order, rigorously riveted to each other by the
police regulations, and locked into rails, as it were. Any one in
these vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle. Police-sergeants
maintained, on the sides of the boulevard, these two interminable
parallel files, moving in contrary directions, and saw to it that
nothing interfered with that double current, those two brooks of
carriages, flowing, the one down stream, the other up stream, the
one towards the Chaussee d'Antin, the other towards the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine. The carriages of the peers of France and of the
Ambassadors, emblazoned with coats of arms, held the middle of the way,
going and coming freely. Certain joyous and magnificent trains, notably
that of the Boeuf Gras, had the same privilege. In this gayety of Paris,
England cracked her whip; Lord Seymour's post-chaise, harassed by a
nickname from the populace, passed with great noise.

In the double file, along which the municipal guards galloped like
sheep-dogs, honest family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts and
grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in
disguise, Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines of six, ravishing
little creatures, who felt that they formed an official part of the
public mirth, who were imbued with the dignity of their harlequinade,
and who possessed the gravity of functionaries.

From time to time, a hitch arose somewhere in the procession of
vehicles; one or other of the two lateral files halted until the knot
was disentangled; one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze the whole
line. Then they set out again on the march.

The wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the Bastille,
and skirting the right side of the Boulevard. At the top of the
Pont-aux-Choux, there was a stoppage. Nearly at the same moment, the
other file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine, halted also. At
that point of the file there was a carriage-load of maskers.

These carriages, or to speak more correctly, these wagon-loads of
maskers are very familiar to Parisians. If they were missing on a Shrove
Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad part, and people
would say: "There's something behind that. Probably the ministry
is about to undergo a change." A pile of Cassandras, Harlequins and
Columbines, jolted along high above the passers-by, all possible
grotesquenesses, from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting
Marquises, fishwives who