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Updated: May 21, 2025
I am reminded of the day when, already with that air of seemly thought, le bel serieux, he was found sketching, with so much truth to the inmost mind in them, those picturesque mountebanks at the Fair in the Grande Place; and I find, throughout his course of life, something of the essential melancholy of the comedian.
At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the meadows into the open theatre. Here were tall fellows in mountain dress, with leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles' feathers; here were fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives, mountebanks, actors, and every kind of visitor. The audience, packed into an enclosure of high boards, sweltered under the burning sun.
Descending, we found the long street lin'd with booths and shows, and nigh blocked with the crowd: for the revel began early and was now in full swing. And the crew of gipsies, whifflers, mountebanks, fortune tellers, cut-purses and quacks, mix'd up with honest country faces, beat even the rabble I had seen at Wantage.
Disorderly bands of mountebanks from the depths of Roumelia traversed the streets, the bazaars and public places; flocks and herds, with fleeces dyed scarlet, and gilded horns, were seen on all the roads driven to the court by peasants under the guidance of their priests.
There ever was enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, and no endeavours can reconcile them. The world says, They will never come over to us; and we again say, By God's grace we will not go over to them. Holy Hunt of Hitchin, as he was called, a friend of Bunyan's, passing the market-place where mountebanks were performing, one cried after him, "Look there, Mr. Hunt!"
She looks nice and sweet, and you say she is so; and yet here she is married to a notorious gambler, and associating with mountebanks and all sorts of malodorous people. Why, I've seen her riding down the street with the upholsterer, and Mrs. Congdon told me that she saw her stop her carriage in front of a cigar store and talk with a barber in a white jacket for at least ten minutes."
There were also gypsies, mule and dog clippers, nor was there a dearth of porters, itinerant barbers and mountebanks. Almost all of them, if opportunity offered, stole what they could; they all presented the same pauperized, emaciated look. And all harboured a constant rage that vented itself in furious imprecations and blasphemies.
Ten thousand young married women, each hushing an infant to repose upon the left breast to the sound of clarions and trumpets, emblematical of the peaceful and quiet state of matrimony. The banner of impudence. Five thousand political mountebanks, contradicting each other, and exerting themselves for the amusement of the people, who, however, suffered rather severely from their mad tricks.
Music as an end of existence and means of livelihood was lightly estimated by the followers of the learned professions, the wielders of weighty doctrines and drugs, and also by the tillers of the stern New England soil. The Hautvilles, furnishing the music in church, and for dances and funerals, were regarded much in the light of mountebanks, and jugglers with sweet sounds.
There are days too when, having started for a drive, I get out and walk in the Champs-Elysees, and picture to myself that the man who is to waken my slumbering soul is at hand, that he will follow and look at me. Then I meet only mountebanks, vendors of gingerbread, jugglers, passers-by hurrying to their business, or lovers who try to escape notice.
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