Our king, as a matter of course, retained his 'fool.' The fact is,
he required something in the way of folly- if only to counterbalance
the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers- not
to mention himself.
His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however.
His value was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his
being also a dwarf and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in
those days, as fools; and many monarchs would have found it
difficult to get through their days (days are rather longer at court
than elsewhere) without both a jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to
laugh at. But, as I have already observed, your jesters, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat, round, and unwieldy- so
that it was no small source of self-gratulation with our king that, in
Hop-Frog (this was the fool's name), he possessed a triplicate
treasure in one person.
I believe the name 'Hop-Frog' was not that given to the dwarf by his
sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent
of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other
men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of
interjectional gait- something between a leap and a wriggle- a
movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course
consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his
stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his
whole court, was accounted a capital figure.
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