ous demonstration, to revive the courage of
the affrighted populace. Immediately, artists, young men about town,
students, and so on, responded to the appeal, and though till now unknown
one to the other, they easily fraternized together. Many brought their
mistresses, to complete the show. A subscription had been opened to
defray the expenses, and, that morning, after a splendid breakfast at the
other end of Paris, the joyous troop had started bravely on their march,
to finish the day by a dinner in the square of Notre Dame.

We say bravely, for it required a singular turn of mind, a rare firmness
of character, in young women, to traverse, in this fashion, a great city
plunged in consternation and terror--to fall in at every step with
litters loaded with the dying, and carriages filled with the dead--to
defy, as it were, in a spirit of strange pleasantry, the plague that was
detonating the Parisians. It is certain that, in Paris alone, and there
only amongst a peculiar class, could such an idea have ever been
conceived or realized. Two men, grotesquely disguised as postilions at a
funeral, with formidable false noses, rose-colored crape hat-bands and
large favors of roses and crape bows at their buttonholes, rode before
the vehicle. Upon the platform of the car were groups of allegorical
personages, representing WINE, PLEASURE, LOVE, PLAY. The mission of these
symbolical beings was, by means of jokes, sarcasms, and mockeries, to
plague the life out of Goodman Cholera, a sort of funeral and burlesque
Cassander, whom they ridiculed and made game of in a hundred ways. The
moral of the play was this: "To brave Cholera in security, let us drink,
laugh, game, and make love!"

WINE was represented by a huge, lusty Silenus, thick-set, and with
swollen paunch, a crown of ivy on his brow, a panther's skin across his
shoulder, and in his hand a large gilt goblet, wreathed with flowers.
None other than Ninny Moulin, the famous moral and religious writer,
could have exhibited to the astonished and delighted spectators an ear of
so deep a scarlet, so majestic an abdomen, and a face of such triumphant
and majestic fulness. Every moment, Ninny Moulin appeared to empty his
cup--after which he burst out laughing in the face of Goodman Cholera.
Goodman Cholera, a cadaverous pantaloon, was half-enveloped in a shroud;
his mask of greenish cardboard, with red, hollow eyes, seemed every
moment to grin as in mockery of death; from beneath his