The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MOUNTEBANK 115 In proportion as their forms were exalted into the air, so had their spirits seemed to rise, for they were laughing and joking merrily amongst themselves, one of them every now and then cutting some extraordinary caper, or perhaps paus- ing to play off a practical joke upon poor Baron Raggidbak, who was toiling on with his huge drum slung behind him and his mouth-organ stuck in his buttoned up coat, ready for melodious use at any moment. The ex-groom of the stole — never a good-tempered man in the best of times — had been still more soured and embittered by vicissitude and adver- sity; and thus, when one of the mountebanks, lifting up a stilt, knocked his hat over his eyes, or when another knocked it off, or when a third, still more mischievously inclined, in- flicted a smart blow with a stilt against the baron’s spindle- shanks, he gave vent to his rage in low but deeply uttered German imprecations, and cursed the necessity which held him in such companionship. But perhaps the reader would like to be informed how it was that his lordship had fallen from his high estate as groom of the stole, and had sunk down into the beater of a drum and the player of a set of Pandean pipes in the train of a troupe of mountebanks. It cannot have been forgotten that though performing the part of the grand duke’s groom of the stole in the English metropolis, and there enjoying the style and distinction of Baron Raggidbak, yet when at home in his native city of Quotha (Gf a city the trumpery place de- served to be called) the worthy German was nothing more than a stable-groom, and his patrician title became lost amidst all other wild and preposterous fictions. But Raggid- bak — for this was really his surname — had so managed by hook and by crook to eat and to drink of the best when in the British metropolis, that he found it somewhat difficult to accommodate himself, on his return to Quotha, to the filthy sourcrout and the beer of choleraic acidity which constituted the staple refreshments in the servants’ hall at the ducal palace of Quotha, — and not merely in the servants’ hall, but now and then in the ducal dining-room itself, when cash was short through non-arrival of subsidies from England. Raggidbak therefore missed the wine and the ale, the fat capons and the substantial steaks, which he had enjoyed at Mivart’s; and in order to supply himself with creature com- forts more to his taste than the crout and beer which vied CORMMICLOO© cS (CO)