Vivian GreyDisraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
ReligionIslamic
Vivian Grey
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
Bildungsromans; British -- Europe -- Fiction; Political fiction; Politicians -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
When the soldier was a little cooled, the conjuror again came forward,
and, having moved his small magical table to a corner, and lit two
tapers, one of which he placed at each side of the stage, he stripped
off his hussar jacket, and began to imitate a monkey; an animal which,
by the faint light, in his singular costume, he very much resembled. How
amusing were his pranks! He first plundered a rice plantation, and then
he cracked cocoa-nuts; then he washed his face and arranged his toilet
with his right paw; and finally he ran a race with his own tail, which
humorous appendage to his body was very wittily performed for the
occasion by a fragment, of an old tarred rope. His gambols were so
diverting that they even extracted applause from his enemy the one-eyed
serjeant; and, emboldened by the acclamations, from monkeys the conjuror
began to imitate men. He first drank like a Dutchman, and having reeled
round with a thousand oaths, to the manifold amusement of the crowd, he
suddenly began to smoke like a Prussian. Nothing could be more admirable
than the look of complacent and pompous stolidity with which he
accompanied each puff of his pipe. The applause was continued; and the
one-eyed Bohemian serjeant, delighted at the ridicule which was heaped
on his military rival, actually threw the mimic some groschen.
“Keep thy pence, friend,” said the conjuror; “thou wilt soon owe me
more; we have not yet closed accounts. My friends, I have drank like a
Dutchman; I have smoked like a Prussian; and now I will eat like an
Austrian!” and here the immense mouth of the actor seemed distended even
a hundred degrees bigger, while with gloating eyes and extended arms he
again set to at the half-emptied wafila basket of the unhappy
pastry-cook.
“Now, by our black Lady of Altoting, thou art an impudent varlet!”
growled the Austrian soldier.
“You are losing your temper again,” retorted the glutton, with his mouth
full; “how difficult you are to please! Well, then, if the Austrians may
not be touched, what say you to a Bohemian! a tall one-eyed Bohemian
serjeant, with an appetite like a hog and a liver like a lizard?”
“Now, by our black Lady of Altoting, this is too much!” and the soldier
sprang at the conjuror.
“Hold him!” cried Vivian Grey; for the mob, frightened at the soldier,
gave way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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