d which to us best recalls
such gigantesque idiocy is the word "mafficking." The slaves of that
saturnalia were not only painting the town red; they thought that they
were painting the map red--that they were painting the world red. But,
indeed, this Imperial debauch has in it something worse than the
mere larkiness which is my present topic; it has an element of real
self-flattery and of sin. The Jingo who wants to admire himself is
worse than the blackguard who only wants to enjoy himself. In a very old
ninth-century illumination which I have seen, depicting the war of the
rebel angels in heaven, Satan is represented as distributing to his
followers peacock feathers--the symbols of an evil pride. Satan also
distributed peacock feathers to his followers on Mafeking Night...

But taking the case of ordinary pagan recklessness and pleasure seeking,
it is, as we have said, well expressed in this image. First, because
it conveys this notion of filling the world with one private folly; and
secondly, because of the profound idea involved in the choice of colour.
Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it
is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where
the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns
through. It glows in the blood which sustains and in the fire which
destroys us, in the roses of our romance and in the awful cup of our
religion. It stands for all passionate happiness, as in faith or in
first love.

Now, the profligate is he who wishes to spread this crimson of conscious
joy over everything; to have excitement at every moment; to paint
everything red. He bursts a thousand barrels of wine to incarnadine the
streets; and sometimes (in his last madness) he will butcher beasts
and men to dip his gigantic brushes in their blood. For it marks
the sacredness of red in nature, that it is secret even when it is
ubiquitous, like blood in the human body, which is omnipresent, yet
invisible. As long as blood lives it is hidden; it is only dead blood
that we see. But the earlier parts of the rake's progress are very
natural and amusing. Painting the town red is a delightful thing until
it is done. It would be splendid to see the cross of St. Paul's as red
as the cross of St. George, and the gallons of red paint running down
the dome or dripping from the Nelson Column. But when it is done, when
you have painted the town red, an extraordinary thing happ