CHAPTER IV
SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifullytold; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference;it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon rousedthe rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality.He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose,and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright,with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering andcrashing against everything that came in their way and makingaltogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din andturmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughedtill the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs andwallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children.Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keepfrom telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortalidea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humoristsof his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else hadgot through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech--of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many oldplayed-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse thanthe minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemedpeculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I wasborn, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that hadgiven me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred yearsafterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thingas a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities--but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later.However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh--I mean the boy. No,he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He saidthe most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest werepetrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I believed, myself,that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some ofthose jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hitthe boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet.However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educatethe commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no useto throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet.
Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with mefor fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kaytold how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, whoall wore the same ridiculous garb that I did--a garb that was a workof enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurtby human hands. However he had nullified the force of theenchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights ina three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my lifein order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibitedto the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spokeof me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant,"and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked andtaloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this boshin the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice thatthere was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me.He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top ofa tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodgedme with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the mostof my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court forsentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st;and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn beforehe named the date.
I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enoughin my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up asto how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing beingdoubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yetit was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops.Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many ofthe terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this greatassemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land wouldhave made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to conveythe idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Roderick Random,"and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and firstladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleanerin their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talkimplies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into ourown nineteenth century--in which century, broadly speaking,the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverablein English history--or in European history, for that matter--may besaid to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, insteadof putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters,had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We shouldhave had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowenawhich would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to theunconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur'speople were not aware that they were indecent and I had presenceof mind enough not to mention it.
They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they weremightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficultyaway for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why theywere so dull--why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half aminute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear, dear, to thinkof it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussedme; and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage.Queen Guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and saidshe had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It wasthe only compliment I got--if it was a compliment.
Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothesin another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon,with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed,and no end of rats for company.