And, much to the disdain of your English coachman and footman, both sitting so correctly on the box, I fetched you some beautiful hot potatoes nicely powdered with salt. And in your satin-lined coupé, touching them daintily with the ends of your lavender-gloved fingers, one by one, you ate them, seasoned with merry laughter.
“Oh, Time, arrest thy flight!” . . . . .
Five o’clock struck: it was the last effort of the fair before [p048] the neighbourhood commenced the evening meal. The clowns joked and shouted louder than usual; the rattles, gongs, pipes, drums, speaking-trumpets, barrel-organs, and whistles of the steam-engines all sounded together in a final tremendous discord. Through the clamour, the crowd, eddying like a stream, ascended the Avenue de Vincennes, going towards the columns erected on the spot where the fire took place.
Between them, the disk of the setting sun was shining like the Pyx upon an altar. And as it suddenly disappeared behind the hill, a cry rose in the air, stifled, agonizing, which threw you trembling upon my shoulder—a cry which pierced above all the clamour of machinery and men—the captive lion’s farewell to the darkened sun!
It is a great mistake to imagine that all fairs are alike. Each of them, although composed of the same booths, assumes such a different character from the locality where it is installed and the people who frequent it, that any one interested in such matters, like myself, could easily make a bet, that carried blindfolded into the midst of any local festival, when his eyes were uncovered, he could at the first glance distinguish which fair was being celebrated. And he could tell, simply through seeing the visitors, who thronged it, and by inspecting the stalls.
Look, for instance, at the old fair held at Versailles, the fair of Saint Louis, which, annually, in the heart of August, placards on the doors of the railway stations, between the lists of circular excursions and the advertisements of summer pleasures, long descriptions of its attractions: water-jousts, fanfares of horns sounded through the alleys of the park, display of fountains in the Neptune basin, shows accompanied [p049] by big drums, the music of the roundabouts, the gaiety of the little booths, side by side with the great empty palace. Is it through the immense width of the alleys that the noise of the bands seems scattered and lost? Or can it be a secret dread of disturbing the king’s slumbers, which still haunts all these small folk, and causes them to subdue the rough music of their orchestras?
Surrounded by barriers, this agglomeration of diminutive white shops resembles a flock of timid sheep huddling close together, not venturing to ring their bells too loudly through fear of the wolf. Here, too, are stalls of rosaries, holy-water vases, and crucifixes, recalling the sacred origin of the fair.
