epict them.
In front of the tables of the drunkards a fairly young negress was
displaying herself. She was dressed in a man's waistcoat, unbuttoned,
and a woman's skirt loosely attached. She wore no chemise and her
abdomen was bare. On her head was a magistrate's wig. On one shoulder
she carried a parasol, and on the other a rifle with bayonet fixed.

A few whites, stark naked, ran about miserably in the midst of this
pandemonium. On a litter was being borne the nude body of a stout man,
in whose breast a dagger was sticking as a cross is stuck in the ground.

On every hand were gnomes bronze-coloured, red, black, kneeling,
sitting, squatting, heaped together, opening trunks, forcing locks,
trying on bracelets, clasping necklaces about their necks, donning coats
or dresses, breaking, ripping, tearing. Two blacks were trying to get
into the same coat; each had got an arm on, and they were belabouring
each other with their disengaged fists. It was the second stage of a
sacked town. Robbery and joy had succeeded rage. In a few corners some
were still engaged in killing, but the great majority were pillaging.
All were carrying off their booty, some in their arms, some in baskets
on their backs, some in wheelbarrows.

The strangest thing about it all was that in the midst of the
incredible, tumultuous mob, an interminable file of pillagers who were
rich and fortunate enough to possess horses and vehicles, marched and
deployed, in order and with the solemn gravity of a procession. This was
quite a different kind of a medley!

Imagine carts of all kinds with loads of every description: a four-horse
carriage full of broken crockery and kitchen utensils, with two or three
dressed-up and beplumed negroes on each horse; a big wagon drawn by oxen
and loaded with bales carefully corded and packed, damask armchairs,
frying pans and pitchforks, and on top of this pyramid a negress wearing
a necklace and with a feather stuck in her hair; an old country coach
drawn by a single mule and with a load of ten trunks and, ten negroes,
three of whom were upon the animal's back. Mingle with all this bath
chairs, litters and sedan chairs piled high with loot of all kinds,
precious articles of furniture with the most sordid objects. It was
the hut and the drawing-room pitched together pell-mell into a cart, an
immense removal by madmen defiling through the town.

What was incomprehensible was the equanimity with which the petty
robbers regar