Feast days will soon be upon us, so, though somewhat short of means, we must live up to our reputation and that of the town. What would the world say if Shrove-Tuesday caught Clamecy without its justly celebrated meat-balls? You can hear the grease frying, and sniff the delicious fragrance in the streets. The flapjacks fairly hop from the pan for my little Glodie! Now the drums go “rub-a-dub,” and the flutes “twee-wee,” as amid cheers and shouts the “Gentlemen from Judæa” come on their car to visit “Rome.”[2] First appears the band; then the halberdiers, and the crowd actually falls back before the great noses they wear. Some are shaped like trumpets, or lances, there are snouts like hunting-horns or pea-shooters, noses stuck full of spikes, like a chestnut burr, or with a bird perched on the tip. They hustle the passers-by, and tickle the ribs of the squealing girls; and at last comes the Nose King, scattering all before him like a battering-ram with his great proboscis which rests on a gun-carriage like a bombard. Then comes the car of Lent, Emperor of the Fish-eaters. Their masks are pale green, skinny, and chilled-looking. They shiver under hoods, or heads of fishes. One has a perch, or a carp, in each hand; another brandishes a gudgeon stuck on a fork; a third wears a hat like a pike’s head, with a roach dangling from its mouth, and little fishes falling all around. It is enough to give a man a surfeit. Some stick their fingers into their jaws and try to force down eggs too big to swallow. To right and left, high up on the car, are masks of owls and monks and fishermen dangling their lines over the heads of urchins, who jump up like goats to catch at what may be sweetmeats or perhaps only dirt rolled in sugar. Behind is a dancing devil, dressed like a cook, waving a saucepan and big spoon. Six souls of the damned stick their grinning heads through the rungs of a ladder behind the car, and the devil keeps thrusting his spoonful of disgusting stew at them.