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- [00:12]
Narrator
The back of the king's hand found Hop Frog's forehead, and Hop Frog's body found the stones of the throne room, none of which were previously unacquainted. Hop Frog willed himself to get up. The longer he stayed down, the more likely the king would wave to one of his courtiers and they would struggle on over to kick Hop Frog until he complied or he stopped moving. One time he woke up 12 hours later, covered in spit. His leg popped in the joint as he rose. He had never been the same, not after that day. The king might have conquered the village, but they didn't come for the village. They came for him. The king's last fool had died under regrettable circumstances. He had drowned when the king made him swim in wine. He had never learned how to swim. It was well known. Hop Frog, a young man of short stature, lived in his village, and his parents nearly had enough time to warn him. The king's men caught him on the edge of the village, and they found the young man's jests poorly timed with a sharp stomp from his boot. The man shattered Hop Frog's hip, giving him two things, a permanent limp and his name. The laughter still echoed around the chamber. Hop Frog could hear it start to wane. The king and his courtiers loved their jokes, but their humor burned hot and short. They would explode, if not diffused. Hop Frog hopped to his feet and, grinning, begged his king for another kiss. The king pointed, and the flecks of wine from his guffaws peppered Hop Frog's face. Hop Frog wasn't a strictly accurate name. He had heard the arguments before as he limped through the room with the massive wine jugs. He could climb quickly when need arose, like one of the king's seven privy councilors lighting the curtain behind him. That day, as he scrambled to keep his other leg away from the fire, they mused that he wasn't a frog, closer to a squirrel or a small monkey. Of all the comparisons they made, though they never compared him to a person. My lords and your grace, how about a dance? A voice rang out. The whole hall turned from Hop Frog to her. She was from a nearby village, based on her accent alone, but. But they had never met before the king's court. The sight of Trippetta was, to him, as well as every other man in court, a balm. The difference was that she looked back at him, looked back at Hop Frog with that same joy in her eyes. She was a dancer, not much taller than him. If she had been born anywhere else, she would have been a royal ballerina. Here she was merely a private dancer for the king. He went through those almost as quickly as fools. She flew through the hall so graceful that her toes barely seemed to touch the ground. But the king waved for the music to stop, running his fingers through his hair, leaving greasy fingerprints on the throne. The king said they didn't come here to watch a dance. They came because the fete was that evening and they still didn't have their costumes. Hop Frog, in addition to his role as the fool and the jester, was whatever else his king asked. He was an unending font of creativity. He was also the party planning committee, and tonight was the King's big fete, and the king was out of ideas. From Jason and Carissa Weiser, the creators of myths and legends. This is fictional, a masquerade. People have been planning out their costumes weeks, sometimes months in advance. The king gave Hop Frog hours, and not very many at that. The backhand that had laid him out on the floor had been in response to Hop Frog's disbelief at the mere suggestion that the king would be unprepared enough to wait until the day of to think of his costume, knowing that all the eyes in the room would be on him and his seven privy Councillors. Here, Hop Frog, drink for your creativity, the king said, passing his goblet down to the man. The king's and 14 other eyes were on Hop Frog as he looked at the sea of wine he held in his palms. He took a sip. Come on, come on, the king said, his scepter tipping the goblet up. Drink to your health, to your absent friends. And then he laughed. The wine was already sour, but it turned bitter in his mouth at the thought of his friends dropping to the ground as guns fired behind them. His friends, his family, his village. He was all that remained. At a quarter of the goblet, Hop Frog lowered it. Well, I need characters for this evening, Hop Frog. What do you have? I'm endeavoring to think of something novel, the man said, the wine already hitting him. Oh, endeavoring, the king mocked. Big word. Drink more. Come on. Hop Frog took a deep breath as the man rushed another goblet to the king. Hop Frog hated wine. The king, being several times his size, didn't seem to understand