he Parisians.

These fishwife vehicles, in which one feels one knows not what shadows,
set the philosopher to thinking. There is government therein. There one
lays one's finger on a mysterious affinity between public men and public
women.

It certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total
of gayety, that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should
be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving as caryatids to
prostitution should amuse the rabble when it confronts them, that the
crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags, half
dung, half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing, that they
should clap their hands at this glory composed of all shames, that there
would be no festival for the populace, did not the police promenade in
their midst these sorts of twenty-headed hydras of joy. But what can be
done about it? These be-ribboned and be-flowered tumbrils of mire are
insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public. The laughter of all
is the accomplice of universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals
disaggregate the people and convert them into the populace. And
populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has Roquelaure,
the populace has the Merry-Andrew. Paris is a great, mad city on every
occasion that it is a great sublime city. There the Carnival forms
part of politics. Paris,--let us confess it--willingly allows infamy to
furnish it with comedy. She only demands of her masters--when she has
masters--one thing: "Paint me the mud." Rome was of the same mind. She
loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman.

Chance ordained, as we have just said, that one of these shapeless
clusters of masked men and women, dragged about on a vast calash, should
halt on the left of the boulevard, while the wedding train halted on the
right. The carriage-load of masks caught sight of the wedding carriage
containing the bridal party opposite them on the other side of the
boulevard.

"Hullo!" said a masker, "here's a wedding."

"A sham wedding," retorted another. "We are the genuine article."

And, being too far off to accost the wedding party, and fearing also,
the rebuke of the police, the two maskers turned their eyes elsewhere.

At the end of another minute, the carriage-load of maskers had their
hands full, the multitude set to yelling, which is the crowd's caress
to masquerades; and the two maskers who had just spoken had to face the
throng with