th."

Indeed, the wagon was now directly in front of the carriage, and at a
very little distance from it. A man in a smock-frock and wooden shoes
drove the two leaders, and an artilleryman the other horses. The coffins
were so piled up within this wagon, that its semicircular top did
not shut down closely, so that, as it jolted heavily over the uneven
pavement, the biers could be seen chafing against each other. The fiery
eyes and inflamed countenance of the man in the smock-frock showed that
he was half intoxicated; urging on the horses with his voice, his heels,
and his whip, he paid no attention to the remonstrances of the soldier,
who had great difficulty in restraining his own animals, and was obliged
to follow the irregular movements of the carman. Advancing in this
disorderly manner, the wagon deviated from its course just as it should
have passed the travelling-carriage, and ran against it. The shock
forced open the top, one of the coffins was thrown out, and, after
damaging the panels of the carriage, fell upon the pavement with a dull
and heavy sound. The deal planks had been hastily nailed together, and
were shivered in the fall, and from the wreck of the coffin rolled a
livid corpse, half enveloped in a shroud.

At this horrible spectacle, Lady Morinval, who had mechanically leaned
forward, gave a loud scream, and fainted. The crowd fell back in dismay;
the postilions, no less alarmed, took advantage of the space left open
to them by the retreat of the multitude; they whipped their horses, and
the carriage dashed on towards the quay. As it disappeared behind
the furthermost buildings of the Hospital, the shrill joyous notes
of distant trumpets were heard, and repeated shouts proclaimed: "The
Cholera Masquerade!" The words announced one of those episodes combining
buffoonery with terror, which marked the period when the pestilence was
on the increase, though now they can with difficulty be credited. If
the evidence of eyewitnesses did not agree in every particular with the
accounts given in the public papers of this masquerade, they might be
regarded as the ravings of some diseased brain, and not as the notice of
a fact which really occurred.

"The Masquerade of the Cholera" appeared, we say, in the square of Notre
Dame, just as Morinval's carriage gained the quay, after disengaging
itself from the death-wagon.

(37) It is well-known that at the time of the cholera, such placards
were numerous in Paris, a