that they couldn't drink the same amount, or rather did understand and relished making Hop Frog vomit and shake. Trapella knew all this about Hot Frog. She was a good friend, his only friend, and she was going to get herself killed in a moment. She ran not Danced ran over to the throne and, dropping to her knees, begged the king not to make him drink. It almost killed him last time. He was nearly comatose. The king was at a loss for words to say. Despite having no doubt been taught many words in his many years of schooling, he never put a fraction of them to use. He didn't have a good reason to torture Hop Frog, just like he didn't have a good reason to torture anyone or rule a kingdom. Or exist. That didn't stop him. And neither did Tripella. Seeing the young woman on the steps before him begging for the life of her friend, he didn't respond to her in words. Years of men currying favor had atrophied his words, and what royalty couldn't coax, violence could coerce. He smacked Trapella across the face with the length of his scepter, and she dropped to the stone floor. Then he emptied the goblet of wine on her head. When the last drops accompanied her quiet sobs, the king let the goblet fall and then laughed. Following their monarch's lead, the seven Privy Councilors cackled with him. Then another goblet fell. Having nearly forgotten about Hop Frog, the king was surprised to see him still standing. He finished the wine. His teeth scraped against one another so that the entire room could hear. Orangutans. Hop Frog smiled. The room looked at him. What? The characters, he had it Orangutans. The room looked at him. What was that even a word? Hop Frog wiped his mouth and limped in a circle, pacing around the room. Well, they may be unknown here, but an orangutan was something of a big orange ape. There was a show. He was familiar with the eight chained orangutans. It was something of a cultural artifact from his home country. The king rubbed his greasy hands together, the flecks of dirt rolling free the longer he did so. Yes, something grand, Exotic. Hop Frog winced. It might not be for them, though it tended to be a bit frightening for the ladies. The king clapped. Even better. Hop Frog's eyebrows arched. Oh, so they were interested. Well, he should be warned that when done right, it would frighten not just the women, but the whole party. They would all think that the king and his seven privy ministers were naught but beasts. The king rose. Then they would give the party a fright. Oh, he knew he could count on Hot Frog. Hot Frog could see right what he did. He did it because he knew Hot Frog could be beast better. He saw something in Hop Frog that the world didn't, and sometimes it took a Little. Just a little bit more force to draw it out. Hop Frog bowed low. The king was like a father. He always knew best. He told the king that he would make all the necessary preparations. Not two hours later, the attendants rushed into the room with a cloth plastered with still cooling tar and covered in flax. Hop Frog had designed them himself. Two servants at the back of the room struggled under the heavy chains. Now, Hop Frog, are the chains necessary? The king, who under his flaxen wig was nearly unrecognizable, said as he felt the weight of the chains. Oh, but yes, Hop Frog said, helping the others to clasp the chain on their wrists and ankles. They were styled in the fashions of men who captured chimpanzees in Borneo. The king and his ministers would be escaped beasts from the king's menagerie. It would only make sense for them to be chained in such a way. Even someone who knew these beasts and captured them for a living would be fooled. He was happy to alter the ruse in any manner the king wished, but for it to be effective and frightening, it had to be done to Hop Frog's exacting specifications. The king sighed. Okay, he understood. Hop Frog secured the chains around his wrists and ankles. The room had been transformed for the masquerade, a giant domed salaam with a single skylight in the middle. It usually had a chandelier hanging over the grand table, but after some discussion, it was deemed to be too much of a hazard or inconvenience for the guests to have wax dripping on their grand costumes. It was taken down that night, and the servants installed additional sconces on the edges of the room. Tripella, following Hot Frog's orders at the behest of the king, had been in charge of the other decorations to go along with the prank. Hop Frog and, by extension, the king. Well, they were playing things fairly close to the chest. So while each of the decorators got a piece of the plan, none of them got all of it, save Hop Frog and Trapella. In order to preserve the surprise, the king and