It needs the pencil of Callot, or Rembrandt, or of Goya to portray the bizarre, hideous, almost fantastical appearance of this multitude. Almost all, men, women, children, were dressed in old masquerading costumes; those who had not been able to obtain this luxury had fastened on their clothes old rags, of flaunting colors; some young men were attired in women's apparel, torn and soiled with mud; all these faces, haggard from debauch and vice, bloated by intoxication, sparkled with savage joy, in thinking that, after a night of drunken orgies, they were going to see the two women put to death, for whom the scaffold was raised. The scum of the population of Paris, an immense mob, was composed of bandits and abandoned women, who demand each day from crime their daily bread, and who each night return well filled to their dens. The exterior boulevard being very contracted at this place, the closely-packed crowd entirely blocked up the passageway. In spite of his athletic strength, the Slasher was obliged to remain almost immovable in the midst of this compact mass; he submitted. The prince, leaving the Rue Plumet at ten o'clock, as they had told him, would not leave the Barrière Charenton until about eleven, and it was not yet seven. Although formerly he had associated with the degraded classes to which this mob belonged, the Slasher, on again finding himself among them, felt invincible disgust. Crowded, by the reflux of the mob, against the wall of one of the wine shops, which swarm on these boulevards, through the open window from whence escaped the deafening sound of a brass band, the Slasher saw, against his will, a strange spectacle. In a long low room (one end of which was occupied by the musicians), surrounded by benches and tables covered with the remains of a repast, broken plates, and overturned bottles, a dozen men and women disguised, half drunk, were dancing _La Chahut_ a dance which was never performed except at the end of the _ball_, when the municipal guards had retired. Among the depraved couples who figured in the revel, the Slasher remarked two who won applause above all by the disgusting immodesty of their postures, gestures, and words. The first couple were composed of a man nearly disguised as a bear, by means of a waistcoat and trousers of black sheepskin. The head of the animal, doubtless too heavy to carry, had been replaced by a kind of hood of long hair, which entirely covered the face; two holes near the eyes, and a large slit over the mouth, allowed him to see, speak, and breathe. This masked man, one of the prisoners who had escaped from La Force (among whom were also Barbillon and the two murderers arrested at the _tapisfranc_ at the comencement of this story), was Nicholas Martial, the son and brother of the women for whom the scaffold was erected close at hand. Dragged into this act of inhuman insensibility by one of his companions, a formidable