it has masters--one thing, "paint the mud for me." Rome was of the same humor; she loved Nero, and Nero was a Titanic débardeur. Accident willed it, as we have just said, that one of the shapeless groups of masked men and women collected in a vast barouche stopped on the left of the boulevard while the wedding party stopped on the right. The carriage in which the masks were, noticed opposite to it the carriage in which was the bride. "Hilloh!" said a mask, "a wedding." "A false wedding," another retorted, "we are the true one." And, as they were too far off to address the wedding party, and as they also feared the interference of the police, the two masks looked elsewhere. The whole vehicle-load of masquers had plenty of work a moment after, for the mob began hissing it, which is the caress given by the mob to masquerades, and the two masks who had just spoken were obliged to face the crowd with their comrades, and found all the missiles of the market repertory scarce sufficient to reply to the atrocious jaw-lashing from the people. A frightful exchange of metaphors took place between the masks and the crowd. In the mean while two other masks in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an exaggerated nose, an oldish look, and enormous black moustaches, and a thin and very youthful fish-girl, wearing a half-mask, had noticed the wedding also, and while their companions and the spectators were insulting each other, held a conversation in a low voice. Their aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it. The showers had drenched the open carriage; the February wind is not warm, and so the fish-girl while answering the Spaniard shivered, laughed, and coughed. This was the dialogue, which we translate from the original slang:-- "Look here." "What is it, pa?" "Do you see that old man?" "What old man?" "There, in the wedding coach, with his arm in a sling." "Yes. Well?" "I feel sure that I know him." "Ah!" "May my neck be cut, and I never said you, thou, or I, in my life, if I do not know that Parisian." "To-day Paris is Pantin." "Can you see the bride by stooping?" "No." "And the bridegroom?" "There is no bridegroom in that coach." "Nonsense." "Unless it be the other old man." "Come, try and get a look at the bride by stooping." "I can't." "No matter, that old fellow who has something the matter with his paw, I feel certain I know him." "And what good will it do you, your knowing him?" "I don't know. Sometimes!" "I don't care a curse for old fellows." "I know him." "Know him as much as you like." "How the deuce is he at the wedding?" "Why, we are there too." "Where does the wedding come from?" "How do I know?" "Listen." "Well, what is it?" "You must do something." "What is it?" "Get out of our trap and follow that wedding." "What to do?" "To know where it goes and what it is. Make haste and get down; run, my daughter, for you are young." "I can't leave the carriage." "Why not?" "I am hired." "Oh, the devil!"