his privy councilors hung back in the throne room as the doors opened at 10 and the people began filtering in. They watched in their costumes, and Hop Frog, standing beside them, marveled. In their costumes with their flax, the world would see them as he saw them. Brutes, animals. The clock struck midnight. Hop Frog nodded to Trapella, who slipped from the room. She returned moments later with the keys. They hadn't tried moving with the chains yet, only sitting and drinking and supping on whatever sweets the servants Brought their way like animals. They couldn't see the trap. Well, that wasn't quite right. An animal could see the trap when it was right in front of them. They could feel the trap when the chains closed on their wrists. The king and his seven privy councilors. They only feasted. Hop Frog had never seen an orangutan, but to be fair, no one in the room had. He had heard of them in stories from lands that were far away, even those that were far from his own land. So he was able to instruct the king and his counselors in their hooting and scratching and lumbering into the room. They barely needed to act at all. The tripping and rolling was an added pleasure, but with a sharp look from the orangutan in front, one that was nearly imperceptible to the audience. None of the other apes broke character. The room, however, broke into bedlam. There were wild beasts loose in the castle, their chains trailing off of each of them. And the big one that linked the group bounded behind and alongside them. It had been the king's idea to lock the doors, part to force the terrified partygoers to look at them, part to ensure that no one went for weapons, as they had been explicitly forbidden from the party. Hot Frog locked the door to the king's chamber as a woman swooned beside him. Hop Frog was invisible on the best days to everyone but the king and his privy councilors. He might as well have been a toy. He was always there and yet completely inconsequential. So while the king laughed at his courtiers who ran terrified from him, while his counselors leapt atop some and struck others and the whole of the room pointed at the doors, Hop Frog looked to the ceiling, where Tripella emerged, no longer waving and smiling and graceful with her magician's assistant Persona. She was fast and purposeful. She found the lever that controlled the police and dropped it. She climbed down the walls and joined Hop Frog on the floor. To the king and his counselors, the chains were cosmetic. They were all there to sell the performance. Hop Frog worked with two minds. One was the confused and put upon enslaved man who was just trying to plan out the best party for his king. Oh, I'm sorry, your grace. Forgive me, your grace. I think this would be the best way to go. The other was a man with a purpose. The man with one shot, the man who knew the chains had to hold, if only for a minute. And so he crisscrossed the performers this way and that. He had the heaviest chain in the middle Linking them all. No one, not even the king, noticed Hop Frog click the two ends into the rigging that usually held the chandelier. There was enough slack so both the Hop Frog and Trapella could climb back up to the lever while still allowing the king and his ministers plenty of time to look and act like literal animals. There was palpable relief in the room when the shrill whistle went up from Hop Frog. The chains went taut, and at the edge the counterweight went down, pulling the orangutans into the air and holding them there by their wrists and ankles. All eyes went to Hop Frog, propped on the ledge that encircled the bottom part of the dome. Oh, it was just a show, a jest. Leave them to me. Leave the brutes to me. The man limped along the edge, and the whole room laughed at the idea of Hop Frog taking on several massive apes. Hop Frog passed by Trapella, who handed him the torch, and as it sputtered to life, Hop Frog squinted at the apes. Wait. I fancy I know these apes, these brutes, these animals. If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell you who they are. The apes were at this point laughing, and the room was surprised that their laughs sounded quite human. They were even more surprised when Hop Frog made the leap to the center mass, one that was squirming and hairy with eight grown men. He went over to the king's face, the man who was laughing so hard he was crying. It was in that moment, right before the torch touched the tarred linen and flax, that the king saw the hate in Hop Frog's eyes. He realized that he was at the mercy of someone who had nothing to lose because the king had taken everything from him. Or at least that's what Hot Frog hoped. Hop Frog wouldn't overextend himself or spend too