Finally, he ran up to the feet of the
old man, and hid himself under his legs, so as to shew only his head.
The people called him _Grimaldi_, an appellation that appears to have
belonged to him by usage, and it is a singular coincidence that the
surname of the noblest family of Genoa the Proud, thus assigned by the
rude rabble of a sea-port to their buffoon, should belong of right to
the sire and son, whose _mops_ and _mowes_ afford pastime to the upper
gallery at Covent-Garden.
Thus did the pageant proceed in all its grotesque glory, and, while--
"These labor'd nothings in so strange a style
Amazed the unlearned, and made the learned smile,"
the children shouted aloud for their favorite Grimaldi; the priests,
accompanied with bells, trumpets, and organs, thundered out the mass;
the pious were loud in their exclamations of rapture at the devotion of
the Virgin; and the whole church was filled with "un non so che di rauco
ed indistinto".--But I have told you enough of this foolish story, of
which it were well if the folly had been the worst.
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