Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

208
budding to the cheek of either. A simultaneous throb beat in those young hearts! They
loved each other for ever from that instant. Otto still stood, cross-legged, enraptured,
leaning on his ivory bow; but Helen, calling to a maiden for her pocket-handkerchief, blew
her beautiful Grecian nose in order to hide her agitation. Bless ye, bless ye, pretty ones! I
am old now; but not so old but that I kindle at the tale of love. Theresa MacWhirter too has
lived and loved. Heigho!
Who is yon chief that stands behind the truck whereon are seated the Princess and the stout
old lord, her father? Who is he whose hair is of the carroty hue? whose eyes, across a
snubby bunch of a nose, are perpetually scowling at each other; who has a hump-back and a
hideous mouth, surrounded with bristles, and crammed full of jutting yellow odious teeth.
Although he wears a sky-blue doublet laced with silver, it only serves to render his vulgar
punchy figure doubly ridiculous; although his nether garment is of salmon-colored velvet, it
only draws the more attention to his legs, which are disgustingly crooked and bandy. A
rose-colored hat, with towering pea-green ostrich-plumes, looks absurd on his bull-head;
and though it is time of peace, the wretch is armed with a multiplicity of daggers, knives,
yataghans, dirks, sabres, and scimitars, which testify his truculent and bloody disposition.
'Tis the terrible Rowski de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschreckenstein. Report says he
is a suitor for the hand of the lovely Helen. He addresses various speeches of gallantry to
her, and grins hideously as he thrusts his disgusting head over her lily shoulder. But she
turns away from him! turns and shudders—ay, as she would at a black dose!
Otto stands gazing still, and leaning on his bow. "What is the prize?" asks one archer of
another. There are two prizes—a velvet cap, embroidered by the hand of the Princess, and a
chain of massive gold, of enormous value. Both lie on cushions before her.
"I know which I shall choose, when I win the first prize," says a swarthy, savage, and
bandy-legged archer, who bears the owl gules on a black shield, the cognizance of the Lord
Rowski de Donnerblitz.
"Which, fellow?" says Otto, turning fiercely upon him.
"The chain, to be sure!" says the leering archer. "You do not suppose I am such a flat as to
choose that velvet gimcrack there?" Otto laughed in scorn, and began to prepare his bow.
The trumpets sounding proclaimed that the sports were about to commence.
Is it necessary to describe them? No: that has already been done in the novel of "Ivanhoe"
before mentioned. Fancy the archers clad in Lincoln green, all coming forward in turn, and
firing at the targets. Some hit, some missed; those that missed were fain to retire amidst the
jeers of the multitudinous spectators. Those that hit began new trials of skill; but it was easy
to see, from the first, that the battle lay between Squintoff (the Rowski archer) and the