"Scarcely have they got out of doors when a thick cloud appears. Great disquietude! They open their Parasol, and make a thousand pretty grimaces, to show how sadly they fear the ruin of their charming dresses. . . . A few drops of rain begin to fall: they quicken their steps on their way home again. "A burst of thunder occasioned by the /Samisen/ and the drums, is heard, which announces a terrible downpour. Then our four dancers catch their robes with both hands, and throw them with one sweep under their arms, and suddenly turning, take to their heels, showing us a row of little . . . . frightened faces, saving themselves at the full speed of their legs." What a series of pantomimes, in which the Sunshade must assume in the hands of the charming /Geishas/ the most seductive positions! "Among the Arabs the Parasol was a mark of distinction" (as we learn from M. O. S., the English reporter of a commission which published a small notice on /Umbrellas, Parasols, and Walking-sticks/ in London about 1871). There is the same importance attached to it among certain blacks of Western Africa, who have probably borrowed it from the Arabs. Niebuhr, in the description of the procession of the Imam of Sanah, tells us that the Imam, and every one of the princes of his numerous family, had carried by their side a /Madalla/ or large Parasol. It is in that country a privilege of princes of the blood. The same writer relates that many independent chiefs of Yemen bear /Madallas/ as a mark of their independence. In Morocco the Emperor alone and his family have the privilege of the Parasol. In the /Voyages of Aly Bey/ we read in fact:--"The retinue of the Sultan was composed of a troop of from fifteen to twenty gentlemen as the vanguard; behind them, some hundred paces, came the Sultan, mounted on a mule, having beside him, also mounted on a mule, an officer carrying the Imperial Parasol. The Parasol is the distinctive sign of the sovereign of Morocco. No one but he would dare to use it." In certain tribes of central Africa explorers speak of having encountered, amidst the tribes of the desert, kings half-dressed in European old clothes, taken or exchanged no one knows where; and, strangely enough, on the top of an old silk hat, half-knocked in, one of these negro kings, says a traveller, held with a sort of grotesque majesty an old torn Umbrella of which the whalebone appeared to be half-broken. This Robert Macaire of the desert, does he not recall that pleasant equatorial fantasy of the /Parnassiculet Contemporain/, a sonnet terminating with the verses:-- What then is strange about this desert's pride, Who in the desert without thee had died? Bétani answered, "Child of open mien, Where on board ship he comes, I tell you that For full court-dress, this half-blood wears a hat Of an old shako, trimmed with tufts of green!"