Hop-Frog also laughed, although feebly and somewhat vacantly.
“Come, come,” said the king, impatiently, “have you nothing to suggest?”
“I am endeavouring to think of something novel,” replied the dwarf, abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine.
“Endeavouring!” cried the tyrant, fiercely; “what do you mean by that? Ah, | perceive. You are sulky, and want more wine. Here, drink this!” and he poured out another goblet full and offered it to the cripple, who merely gazed at it, gasping for breath.
“Drink, I say!’ shouted the monster, “or by the fiends——”
The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtiers smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch’s seat, and, falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.
The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at her audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say—how most becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of the brimming goblet in her face.
The poor girl got up as best she could, and, not daring even to sigh, resumed her position at the foot of the table.
There was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which the falling of a leaf, or of a feather might have been heard. It was interrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which seemed to come at once from every corner of the room.
“What—what—what are you making that noise for?” demanded the king, 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 honour 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 having57
