"They let him go with a muttered oath. The man's face was pale, and belied his words. Indeed, on many faces Pierre learnt to recognise the traces of misery and deadly fear, though these very ones sometimes laughed and shouted the loudest. But his attention was now caught by a strange sound coming nearer and nearer--a distant roar it had seemed at first, but by degrees it grew into the shouting and yelling, hardly to be called singing--though there was some tune and measure in it, and the time was marked by the beating of small drums, the clashing and clanging of tambourine;--of a multitude of human voices. "`What is it?' said Pierre, half-timidly, to a boy a year or two younger than himself, who stood near. `Is it a procession?' "The boy looked at him curiously. But his face was thin and pale; he did not look as if he had come in for many of the good things to be had for the asking. "`A procession!' he repeated, but in a low voice; `mind what you say.' For the word is associated in France with religious observances. `It is the Carmagnole--the dance of rejoicing. Stay, you will see for yourself; you must be a new-comer never to have seen it before.' "Many and many a time in his after-life, as he has often told me, did Pierre Germain wish he had never seen that horrid sight at all. It used to haunt him, strong and practical as he was, like a hideous nightmare. There they came--a band of men and women, or beings that had been such, though looking more like demons. Some were half-naked, with scarfs and ribbons, generally of flaming red, flying from them; some in the most absurd and grotesque costumes that could be imagined: the women with long hair streaming, the men daubed crimson with paint or what looked like worse, some brandishing sticks and clubs, some waving scarlet flags--all leaping and dancing with a sort of monotonous rhythm, sometimes closing in together, sometimes stretching out with joined hands in enormous wheels, all yelling and shouting, with yet a tune or refrain that went in time to their steps, and somehow seemed to make the whole more horrible. "`Are they mad?' said Pierre, leaning back against the wall with unutterable loathing. The pale-faced boy was still beside him, for to proceed on one's way till the hideous crowd had passed was impossible. "`Hush! hush!' said the boy in a tone of real terror. `Mad? Yes, indeed they are--mad with blood! Oh, I would not have risked coming out had I known I would meet them again,' and he reeled as if he were going to faint. Pierre caught him by the arm; something in the boy's air and tone seemed at variance with his shabby clothes. "`Can I do nothing for you?' said Pierre. `You seem so weak. Will you take my arm?' "But the boy seemed better again, and as the crowd began to disperse a little he was evidently in an agony to be gone. "`No, no,' he said, `I have not far to go. Take care of yourself,' he added, and in an instant he had slipped away.