But the great heart of the People, that beats still to the homely old music, and you shall find no trace of morbidity in the melodramas of the Porte-St.-Martin or the music-halls of the people's quarter. To-day is the Gingerbread Fair--_La Foire au Pain d'Épices_; and _Tout Paris_--that is to say, everybody who isn't anybody--is elbowing its way towards the centre of gaiety. Tramcars deposit their packed freights near the Bastile[*], and where the women of the Revolution knitted, feeding their eyes on blood, bonnetless old crones sit drinking red wine in the sun. The sky is radiantly blue, and there is a music of merry-go-rounds. They are far more elegant than our English merry-go-rounds, these _carrousels_, hung with tapestry, and offering you circumambient palanquins or even elephants. Before a toy stage, on which a mechanical skirt-dancer disports herself with a tireless smile, an automatic _chef-d'orchestre_ conducts the revolutionary march (none other than "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay") while grotesque figures strike stiffly at bells. On the pavement an old man has spread for sale a litter of broken dolls, blind, halt and lame, when not decapitated; and in the roadway the festive crowd splits to allow the passage of a child's coffin covered with white flowers. The air thrills with the "ping" of unsuccessful shots: I take a gun, and by aiming at a ball dancing on a fountain jet, hit a bull's-eye two yards to the left. I throw flat rings at a sort of ninepins, five shots for a halfpenny: the first four leave the pins stolid and the public derisive. I throw the last at random, bring down half the pins, and stalk off: nonchalantly, the pet of the fickle French populace. I buy pancakes fried on the stall while you wait--they are selling like hot cakes--and but for the difficulty of finding one with my name picked out in pink on the gingerbread, I would buy a pig and hang it on my breast. Some of the pigs have mottoes instead of names: De toute la création C'est moi le plus cochon. [* Transcriber's note: So in original.] Another asserts: De la tête à la queue Je suis délicieux.