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In the centre of the balcony, precisely opposite the Green Box, and in a
compartment having for entrance a window reaching to the ground, there
had been partitioned off a space "for the nobility." It was large enough
to hold, in two rows, ten spectators.
"
We are in London," said Ursus. "We must be prepared for the gentry."
He had furnished this box with the best chairs in the inn, and had
placed in the centre a grand arm-chair of yellow Utrecht velvet, with a
cherry-coloured pattern, in case some alderman's wife should come.
They began their performances. The crowd immediately flocked to them,
but the compartment for the nobility remained empty. With that exception
their success became so great that no mountebank memory could recall its
parallel. All Southwark ran in crowds to admire the Laughing Man.
The merry-andrews and mountebanks of Tarrinzeau Field were aghast at
Gwynplaine. The effect he caused was as that of a sparrow-hawk flapping
his wings in a cage of goldfinches, and feeding in their seed-trough.
Gwynplaine ate up their public.
Besides the small fry, the swallowers of swords and the grimace makers,
real performances took place on the green. There was a circus of women,
ringing from morning till night with a magnificent peal of all sorts of
instruments--psalteries, drums, rebecks, micamons, timbrels, reeds,
dulcimers, gongs, chevrettes, bagpipes, German horns, English
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