long relishing the moment and thus lose it. He would have to remain content in the memory of the final look on the king's face, one that morphed seamlessly from elation to realization, to terror to agony. As Hop Frog lowered the torch and touched it to the king's chest, his costume burst into flames, instantly hot. Frog tossed the torch elsewhere in the group and climbed up the chain, the flames licking his own heels and swinging back down among the web of pulleys. He took his place next to Trapella, who embraced Hop Frog. The people below clapped as the men screamed. Everyone knew the king's peculiar tastes for entertainment, so they didn't know if these were actual apes or more theater effects. They could all agree, though, that it certainly was a good show. They marveled, as the hair seemed to fuse with flesh and skin bubbled and burned, and the ape's eyes all seemed to disappear at once. The black smoke rose to vent from the skylight and then tapered off as eight apes sufficiently charred. There was nothing left to burn then. The worst thing of all for a performance that is dead air. The audience looked at each other, then to the blackened, greasy husks that still hung in the air. Was it was. Was that it was. One man was close to clapping when, limping over, Hop Frog took command of the performance once again. He held his torch low, illuminating the face that, even though it was taut and charred, held the unmistakable visage of agony. I see now distinctly, he said, what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy councillors, a king who does not scruple to strike a defenseless girl and his seven counselors who abet him. In the outrage. Hop Frog paused to soak up the growing horror of the audience, who were only now starting to grasp that they hadn't seen an elaborate stage effect or mere apes. But the king and his seven privy ministers, the most powerful men in their worlds, burned to death before their very eyes. As for myself, I am simply Hop Frog the Jester, and this is my last jest. Hop Frog climbed the chains and the sooty remains of those who had abused him, and Trapella clung to his hands and smeared his jester costume. He met Trapella at the skylight, where both of them felt the cool night air on their skin. They left the kingdom together and never looked back. This story is a Poe revenge tale thought to be loosely based on Le Bardan or the Ball of the Burning Men, a masquerade ball held in Paris in 1393. King Charles IV arranged a dance with five men at the ball, where he and his men were dressed as wild men of the forest, a trope from folklore where a hairy wild man lives in the forest and he's either very clever or wise, or a cursed prince, or more commonly, insane and dangerous. In the middle of their dance, when the dancers were screaming obscenities at the royal court and challenging the people at the ball to guess their identities, Charles's brother, the Duke of Orleans, who had arrived late and drunk, walked up to one of the men with a torch and held it near his face. Like in the story, the linen was soaked in resin and tar so the flax would stick and make them hairy, and a spark dropped from the torch and touched one of the dancer's legs, immediately catching the costume on fire. Since it was a dance and they were so near to one another, all the men caught each other on fire. The king only survived because he was near his aunt, who happened to recognize him and threw her massive skirt over him, smothering the flames. To the partygoers credit, they didn't stand there and watch or clap, but instead tried to save as many dancers as they could. In the end, only one more could be saved when he jumped into a vat of wine. Four men burned to death as a result of the revelry. In case you thought I was being too graphic today, I apparently have nothing on the actual history where a historian, the monk of St. Denis, wrote that four men were burned alive, their flaming genitals dropping to the floor, releasing a stream of blood. The people were outraged at the decadence of the French court. Orlans was blamed and his reputation never recovered. And he was alleged to have communed with devils and evil priests and witches before tossing the torch into the dancing men and laughing. Thirteen years later, after the death of the king, Orlanz was assassinated, thanks in part to his bad reputation, which led to a civil war in 15th century France, which, if you think of the worst possible outcomes of a botched costume party, multiple immolations, assassination and a civil war, that sits pretty close to the top. We have one more story today about a man who discovers a strange, otherworldly painting deep in a forgotten castle. But that will be right after this.
