Chapter 17

Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.

Rosalind.

The hour of noon was past, when the stage was a second time filled with
the privileged. The multitude was again disposed around the area of the
square, and the bailiff and his friends once more occupied the seats of
honor in the centre of the long estrade. Procession after procession now
began to reappear, for all had made the circuit of the city, and each had
repeated its mummeries so often that the actors grew weary of their
sports. Still, as the several groups came again into the high presence of
the bailiff and the élite not only of their own country but of so many
others, pride overcame fatigue, and the songs and dances were renewed with
the necessary appearance of good will and zeal. Peter Hofmeister and
divers others of the magnates of the canton, were particularly loud in
their plaudits on this repetition of the games, for, by a process that
will be easily understood, they, who had been revelling and taking their
potations in the marquees and booths while the mummers were absent, were
more than qualified to supply the deficiencies of the actors by the
warmth and exuberance of their own warmed imaginations. The bailiff, in
particular, as became, his high office and determined character, was
unusually talkative and decided, both as respects the criticisms and
encomiums he uttered on the various performances, making as light of his
own peculiar qualifications to deal with the subject, as if he were a
common hack-reviewer of our own times, who is known to keep in view the
quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price
he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would hold good in more
respects than that of knowledge, for his language was unusually captious
and supercilious, his tone authoritative, and his motive the desire to
exhibit his own endowments, rather than the wish he affected to manifest
of setting forth the excellences of others. His speeches were more
frequently than ever directed to the Signor Grimaldi, for whom there had
suddenly arisen in his mind a still stronger gusto than that he had so
liberally manifested, and which had already drawn so much attention to the
deportment of this pleasing but modest stranger. Still he never failed to
compel all, within reach of a reasonable exercise of his voice, to listen
to his oracles.

"Those that have passed, brother Melchior," said the bailiff, addressing
the Baron de Willading in the fraternal style of the bürgerschaft, while
his eye was directed to the Genoese, in whom in reality he wished to
excite admiration for his readiness in Heathen lore, "are no more than
shepherds and shepherdesses of our mountains, and none of your gods and