Lady Caroline clapped her hands and a last page entered dressed in red and black as Mephistopheles, carrying aloft on a wand what looked like a gigantic doll. The wand he fitted into a socket in the salver, and the dangling figure that swung from it, turning slowly, revealed a grotesque image of George Gordon.
The audience gazed at the effigy with its clever burlesque of each well-known detail,—the open rolling collar, the short brown curls pasted on the mask, the carnation in its buttonhole—startled at the effrontery of the idea. It was Brummell who gave the signal by an enthusiastic Brava!
Then the assemblage broke into applause and laughter that ran like a mounting wave across the flash and glitter of the ball-room, thundering down the refrain of the orchestra.
The applause stilled as Lady Caroline raised her hand, and recited, in a voice that penetrated to the furthermost corner:
“Is it Guy Fawkes we bring with his stuffing of straw?
No, no! For Guy Fawkes paid his debt to the law!
But the cause we uphold is to decency owed,
By a social tribunal, unmarked by the code!
Behold here a poet—an eloquent thing
Which the Drury Lane greenroom applauded its king,