to a house where I stood on a
balcony looking up a street down which the procession was to come.

We had to wait till long after midnight, but at last the moving lights
began to shine on the high houses in the distance, the band was heard
approaching, and at 1.45 the first car staggered into sight. It
represented _The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men_; there were three
of each, reclining in the front part of the car and offering flowers to
one another, instigated so to do by the Monster of Iniquity, a loathsome
dragon, who was insinuating himself among them from rocks behind, while
the Angel of the Lord, a singularly beautiful child, stood on a high
cloud in the background, in an attitude of horror, about to take wing
from such a world of wickedness. Cupid was there also, sitting at the
feet of the daughters of men and taking aim generally.

The second car brought _Sin_, a bearded man in an imperial attitude with
a golden sceptre resting on his hip. He dominated a globe round which
the old Serpent had coiled himself. He was dressed in dark-blue velvet,
and wore a voluminous red cloak. On his breast was a bunch of grapes,
made entirely of diamond rings; each grape was a separate ring isolated
from the others and so sewn on that the hoop, being passed through a hole
in the material, was not visible, and only the rose of diamonds was
displayed. There were fifty-five grapes, and they sparkled and glittered
in the flickering lights as the car lurched down the street and passed
the balcony.

The third car represented _The Voice of God_, a beautiful figure of an
Angel blowing a trumpet, and the words written on the cloud behind were
"Delebo hominem." In the front of the car sat a youth and a girl holding
hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction.

Then _The Universal Deluge_ came pitching and tossing round the
corner--rather an ambitious car. The foreground was occupied by the
water, with the head of a drowning man throwing up his arms, and the
indication of another entirely submerged. The waves were beating against
a steep bank up which a tigress was climbing, carrying her cub in her
mouth. On the top of the bank stood a lovely woman endeavouring to save
her terrified child. She was the only living figure on the car,
everything else, even the terrified child, being of papier mache.

_The Ark_ came on the fifth car and had no living figure at all, being
merely Noah's Ark resting on Mou