ere his friends. He even allowed people
to think that he had taken luncheon with one and dinner with the other.

BEFORE THE CELEBRATION

The celebration is approaching and preliminary quivers are already
running through the streets, just as the ripples disturb the water
preparatory to a storm. The shops, draped with flags, display a variety
of gay-colored bunting materials, and the dry-goods people deceive one
about the three colors as grocers do about the weight of candles. Little
by little, hearts warm up to the matter; people speak about it in the
street after dinner; ideas are exchanged:

"What a celebration it will be, my friend; what a celebration!"

"Have you heard the news? All the rulers are coming incognito, as
bourgeois, in order to see it."

"I hear that the Emperor of Russia has arrived; he expects to go about
everywhere with the Prince of Wales."

"It certainly will be a fine celebration!"

It is going to a celebration; what Monsieur Patissot, Parisian
bourgeois, calls a celebration; one of these nameless tumults which, for
fifteen hours, roll from one end of the city to the other, every ugly
specimen togged out in its finest, a mob of perspiring bodies, where
side by side are tossed about the stout gossip bedecked in red, white
and blue ribbons, grown fat behind her counter and panting from lack
of breath, the rickety clerk with his wife and brat in tow, the laborer
carrying his youngster astride his neck, the bewildered provincial
with his foolish, dazed expression, the groom, barely shaved and still
spreading the perfume of the stable. And the foreigners dressed like
monkeys, English women like giraffes, the water-carrier, cleaned up
for the occasion, and the innumerable phalanx of little bourgeois,
inoffensive little people, amused at everything. All this crowding and
pressing, the sweat and dust, and the turmoil, all these eddies of human
flesh, trampling of corns beneath the feet of your neighbors, this city
all topsy-turvy, these vile odors, these frantic efforts toward nothing,
the breath of millions of people, all redolent of garlic, give to
Monsieur Patissot all the joy which it is possible for his heart to
hold.

After reading the proclamation of the mayor on the walls of his district
he had made his preparations.

This bit of prose said:

I wish to call your attention particularly to the part of
individuals in this celebration. Decorate your homes, illuminate