The performance is in charge of a marabout, a dignified, patriarchal-looking Arab in a high thimble-shaped turban and a burnous of brown camel’s-hair, who acts as a sort of stage-director. Calling up the performers, one by one, he enfolds each in his arms and makes a few passes about him, whereupon the dervishes and the demented proceed to work themselves into an authentic frenzy of religious exaltation, rolling their eyeballs in their sockets, foaming at the lips, twitching their limbs, and shaking as though afflicted with palsy, while their confederates, employed for the occasion, imitate them with an attempt at realism which is not wholly convincing. Faster and faster the frenzied figures reel about the room, louder and faster throb the drums, while the “_Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!_” of the native spectators, who rock themselves backward and forward in time with the chant, adds to the infernal din. A few minutes of this and, at a signal from the marabout, the racket ceases as abruptly as it began. A word from the leader, and there staggers into the center of the circle a wild-looking, long-haired figure clad only in a breech-clout; his eyes are glazed, and he is thin to the point of emaciation. From a brazier he lifts between his thumb and forefinger a glowing coal the size of a large marble, places it upon his tongue, swallows it as though it were a bon-bon. In the air is the horrid odor of burning flesh; an American spectator gives an exclamation of disgust; a woman utters a faint scream; the natives emit a long-drawn “_Ah-h-h_” of gratification. The next number on the program was even more revolting. A pseudo-dervish, who by day is a street-sweeper in the Rue Berthe, so I was informed, plunged his hand into a basket and withdrew a live green snake, perhaps eighteen inches long. The silence in the room was so intense that we could hear the serpent hissing. Holding the wriggling thing firmly, he inserted its head into his mouth ... his throat worked convulsively for a moment ... and it was gone! The florid American beside me mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. There was a little commotion among the spectators gathered near the door; the woman who had screamed was going out.