e last revels of the carnival. The woman who danced with him,
dressed as a _vivandiere_, wore a round leather cap with ragged ribands,
a kind of bodice of threadbare red cloth, ornamented with three rows of
brass buttons, a green skirt, and trousers of white calico. Her black
hair fell in disorder all about her head, and her haggard and swollen
features evinced the utmost effrontery and immodesty. The _vis-a-vis_ of
these dancers were no less disgusting.

The man, who was very tall, and disguised as Robert Macaire, had so
begrimed his features with soot that it was impossible to recognise him,
and, besides, a large bandage covered his left eye; the white of the
right eye being thus the more heightened, rendered him still more
hideous. The lower part of the Skeleton's countenance (for it was he)
disappeared in a high neckcloth made of an old red shawl.

Wearing an old, white, napless hat with a crushed side, dirty, and
without a crown, a green coat in rags, and tight mulberry-coloured
pantaloons, patched in every direction, and tied around the instep with
pieces of packthread, this assassin outraged the most _outre_ and
revolting attitudes of the _Chahut_, darting from right to left, before
and behind, his lanky limbs as hard as steel, and twisting and twining,
and springing and bounding with such vigour and elasticity, that he
seemed set in motion by steel springs.

A worthy coryphee of this filthy saturnalia, his lady partner, a tall
and active creature with impudent and flushed features, attired _en
debardeur_, wore a flat cap on one side of a powdered wig with a thick
pigtail, a waistcoat and trousers of worn green velvet, adjusted to her
shape by an orange scarf, with long ends flowing down her back.

A fat, vulgar, coarse woman, the brutal ogress of the _tapis-franc_, was
seated on one of the benches, holding on her knees the plaid cloaks of
this creature and the _vivandiere_, whilst they were rivalling the
bounds, and jumps, and gross postures of the Skeleton and Nicholas
Martial.

Amongst the other dancers there was a lame boy, dressed like a devil, by
means of a black net vest, much too large for him, red drawers, and a
green mask hideous and grotesque. In spite of his infirmity, this little
monster was wonderfully agile, and his precocious depravity equalled, if
it could not exceed, that of his detestable companions, and he gambolled
as impudently as any of them before a fat woman, dressed as a
shepherdess