Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/31

Rh and serves no good end. One dies of it,—that is all. I am no ignorant boor; I honour eloquence and poetry, and live in an innocent union with these goddesses. I will conclude with a piece of advice. Ladies and gentlemen, on the sunny side of your dispositions cultivate virtue, modesty, honesty, probity, justice, and love. Each one here below may thus have his little pot of flowers on his window-sill. My lords and gentlemen, I have spoken. The play is about to begin."

The man dressed as a sailor, who had been listening outside, entered the tap-room of the inn, crossed it, paid the necessary entrance money, stepped into the courtyard, which was full of people, saw at the farther end of it a huge van on wheels, wide open, and on the platform an old man dressed in a bearskin, a young man with a face like a horrible mask, a blind girl, and a wolf.

"Gracious heaven, what amusing people!" he cried.