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The point is not whether we regard his attitude in Belfast as the defiance of a sincere and dogmatic rebel, or as the bluff of a party hack and mountebank. The point is not whether we regard his defence of the Government at the Old Bailey as a chivalrous and reluctant duty done as an advocate or a friend, or as a mere case of a lawyer selling his soul for a fat brief.
Such were only some of the expressions, blasphemously familiar, which this clerical mountebank made use of during a full half hour, that he almost electrified the whole company by his half-mad gesticulations and discourses. At length, when his legs began to fail, he got on his knees, or rather on his heels a posture the Irish call "on his grugg."
His idea was to set aside out of his earnings enough to make him independent, and then to give up "this mountebank business," as he called it. He had a great respect for scholarly culture and personal respectability, and thought that if he could get time and health he might do something "in the genteel comedy line."
"Finally, in order to complete the scene, I just learn that a mountebank with a dancing bear and a monkey has been let into the burg. Neroweg proposed the amusement to King Chram, and the steward issued orders to admit the man and his animals in the banquet hall. They were sent for amid the shouts of glee of the whole convivial party. I want to go back quick and share the sport." "Happy Sigefrid!
In those parts of his brief but inimitable Histoire Comique on which he is most to be congratulated for there are some that prompt to reserves he has "done the actress," as well as the actor, done above all the mountebank, the mummer and the cabotin, and mixed them up with the queer theatric air, in a manner that practically warns all other hands off the material for ever.
Though you should declare yourself to be the daughter of a thief, a costermonger, or a chimpanzee monkey though you should profess yourself to have been a charwoman, a foundling, a Billingsgate fish-woman, or a female mountebank my feelings and resolves will remain the same. Sufficient for me to know that you are you, and that you are mine! There, go on."
He was seeking to redeem the reputation of a horse-stealing father if I remember right 'He was a friend of Stuermer, Niki, not a friend to you, interrupted the ex-Empress... 'You are right, darling, returned the 'prisoner, 'quite right, I know.... 'What kind of a mountebank was RASPUTIN? I asked to feel my 'prisoner' out.... 'He was a worthless rasputnik at best, the fallen Emperor answered.... And you think the Jews are responsible for your reported attachment to him? I asked.... 'Undoubtedly, he said bitterly with a sigh of resignation.... 'When we were being taken to the boat at Tobolsk did they not make faces at me and Alice and flout me with their cries: "Take him to the Criminal Court and let him read the record of his libertine, Rasputin!
A juggler with a mountebank jade a vile hackney which thou hast taught to caper! A soldier indeed! 'A soldier and seatless! returned Richard. 'A soldier and rail! A soldier and steal my mare, then shoot my horse! Bah! an' the rest were like thee, we might take the field with dog-whips. Scudamore drew a pistol from his belt, and glanced towards the mare.
They sauntered around among the booths, and stopped to listen to the harangue of a mountebank or to watch peasant boys shooting at figures of various kinds and a glass ball that danced on a jet of water.
Slaves we are to our muscles, and puppets to the spring of the capricious blood; and the great soul, with all its capacities, its solemn attributes, and sounding claims, is, while on earth, but a jest to this mountebank, the body, from the dream which toys with it for an hour, to the lunacy which shivers it into a driveller, laughing as it plays with its own fragments, and reeling benighted and blinded to the grave!
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