rs and laughter, presses around them, sowing its alms
broadcast; with a continuous jingle, the money rolls on the ground into
the precincts reserved to the priests, where the white mats entirely
f disappear under the mass of many-sized coins accumulated there as if
after a deluge of silver and bronze.

We, however, feel thoroughly at sea in the midst of this festivity; we
look on, we laugh like the rest, we make foolish and senseless remarks
in a language insufficiently learned, which this evening, I know not
why, we can hardly understand. Notwithstanding the night breeze, we find
it very hot under our awning, and we absorb quantities of odd-looking
water-ices, served in cups, which taste like scented frost, or rather
like flowers steeped in snow. Our mousmes order for themselves great
bowls of candied beans mixed with hail--real hailstones, such as we
might pick up after a hailstorm in March.

Glou! glou! glou! the crystal trumpets slowly repeat their notes, the
powerful sonority of which has a labored and smothered sound, as if they
came from under water; they mingle with the jingling of rattles and the
noise of castanets. We have also the impression of being carried away
in the irresistible swing of this incomprehensible gayety, composed, in
proportions we can hardly measure, of elements mystic, puerile, and
even ghastly. A sort of religious terror is diffused by the hidden idols
divined in the temple behind us; by the mumbled prayers, confusedly
heard; above all, by the horrible heads in lacquered wood, representing
foxes, which, as they pass, hide human faces--hideous livid masks.

In the gardens and outbuildings of the temple the most inconceivable
mountebanks have taken up their quarters, their black streamers, painted
with white letters, looking like funeral trappings as they float in the
wind from the tops of their tall flagstaffs. Thither we turn our steps,
as soon as our mousmes have ended their orisons and bestowed their alms.

In one of the booths a man, stretched on a table, flat on his back, is
alone on the stage; puppets of almost human size, with horribly grinning
masks, spring out of his body; they speak, gesticulate, then fall back
like empty rags; with a sudden spring they start up again, change their
costumes, change their faces, tearing about in one continual frenzy.
Suddenly three, even four, appear at the same time; they are nothing
more than the four limbs of the outstretched man, whose legs a