slops in
mid-street.

CHAPTER XXV

JACK BATTLE AGAIN

The higher one's hopes mount the farther they have to fall; and I, who
had mounted to stars with Hortense, was pushed to the gutter by the
king's dragoons making way for the royal equipage. There was a
crackling of whips among the king's postillions. A yeoman thrust the
crowd back with his pike. The carriages rolled past. The flash of a
linkman's torch revealed Hortense sitting languid and scornful between
the foreign countess and that milliner's dummy of a lieutenant. Then
the royal carriages were lost in the darkness, and the streets thronged
by a rabble of singing, shouting, hilarious revellers.

Different generations have different ways of taking their pleasure, and
the youth of King Charles's day were alternately bullies on the street
and dandies at the feet of my lady disdainful. At the approach of the
shouting, night-watchmen threw down their lanterns and took to their
heels. Street-sweeps tossed their brooms in mid-road with cries of
"The Scowerers! The Scowerers!" Hucksters fled into the dark of side
lanes. Shopkeepers shot their door-bolts. Householders blew out
lights. Fruit-venders made off without their baskets, and small
urchins shrieked the alarm of "Baby-eaters! Baby-eaters!"

One sturdy watch, I mind, stood his guard, laying about with a stout
pike in a way that broke our fine revellers' heads like soft pumpkins;
but him they stood upon his crown in some goodwife's rain-barrel with
his lantern tied to his heels. At the rush of the rabble for shelves
of cakes and pies, one shopman levelled his blunderbuss. That brought
shouts of "A sweat! A sweat!" In a twinkling the rascals were about
him. A sword pricked from behind. The fellow jumped. Another prick,
and yet another, till the good man was dancing such a jig the sweat
rolled from his fat jowls and he roared out promise to feast the whole
rout. A peddler of small images had lingered to see the sport, and
enough of it he had, I promise you; for they dumped him into his wicker
basket and trundled it through the gutter till the peddler and his
little white saints were black as chimney-sweeps. Nor did our merry
blades play their pranks on poor folk alone. At Will's Coffee House,
where sat Dryden and other mighty quidnuncs spinning their poetry and
politics over full cups, before mine host got his doors barred our
fellows had charged in, seized one of the great wits and