“Who wants a nose? Who wants a nose?” shouts a hawker, holding up a collection of long, vivid red noses. And the red noses are bought; and so, too, are false beards and moustaches, and artificial eyebrows, and huge cardboard ears.
Then, what costumes in the crowd! Of course, any number of pierrots and clowns, who gesticulate and grimace; and ladies in dominoes, and men in heavy scarlet mantles and black masks. Over there, an Arab; here, a Greek soldier in the Albanian kilt—the picturesque “fustanella.” And confetti—red, blue, yellow, green, white, orange, purple—sprinkled over, and clinging to, all these different costumes, and flying above them and all around them, a fantastic spectacle!
Confetti, again, in the fur coats of chauffeurs; a whirl of it—bright yellow—around three colossal negroes from darkest Africa; and a fierce battle of it, waged by an admiring Parisian against two fascinating young ladies from New York. Darkest Africa grins, displaying glistening white teeth. New York utters shrill little cries. And Motordom—represented by the three chauffeurs—imitates the many savage sounds emitted by 60-horse-power machines.
“Your health!” cries a clown, plunging a handful of confetti into a glass which, for only a second or two, has remained uncovered.
“Vive la Vie! Vive la Vie!” shout a procession of students from the Latin Quarter.
“Who is without Confetti? Who wants a nose? Who desires a moustache?” yell the hawkers.
And now, rain. Down it comes, finely, steadily, soddening the carpet of confetti, spotting the fantastic costumes, scattering the crowd. Edouard (in his paper helmet) and Yvonne (with her wand) are hurried along homewards—much against their will—by their parents; the hawkers disappear with the remaining paper bags; the dizzy advertising signs give a last blink and go out; the policemen congregate beneath the street lamps and in doorways—the carnival is over.
However, memories remain, and these memories are—confetti.
It has flown, but it has not gone. Every hour of every day, for many a week, it will turn up in one’s home, in one’s clothing, at one’s meals... still bold, vivid, ungovernable, unconquerable....
And now, after colour and gaiety—ambiguity, gloom. Away to remote, neglected corners of Paris; to the terrain vague—the waste ground—of the Amazing City, which, this particular afternoon, lies steeped in a damp fog, and strewn with sodden newspapers and broken bottles, and pots and pans without handles, hats without brims, and battered old shoes. On the waste, prowling about amidst the wreckage, a gaunt, vagabond cat. Gathering together odds and ends, the aged, bent chiffonnière—a hag of a woman, half demented, with fingers like claws, that go scraping and digging about in the refuse. Then three ragged children—skeletons almost—also interested in the rubbish, who are savagely snarled at by the chiffonnière when they approach her preserves. Fog, damp and puddles. Mounds of overturned earth, subsidences, crevices. A rusty engine lying disabled on its side. Quantities of coarse, savage thistles. Gloom unrelieved. The chiffonnière and the ragged children becoming more and more ghostly and ghastly in the half-light. The kind of scene depicted so tragically by the great-hearted Steinlen, and sung of so despairingly by the humane poet, Rictus. Sung of, too, by lesser poets than the author of the Soliloque d’un Pauvre. For terrain vague is a favourite theme with the chansonniers of Montmartre, and in their songs they are fond of describing how they have passed from comfortable, bourgeois neighbourhoods on to “waste ground.” The bourgeois was dozing in his chair; Madame la Bourgeoise was knitting a hideous woollen shawl; Mademoiselles the three daughters were respectively tinkling away at the piano, pasting picture cards into an album, absorbing a sickly novel. As a heartrending, an overwhelming contrast, behold—after the snugness of the bourgeoisie—the wretchedness, the misère noire of the human phantoms poking about on the waste ground!