Priceless works of art were hurled about and destroyed. The cellars of old wines were quickly emptied by drunken revelers. The kitchen and pantries catered to the mob’s gluttony. Wenches arrayed themselves in the Countess’s costly silks and linens; perfumed, powdered and painted with the cosmetics; preened and perked in the cheval mirrors.
Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs and sirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job––unfortunately for him, accompanied this time by his hatchet-faced spouse.
He started a flirtation with a new-made vamp, all tricked out in stolen finery. The Jolly Baker had found a new use for his eyes and eyebrows, i.e., to convey love messages. He was making the most alarming motions and succeeding most prodigiously in evoking the new vamp’s answering smiles when––
“Ker-plunk!”
––Dame Baker fetched him a tremendous slap directly on the face that caused him to see innumerable little stars.
Gradually coming back to this mundane world, the Jolly Baker resolved to devote his strict attention to the bottle....