, giving him a strange strength. His
sinking legs straightened. His powerless arms were braced. Astonished,
he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonela, with a world of love
burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about
his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of
love. Solon reared himself boldly.

"Sneer at my poor form," he cried, in strong vibrating tones, flinging
out one long arm and one thin finger at the Wondersmith, as if he would
have impaled him like a beetle. "Humiliate me, if you can. I care not.
You are a wretch, and I am honest and pure. This girl is not your
daughter. You are like one of those demons in the fairy tales that held
beauty and purity locked in infernal spells. I do not fear you, Heir
Hippe. There are stories abroad about you in the neighborhood, and when
you pass, people say that they feel evil and blight hovering over their
thresholds. You persecute this girl. You are her tyrant. You hate her. I
am a cripple. Providence has cast this lump upon my shoulders. But that
is nothing. The camel, that is the salvation of the children of the
desert, has been given his hump in order that he might bear his human
burden better. This girl, who is homeless as the Arab, is my appointed
load in life, and, please God, I will carry her on this back, hunched
though it may be. I have come to see her, because I love her,--because
she loves me. You have no claim on her; so I will take her from you."

Quick as lightning, the Wondersmith had stridden a few paces, and
grasped the poor cripple, who was yet quivering with the departing
thunder of his passion. He seized him in his bony, muscular grasp, as
he would have seized a puppet, and held him at arm's length gasping
and powerless; while Zonela, pale, breathless, entreating, sank
half-kneeling on the floor.

"Your skeleton will be interesting to science when you are dead, Mr.
Solon," hissed the Wondersmith. "But before I have the pleasure of
reducing you to an anatomy, which I will assuredly do, I wish to
compliment you on your power of penetration, or sources of information;
for I know not if you have derived your knowledge from your own mental
research or the efforts of others. You are perfectly correct in your
statement, that this charming young person, who day after day parades
the streets with a barrel-organ and a monkey,--the last unhappily
indisposed at present,--listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys
and depraved men,--you are quite correct, Sir, in stating that she is
not my daughter. On the contrary, she is the daughter of an Hungarian
nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son,
crooked spawn of a Christian!--a son, not like you, cankered, gnarled
stump of life that you are,--but a youth tall and fair and noble in
aspect, as became a child of one whose lineage makes Pharaoh modern,--a
youth whose foot in the dance was as swift and beautiful to look at as
the golden sandals of the sun when he dances upon the sea in summer.
This youth was virtuous and good; and being of good race, and dwelling
in a country where his rank, gypsy as he was, was recognized, he mixed
with the proudest of the land. One day he fell in with this accursed
Hungarian, a fierce drinker of that Devil's blood called brandy. My
child until that hour had avoided this bane of our race. Generous wine
he drank, because the soul of the sun our ancestor palpitated in its
purple waves. But brandy, which is fallen and accursed wine, as devils
are fallen and accursed angels, had never crossed his lips, until in an
evil hour he was seduced by this Christian hog, and from that day forth
his life was one fiery debauch, which set only in the black waves of
death. I vowed vengeance on the destroyer of my child, and I kept my
word. I have destroyed _his_ child,--not compassed her death, but
blighted her life, steeped her in misery and poverty, and now, thanks to
the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She
thought to solace her life with a love-episode! Sweet little epicure
that she was! She shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she?
Oh, yes! She shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great,
black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear, Death,
sitting between his shoulders!"

There was something so awful and demoniac in this entire speech and the
manner in which it was delivered, that it petrified Zonela into a mere
inanimate figure, whose eyes seemed unalterably fixed on the fierce,
cruel face of the Wondersmith. As for Solon, he was paralyzed in the
grasp of his foe. He heard, but could not reply. His large eyes, dilated
with horror to far beyond their ordinary size, expressed unutterable
agony.

