Day after day their conjectures
concerning him grew more and more wild and fearful. The
strangeness of his arrival, the strangeness of his manners, the
mystery that surrounded him,--all made him something
incomprehensible in their eyes. He was a kind of monster of the
deep to them; he was a merman, he was a behemoth, he was a
leviathan,--in short, they knew not what he was.
The domineering spirit of this boisterous sea urchin at length grew
quite intolerable. He was no respecter of persons; he contradicted
the richest burghers without hesitation; he took possession of the
sacred elbow chair, which time out of mind had been the seat of
sovereignty of the illustrious Ramm Rapelye. Nay, he even went so
far, in one of his rough, jocular moods, as to slap that mighty
burgher on the back, drink his toddy, and wink in his face,--a
thing scarcely to be believed. From this time Ramm Rapelye
appeared no more at the inn. His example was followed by several
of the most eminent customers, who were too rich to tolerate being
bullied out of their opinions or being obliged to laugh at another
man's jokes.
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