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And the thing I knew all the time was this: that if I were in hell and my father in heaven, he would blaspheme God to His face for a monster and come to hell to burn with me forever come with a joke and a song, telling me never to mind, that we'd have a fine time there in hell in spite of everything! That was what I knew of my poor, cheap, fiddle-playing mountebank of a father.
We should give destiny a helping hand. Therefore I wrote to you. One question, Gwynplaine: do you believe in predestination? For my part, I have believed in it since I read, in Cicero, Scipio's dream. Ah! I did not observe it. Dressed like a gentleman! You in fine clothes! Why not? You are a mountebank. All the more reason. A juggler is as good as a lord. Moreover, what are lords? Clowns.
So we find dialect, as a branch of literature, worthy of the high attention and employment of the greatest master in letters not the merest mountebank. Turn to Dickens, in innumerable passages of pathos: the death of poor Jo, or that of the "Cheap John's" little daughter in her father's arms, on the foot-board of his peddling cart before the jeering of the vulgar mob; smile moistly, too, at Mr.
"Nothing?" he repeated, with a mirthless attempt at laughter, and a quick breath. "Not that I've been a a mountebank, a variety actor a clown, you know, for the amusement of the lowest, at twenty-five cents a ticket. That I'm 'Johnny Walker, the song and dance man the all-round man selected by Mr. Barstow to teach these boors a lesson as to what they wanted!"
So there now!" The two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect on this intrepid and ingenious being, a vagabond like themselves, isolated like themselves, frail like themselves, who had something admirable and all-powerful about him, who seemed supernatural to them, and whose physiognomy was composed of all the grimaces of an old mountebank, mingled with the most ingenuous and charming smiles.
As an apothecary true; but I well knew the difficulty of obtaining employment in what is termed a liberal profession, without interest or recommendation; neither did I wish for close confinement, as the very idea was irksome. As a mountebank, a juggler, a quack doctor I spurned the very idea. It was a system of fraud and deceit. What then could I do? I could not dig, to beg I was ashamed.
How long ago it seemed, that time twelve years ago when a mutinous urchin fled from a truculent uncle to seek his fortune as Heaven might please to guide! Heaven guided an itinerant mime and mountebank that tramped France with his doxy to a wet hedge-side where a famished, foot-sore scrap of a lad lay like a tired dog, trying not to sob.
In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection: Lady Mercer, who had been the mockery of every monster shewn in drawing-rooms since her marriage, threw herself in his way, and did all but put on the dress of a mountebank, to attract his notice: though in vain: when she stood before him, though his eyes were apparently fixed upon her's, still it seemed as if they were unperceived; even her unappalled impudence was baffled, and she left, the field.
Elodie continued the discussion of the disaster. His face wore its wry grin of discomfiture; but he said little. They must go on as they had begun. Perhaps things would right themselves. He would lose his loathing of his mountebank trade and thus win back the sympathy of his audience. Before they separated for the night she flung her arm protectingly round him and kissed him.
Now, if by some rare good luck the great talker, the protagonist, of the evening has been provided with a commensurate second, it is just possible that something like a brilliant "passage of arms" may be the result, though much even in that case will depend on the chances of the moment for furnishing a fortunate theme, and even then, amongst the superior part of the company, a feeling of deep vulgarity and of mountebank display is inseparable from such an ostentatious duel of wit.
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