- [22:28]
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- [23:02]
Narrator
The man limped. The chateau, that is, after his valet, Pedro, forced open the doors and carried the bags. This was terrible. He had been injured recently. Never mind how, it doesn't matter. What does matter was that he could hardly manage his daily walks in the stairs of the university. Mrs. Radcliffe had a solution. A chateau. It had been in her husband's family since they bought it from some American merchant who bought it off some old duke when the man needed to sell off an odd castle or two to avoid defaulting on his debts. Regardless, it was perfect. It was bright, airy and private, tucked in the Apennine Mountains, roughly 170km from Rome. It had taken a week from England, but the Warm Italian air was a welcome break from the omnipresent gloom of of London in the winter. The air inside the castle was musty. Mrs. Radcliffe warned that it had been abandoned, but only very recently. She wasn't wrong. Aside from a soft coating of dust and the occasional pile of droppings that he would task Pedro with cleaning up, the chateau was actually fairly livable. There was only one apartment on the ground floor, which was the smallest one, but that made it easier for Pedro to tidy up. That he would then need to climb to tidy up one of the bigger, more unkempt rooms for himself did not cross the professor's mind. Few things not already about the professor ever did. After Pedro found his own room, though, the professor helpfully reminded him that he needed his aid, so the room he just finished would have to remain vacant. Pedro would set up a cot behind a curtain in the Professor's room. The chateau, named such despite being in Italy, had been well cared for by someone in the relatively recent past. While Pedro was preparing his meals and tidying up, the professor would take long walks in the grounds and through the castle. Gradually, his limp began to subdue and he settled into two viewing the paintings and reading. Which was how late one night he found himself gazing on the painting. It started with reading a volume that Pedro had found in his cleaning and left upon the professor's pillow. The professor had found it that evening and limped out to the main room so as to not wake Pedro. And there he sat in the light of the candelabra, coaxing the shadows of the room into dance. He pulled the flame closer to his book. When he saw her, he saw the eyes glow at first, looking at him from the darkness of the room, then her neck, shoulders and gown. She was, in a sentence that is as descriptive as it is off putting a young girl just ripening into womanhood. Yeah. Yikes. The professor was shocked at first, because she seemed to be a person, a real person. When he moved closer with the candle, he could see that she was merely a painting. But wow, it was like a person was staring back at him from the darkness. He stood and limped over with the lantern. The oval painting of the woman with a breathtaking and lifelike subject seemed to melt into the shadows behind her. Her face was sad, but not overly so, like a sadness that was trying to come to bloom, yet was continually pushed away. There was hope in her eyes, only a glimmer, though, and her countenance betrayed her fate. He stood there until he told himself he could no longer bear it with his leg. In truth, he could no longer bear to look upon her. She made him feel entranced, yet forlorn. He returned to his room and a restless sleep found him. The next morning, dust motes were finding new homes while the professor rooted through the library. He knew something of the paintings, and there were a few in this house he recognized. In the library he found books about them, and while initially uninterested by the histories he already knew, he. He now searched for the painting that he had somehow missed, like it was tucked away to avoid the sunlight. Then, in a book that had slipped behind the others, he found the volume he had been looking for, the slender volume that discussed the paintings and their histories. Counting on the wall, he turned to the number that designated the oval painting, tucked away in the alcove of the main hall and standing before the painting, began reading. They had warned her, warned her that marrying him an artist would be trouble. This must have been what they meant. She wanted more. She wanted more than men whose only passion was to turn a dollar into a dollar fifty. And once they got that dollar fifty, turning that into $1.60. Meeting him at the party, she was instantly attracted. His shock of brown hair, his unkempt rakish coat, his humor and his desire. Desire for her. Desire for music, art and food. Desire for life. He was rich enough, many times over, in fact, that they would never need to worry about having enough to live on, which was what she thought her mother and aunts were going on about. No, it must have been this. They bought a castle in which to summer or rented, she wasn't quite sure. Regardless, she was staying there with him the whole summer. Her husband. At first he was. Well, they were newlyweds. But the first night he didn't come to bed, she was concerned, padding the castle halls and climbing the steps while clutching her nightgown. She found him in the tallest tower, doing a still life of some flowers he picked in town. She asked him when he was coming to bed and he barely seemed to hear her. She began to hate, hate the passion that drew her to him, hate the focus and the monomania, hate most of all his art, the canvases and the paints and the brushes. They took him from her son she loathed sulking and sour. She avoided him and the turret that had become a studio, and he didn't notice the light burned in there, hour