In the double file, along which Municipal Guards galloped like watch-dogs, honest family arks, crowded with great-aunts and grandmothers, displayed at windows healthy groups of disguised children, Pierrots of seven and Pierrettes of six, ravishing little creatures, feeling that they officially formed part of the public merriment, penetrated with the dignity of their Harlequinade, and displaying the gravity of functionaries. From time to time a block occurred somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or other of the two side files stopped until the knot was untied, one impeded vehicle sufficing to block the whole line. Then they started again. The wedding carriages were in the file, going towards the Bastille on the right-hand side of the boulevard. Opposite the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux there was a stoppage, and almost at the same moment the file on the other side proceeding towards the Madeleine stopped too. At this point of the procession there was a carriage of masks. These carnages, or, to speak more correctly, these cartloads of masks, are well known to the Parisians; if they failed on Mardi Gras or at mid-Lent, people would say, "There's something behind it. Probably we are going to have a change of Ministry." A heap of Harlequins, Columbines, and Pantaloons jolted above the heads of the passers-by,--all possible grotesques, from the Turk to the savage. Hercules supporting Marquises, fish-fags who would make Rabelais stop his ears, as well as Mænads who would make Aristophanes look down, tow perukes, pink fleshings, three-cornered hats, pantaloons, spectacles, cries given to the pedestrians, hands on hips, bold postures, naked shoulders, masked faces, and unmuzzled immodesty; a chaos of effronteries driven by a coachman in a head-dress of flowers,--such is this institution. Greece felt the want of Thespis' cart, and France needs Vadé's fiacre. All may be parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, by swelling and swelling becomes the Mardi Gras: and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with vine-leaves, inundated by sunshine, and displaying marble breasts in a divine semi-nudity, is now flabby under the drenched rags of the North, has ended by being called a chie-en-lit.