es began, and extinguished
at their close; on which occasions the figures were made to express
reluctance by turning quickly about; so that it required some dexterity
to apply the extinguishers. At the commencement of the mass, two of the
angels by the side of the Almighty descended to the foot of the altar,
and, placing themselves by the tomb, in which a pasteboard figure of the
Virgin had been substituted for her living representative, gently raised
it to the feet of the Father. The image, as it mounted, from time to
time lifted its head and extended its arms, as if conscious of the
approaching beatitude, then, after having received the benediction and
been encircled by another angel with a crown of glory, it gradually
disappeared behind the clouds. At this instant a buffoon, who all the
time had been playing his antics below, burst into an extravagant fit of
joy; at one moment clapping his hands most violently, at the next
stretching himself out as if dead. Finally, he ran up to the feet of the
old man, and hid himself under his legs, so as to shew only his head.
The people called him _Grimaldi_, an appellation that appears to have
belonged to him by usage, and it is a singular coincidence that the
surname of the noblest family of Genoa the Proud, thus assigned by the
rude rabble of a sea-port to their buffoon, should belong of right to
the sire and son, whose _mops_ and _mowes_ afford pastime to the upper
gallery at Covent-Garden.

Thus did the pageant proceed in all its grotesque glory, and, while--

"These labor'd nothings in so strange a style
Amazed the unlearned, and made the learned smile,"

the children shouted aloud for their favorite Grimaldi; the priests,
accompanied with bells, trumpets, and organs, thundered out the mass;
the pious were loud in their exclamations of rapture at the devotion of
the Virgin; and the whole church was filled with "un non so che di rauco
ed indistinto".--But I have told you enough of this foolish story, of
which it were well if the folly had been the worst. The sequel was in
the same taste and style, and ended with the euthanasia of all similar
representations, a hearty dinner.

Footnotes:

[4] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 130.

[5] _Histoire de Dieppe_, II. p. 86.

[6] _Essals sur le Departement de la Seine Inferieure_, I. p. 119.

[7] _Histoire de Dieppe_, I. p. 1.

[8] Another author, mentioned by the Abbe Fontenu, in the _Memoires de
l'Acad