d shrill scraping, and then an old
man proudly limped through the gateway of the Great Clock. This was the
conjurer, this white-haired fellow, who, with fife, cymbals, bells,
concertinas,--he wore two strapped under either arm,--at times fiddler,
made epileptic music as he quivered and danced, wriggled, and shook his
venerable skull. The big drum was fastened to his back, upon its top
were placed cymbals. On his head he wore a pavilion hung with bells that
pealed when he twisted or nodded his long, yellow neck. He carried a
weather-worn fiddle with a string or two missing, while a pipe that
might have been a clarinet years before, now emitted but cackling tones
from his thin lips, through which shone a few fanglike teeth. By some
incomprehensible cooerdination of muscular movements he contrived to make
sound simultaneously his curious armoury of instruments, and the
whistling, screeching, scratching, drumming, wheezing, and tinkling of
metal were appalling. But it was rhythmic, and at intervals the edge of
a tune could be discerned, cutting sharply through the dense cloud of
vibrations, like the prow of a boat cleaving the fog. Baki, his face red
and swollen by his exertions, moved to the spot where waited the girl.

"_Ai_, Debora!" cried a boy, "here's the old man. Pass the plate, pass
the plate!" To his amazement, though he could give no reason for the
feeling, Ferval saw the girl go from group to group, her tambourine
outstretched, begging for coppers. Once she struck an insulting youth
across the face, but when she reached Ferval and met his inquiring look,
she dropped her eyes and did not ask for alms. A red-headed Sibyl, he
thought discontentedly, a street beggar, the daughter of an old ruffian.
And as he walked away rapidly he remembered her glance, in which there
lurked some touch of antique pride and wrath.

II

Rouen lay below him, a violet haze obscuring all but the pinnacles of
its churches. The sinking sun had no longer power to pierce this misty
gulf, at the bottom of which hummed the busy city; but Ferval saw
through rents in the twirling, heat-laden atmosphere the dim shapes of
bridges mirrored by the water beneath him; and once the two islands
apparently swept toward him, a blur of green; while at the end of the
valley, framed by hills, he seemed to discern the odd-looking
Transbordeur spanning the Seine.

For twenty-four hours he had not ceased thinking of the girl with the
tambourine, of her sav