howled; it was a confluence of cries, opposing 
detonations, and sharp explosions; the ‘Merry 
Devils’ and the clowns twisted up the features 
of their weathered faces, hardened by the 
wind, the rain and the sun. They flung forth, 
with the confidence of trained comedians, witty 
sayings and jests as solidly and heavily comic 
as those of Molière. The strong men, proud of 
the size of their limbs, without either forehead 
or cranium, like orang-outangs, were strutting 
majestically beneath the tights which they 
have washed on the previous evening for the 
grand occasion. The dancing girls, beautiful as 
fairies or princesses, leaped and skipped under 
the lanterns whose flame crowds their petti-
coats with spangles. All was light, dust, cries, 
joy, tumult. One set was spending money, an-
other making it; both equally happy. The chil-
dren clung to their mothers’ skirts, begging for 
sugar-sticks, or climbing on to their fathers’ 
shoulders so as to get a better view of some 
juggler who seemed as dazzling as a god, and 
everywhere, dominating every other scent, 
was wafted an odour of frying, which was as it 
were the incense of this holy festival. 
At the extreme end of the range of booths, 
as if, ashamed of himself, he had pronounced 
his own exile from all these splendours, I saw 
a poor mountebank, with bowed back, infirm,