The last sentence had hardly been hissed out by the gypsy when he took
from his pocket a long, thin coil of whipcord, which he entangled in
a complicated mesh around the cripple's body. It was not the ordinary
binding of a prisoner. The slender lash passed and repassed in a
thousand intricate folds over the powerless limbs of the poor humpback.
When the operation was completed, he looked as if he had been sewed from
head to foot in some singularly ingenious species of network.

"Now, my pretty lop-sided little lover," laughed Herr Hippe, flinging
Solon over his shoulder, as a fisherman might fling a net-full of fish,
"we will proceed to put you into your little cage until your little
coffin is quite ready. Meanwhile we will lock up your darling
beggar-girl to mourn over your untimely end."

So saying, he stepped from the room with his captive, and securely
locked the door behind him.

When he had disappeared, the frozen Zonela thawed, and with a shriek of
anguish flung herself on the inanimate body of Furbelow.

VI.

THE POISONING OF THE SWORDS.

It was New Year's Eve, and eleven o'clock at night. All over this great
land, and in every great city in the land, curly heads were lying on
white pillows, dreaming of the coming of the generous Santa Claus.
Innumerable stockings hung by countless bedsides. Visions of beautiful
toys, passing in splendid pageantry through myriads of dimly lit
dormitories, made millions of little hearts palpitate in sleep. Ah! what
heavenly toys those were that the children of this soil beheld, that
mystic night, in their dreams! Painted cars with orchestral wheels,
making music more delicious than the roll of planets. Agile men of
cylindrical figure, who sprang unexpectedly out of meek-looking boxes,
with a supernatural fierceness in their crimson cheeks and fur-whiskers.
Herds of marvellous sheep, with fleeces as impossible as the one that
Jason sailed after; animals entirely indifferent to grass and water and
"rot" and "ticks." Horses spotted with an astounding regularity, and
furnished with the most ingenious methods of locomotion. Slender
foreigners, attired in painfully short tunics, whose existence passed in
continually turning heels over head down a steep flight of steps, at
the bottom of which they lay in an exhausted condition with dislocated
limbs, until they were restored to their former elevation, when they
went at it again as if nothing had happened. Stately swans, that seemed
to have a touch of the ostrich in them; for they swam continually after
a piece of iron which was held before them, as if consumed with a
ferruginous hunger. Whole farm-yards of roosters, whose tails curled the
wrong way,--a slight defect, that was, however, amply atoned for by the
size and brilliancy of their scarlet combs, which, it would appear,
Providence had intended for pen-wipers. Pears, that, when applied to
youthful lips, gave forth sweet and inspiring sounds. Regiments of
soldiers, that performed neat, but limited evolutions on cross-jointed
contractile battle-fields. All these things, idealized, transfigured,
and illuminated by the powers and atmosphere and colored lamps of
Dreamland, did the millions of dear sleeping children behold, the night
of the New Year's Eve of which I speak.

It was on this night, when Time was preparing to shed his skin and come
out young and golden and glossy as ever,--when, in the vast chambers of
the universe, silent and infallible preparations were making for the
wonderful birth of the coming year,--when mystic dews were secreted
for his baptism, and mystic instruments were tuned in space to welcome
him,--it was at this holy and solemn hour that the Wondersmith and his
three gypsy companions sat in close conclave in the little parlor before
mentioned.

There was a fire roaring in the grate. On a table, nearly in the centre
of the room, stood a huge decanter of Port wine, that glowed in the
blaze which lit the chamber like a flask of crimson fire. On every side,
piled in heaps, inanimate, but scowling with the same old wondrous
scowl, lay myriads of the manikins, all clutching in their wooden hands
their tiny weapons. The Wondersmith held in one hand a small silver
bowl filled with a green, glutinous substance, which he was delicately
applying, with the aid of a camel's-hair brush, to the tips of tiny
swords and daggers. A horrible smile wandered over his sallow face,--a
smile as unwholesome in appearance as the sickly light that plays above
reeking graveyards.

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