Sad to relate, my voice was drowned in the coarse laughter of the lady and her foolish friends.
“Upon my honour,” said one, “this is a gay toad!” “Hah! hah! a mangled toad in love!” roared another. “Isn’t he a romantic-looking creature?” inquired a third. “Come, ladies, one of you waltz with him. Nay, don’t go too near, I think he has teeth.”
They then walked round and examined me with their glasses in the most insulting manner.
“I find him less hideous than grotesque,” murmured the queen. “It is his head that is unique. Why, his face is enough to make the daisies yellow, and freeze the swamps with fright! Have you all seen his eye?”
“Yes! yes! his eye,” they replied, “is very strange! very strange!”
Could anything be more galling to my pride to be thus made the butt of these hateful fools? Had they stabbed me to the heart, I think I should have survived in spite of them, but their jeers and laughter made me die a thousand deaths. Under the dominion of proud sentiment (of which I am now heartily ashamed), I raised myself on my bleeding foot and addressed the grasshoppers.
“I ask you for neither pity nor recompense. You yourselves witnessed” ——
“Listen!” said one; “he speaks well, although thick, like a person in liquor.”
“This is horribly interesting.”
“You witnessed,” I continued, almost fainting, “an act of devotion. I loved” —— The hilarity burst forth anew, and the grasshoppers, no longer able to control themselves, joined hands and danced round me like a troop of green devils, singing—