after hour, day after day, as the servants brought him food and water and any paints he might need from the nearby village or, failing that, the city. The woman existed alone, wandering the halls of the castle, one that was even cold in summer, like a ghost. Will you paint me? She asked one afternoon while he was sitting at the open window doing a landscape painting of a nearby mountain. He turned, squinting, as if unsure who spoke to him, and he saw her, looking her up and down and re evaluating her in the context of a subject, not his wife, but of an object he could paint. A smile crept up his face. Yes. Yes he could. She took her seat in front of him and he positioned himself a half dozen times, and then her a dozen times, until finally he found the right light. She sat there with a smile, and her smile faded a bit before the servants arrived with the paints and her husband crafted just the right hue. Through combining them and combining them again, he began painting. It wasn't quite his attention, his focus, but it was. It was close. He was looking at her all the time, but he didn't seem to see her. Still, it was better than wandering the castle and the grounds alone or combing through that boring old library. For the fifth time they were together. He didn't talk much. He didn't do much of anything except glance feverishly down at his palette and then the canvas, dabbing it here and brushing it there. Around nightfall, the servants brought the food, a hunk of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine. He devoured them all. He worked through the night and she sat. When the servants arrived with breakfast, he devoured it, and she asked if she might have some food. Needing to say it thrice, he finally heard her and she scrambled forward to grab some cheese and wine and bread for herself. But he shrieked, what was she doing? Why was she moving? He slammed the paints to the floor, eating a few bites and drinking nothing. She leapt back to the chair as the painter took a deep breath and began mixing his paints. Two more days of his devotion and she could barely keep her eyes open. Each moment passed like a minute and each hour like a year, and she was hungry. His wrath, though every time she moved he barked at her, asking her how difficult it was to sit there while he did all the work. This was his art. Did she have any idea how difficult it was to be him? All the expectations that hung on his every work, every painting, every stroke was a precipice. He was either doing his best work or he was a has been or even worse. People began questioning whether he was ever any good at all. Did she not realize that this work kept the lanterns burning? The diatribes continued, and she grew more and more Tired. So close. They were so close now. His eyes burned and his back ached, but he had done it. Studying the last few brush marks, he told her he was sorry. She might not understand, but creative work, it was an animal. If you didn't grab hold of the bull, it would run you down. Still, he shouldn't have taken his anger out on her. He did just need her to sit still, though. How hard was that? She had been doing a good job of it by the way. He ran his brush along the canvas and exhaled. Finished. He stood basking in the radiance of perhaps his greatest work. Stepping back, the wine bottle bowling pins tumbled over and the half eaten bread was beginning to grow green and fuzzy. A week ago he ordered the servants to pile the food and wine inside the turret so he wouldn't be disturbed. Nudging the remains back, he took the painting fully into view. He smiled. This is indeed life. Life itself. Honey, come here, he said, but there was no response. Honey. Managing to look past his painting, he froze. There, head lolling off to one side, eyes open and mouth agape, was his pale grey wife. She had been dead for weeks. The professor looked at the painting in a different light. It was lifelike, too lifelike, like he had captured all of her essence, everything that remained of her, and put it into his painting. It was like he was looking at a real person, and her sad, subdued smile meant more than even the painter could realize. The professor looked at the name of the painter, of this great man whose work was so important that it cost his wife her life, and shook his head. Huh? Never heard of him. The professor continued on down the hall. I have not done drugs, but I have been in that hyper focused state that creative work can sometimes bring. And I'll say you do forget to eat. You forget to sleep. It's both amazing and a little terrifying to be like, unaware of yourself and your surroundings for hours on end. That's most of what's happening here. I do think that the husband is fairly abusive, and that's not that shouldn't be controversial for me to say that locking your spouse in a tower and prohibiting her from food and water so long that she passes out from exhaustion and starves to death and you don't notice. Yeah, that's not a good guy. In addition to allegedly being the inspiration for the Picture of Dorian Gray, this work is something of a cautionary tale of work and life and not the work you're forced into doing, but what you do out of choice and the devotion that you give it sometimes to the detriment of those around you. Today's stories were adapted from Hop Frog and the Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe, fictionals by Jason and Carissa Weiser, and our theme song is by the amazing Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you in two weeks when Sherlock Holmes and Watson return to the podcast. And we will finally see Sherlock Holmes fail. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [36:58]
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