The Slender Poe Anthology by Edgar Allan Poe Read Free Book Online

are.”
    Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to thewall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the Caryatides, he returned,as he went, to the centre of the room-leaping, with the agility of amonkey, upon the kings head, and thence clambered a few feet up thechain; holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs,and still screaming: “I shall soon find out who they are!”
    And now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsedwith laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle; when thechain flew violently up for about thirty feet — dragging with it thedismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and leaving them suspended inmid-air between the sky-light and the floor. Hop-Frog, clinging to thechain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect tothe eight maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continuedto thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discoverwho they were.
    So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that adead silence, of about a minute’s duration, ensued. It was broken byjust such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted theattention of the king and his councillors when the former threw the winein the face of Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could beno question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fang — liketeeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed atthe mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into theupturned countenances of the king and his seven companions.
    â€œAh, ha!” said at length the infuriated jester. “Ah, ha! I begin to seewho these people are now!” Here, pretending to scrutinize the king moreclosely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him,and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than halfa minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid theshrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken,and without the power to render them the slightest assistance.
    At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced thejester to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, ashe made this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, intosilence. The dwarf seized his opportunity, and once more spoke:
    â€œI now see distinctly ,” he said, “what manner of people these maskersare. They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors, — a king whodoes not scruple to strike a defenceless girl and his seven councillorswho abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, thejester — and this is my last jest. ”
    Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to whichit adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speechbefore the work of vengeance was complete. The eight corpses swung intheir chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishablemass. The cripple hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to theceiling, and disappeared through the sky-light.
    It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon,had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that,together, they effected their escape to their own country: for neitherwas seen again.

    The Elizabethan masque was a courtly spectacle; a familiar one occurs in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and is peremptorily brought to a close by the magus, Prospero, whose qualification of theatrical pageantry immediately following includes the lines:
    We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
    Poe was aware that things were speeding up—printing presses, trains, the telegraph—life in America was going to dedicate itself to speed. Perhaps this is why he invented the “Red Death,” a swift, painful, bloody means to dissolution: “the whole seizure, progress and