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The people on the terraced roofs exhibit their joy by showering down corn-cakes from their perches, which the performers greedily devour. These things are delightful according to Indian notions, and are well fitted to show how much of a child he still is, a child however, it must be remembered, endowed with the physical strength, passions, and appetites of adult mankind. The jesters scatter.
This forcing method to which some conservatories seem addicted reminds one of those men who in bygone ages made a specialty of disfiguring the forms and faces of children, to make dwarfs, jesters and freaks out of them. Bah! "Originality in interpretation is of course no more important than originality in creation.
Rose had no wrinkles, but she had folds of flesh; and jesters declared that to save chafing she powdered her skin as they do an infant's. This ample person offered to a young man full of ardent desires like Athanase an attraction to which he had succumbed. Young imaginations, essentially eager and courageous, like to rove upon these fine living sheets of flesh.
"The streets swarmed with harlequins, punchinellos, and jesters, who leaped about, talking to people in the carriages and on foot, inviting to drink, pretending themselves to be intoxicated, and spilling the beer or water on the right hand and left; crowds of castanet-players and dancers, in every variety of laughable, grotesque, and most frequently tatterdemalion costume, beating drums, and so on making a horrible din.
There can be no doubt that such doctrines were very well suited to the times in which they were introduced; for so great was the social and political disturbance, so great the uncertainty of the tenure of property, that it might well be suggested what better could a man do than enjoy his own while it was yet in his possession? nor was the inducement to such a course lessened by extravagant dissipations when courtesans and cooks, jesters and buffoons, splendid attire and magnificent appointments had become essential to life.
From this yawning cave the devils themselves constantly ascended, to delight and instruct the spectators; to delight because they were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and to instruct for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and relentless spirits."
His Eastern costume was almost equal to that of the Dey in magnificence, but there was a tinselly look about the embroidery, and a glassy sheen in the jewels, which, added to the humorous and undignified cast of his countenance, bespoke him one of low degree. He was the Dey's story-teller, and filled much the same office at the palace that was held by court jesters in the olden time.
"If that touch had not been thrown in," said Don Quixote, "he would not deserve, for mere pimping, to row in the galleys, but rather to command and be admiral of them; for the office of pimp is no ordinary one, being the office of persons of discretion, one very necessary in a well-ordered state, and only to be exercised by persons of good birth; nay, there ought to be an inspector and overseer of them, as in other offices, and recognised number, as with the brokers on change; in this way many of the evils would be avoided which are caused by this office and calling being in the hands of stupid and ignorant people, such as women more or less silly, and pages and jesters of little standing and experience, who on the most urgent occasions, and when ingenuity of contrivance is needed, let the crumbs freeze on the way to their mouths, and know not which is their right hand.
Poet, actor, and satirist, b. in Kent, and ed. at Oxf., he went to London, and wrote plays, which are now lost, and pastorals; but, moved by a sermon preached at Paul's Cross in 1577 during a plague, he deserted the theatre, and became one of its severest critics in his prose satire, The School of Abrose , directed against "poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such-like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth."
The light jesters, who made merry with the phraseology and costumes of Westminster Hall, were only a few degrees less welcome than the stronger and more indignant scribes who cried aloud against the sins and sinners of the courts.
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