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You pose as an enraged Legitimist and ferocious Clerical. You give dinners and hunting parties, and the game is won. I will wager that your son will marry into a Faubourg St.-Germain family, a family which descends authentically from the Crusaders. In order to execute this agreeable buffoonery, you must not forget certain accessories particularly portraits of your ancestors.
A placard announced that Dickens' 'Hard Times, which it appears from this has been dramatised, was about to be acted. The plays are said to be highly moral, but in the melodrama religion and buffoonery are often intermingled; and I confess that I did not approve of this mode of solacing the consciences of those who object to ordinary theatricals, for the principle involved remains the same.
But with the Romans the theatre lost its dignity, and was degraded to low buffoonery, indecencies the most repulsive, and to gaudy spectacles. So bad was the moral result produced by the theatre, that the first Christian bishops who were able to do so, stirred their adherents to the destruction of this breeding-place of moral pestilence.
Comedy brought with it too great a contrast to the inner despair: when such were attempted, it was not unfrequent for a comedian, in the midst of the laughter occasioned by his disporportioned buffoonery, to find a word or thought in his part that jarred with his own sense of wretchedness, and burst from mimic merriment into sobs and tears, while the spectators, seized with irresistible sympathy, wept, and the pantomimic revelry was changed to a real exhibition of tragic passion.
Say the "Jumping Frog" is buffoonery; perhaps it is, but Louis Quinze could not have classed the author among the people he did not love, les buffons qui ne me font rire. The man is not to be envied who does not laugh over the ride on "The Genuine Mexican Plug" till he is almost as sore as the equestrian after that adventure.
He translated the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and portions of the Cambodian lyrics into Siamese; introduced masks, with magnificence of costume and ornament; substituted theatres, or rather salas, for the temporary booth or the open plain; and elevated the matter and the style of dramatic compositions from the burlesque and buffoonery to the sentimental and majestic.
This auctioneer was the very emblem of buffoonery and blackguardism; the rapidity with which he repeated the sums, supposed by the bystanders to be bid, the curt yet extravagant praise bestowed on his wares, and his insulting and unsparing remarks if a comment were made on the goods he offered, or if the company did not respond in bidding, stamped him as one of the baser sort of vulgarians.
For the thing that chiefly delights a man, when some, woman has gone through the solemn buffoonery of yielding to his great love, is the sharp and flattering contrast between her reserve in the presence of other men and her enchanting complaisance in the presence of himself. Here his vanity is enormously tickled.
And since buffoonery is, and has always been, so delightful to great persons, he holds him very improvident that is to seek in a quality so inducing that he cannot at least serve for want of a better, especially since it is so easy that the greatest part of the difficulty lies in confidence; and he that can but stand fair and give aim to those that are gamesters does not always lose his labour, but many times becomes well esteemed for his generous and bold demeanour, and a lucky repartee hit upon by chance may be the making of a man.
"You think, then," asked the prince, with a scornful smile, "that I shall take the buffoonery you have just had played before us for truth?" "That, my prince, must wholly depend upon your own good pleasure. But for the present I must request you to retire to your own apartments!
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