in token
of triumph was spinning her body horizontally around like a top,
upheld by the open palm of his huge right arm.

But what might be this comic figure, quite unpartnered--knocked and
shoved from human pillar to human post--winning the deep curses of the
dancers, and their hearty wallops when not o'er-busied with
Terpsichore?

Picard, the ex-valet of aristocracy, finally let out from the
Salpetriere mock-court, had stumbled into this bedlam of sansculotte
craziness, the rhythm and procedure of which were as foreign to him as
a proposition in Euclid.

But the Jolly Baker, from the Ile de Paris, was his match. The
bare-armed, lean-legged pleasurer had equipped himself (by way of
disguise) with a large false moustache, and evading the close watch of
his hatchet-faced, middle-aged spouse, had come forth to celebrate.
Neither dancer nor vocalist, the Jolly Baker had other little
entertaining ways all his own.

As the foolscap-crowned, white-and-red-trousered Picard bumped the
pave, he saw squatting opposite him a figure whose gleaming eyes,
ferocious whiskerage and lean-wiry frame suggested the canine rather
than the human species. The Jolly Baker was a bum werewolf, but a "hot
dog."

The gleaming eyes never left Picard's face, the dog-like body jumped
whichever way he did, Picard half expected the dog-man to bite or snap
the next instant and take a chunk out of him. Both had got to their
feet now; the stranger still silent and nosey, Picard looking out of
the corner of his eye for a way of escape. But just then the Baker
spied a maenad with a drum.

One could beat drum in celebration, if naught else. Lo and behold, the
posterior of the foolscapped one would serve for a drum very nicely!
The Jolly Baker twisted Picard around, bending him half double as he
did so.

With a rear thrust and firm shoulder grip, the Jolly Baker leaped upon
Picard's back. Emulating the young woman's beating of the drum, he
rained a shower of blows on the valet's hind quarters.

The new "drum"-beater was now quite the cynosure of admiring
attention. He had captured the centre of the stage. He gloried
in it. With a more elaborate, fanciful and complexive
"rat-tat-tat-rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat--"

He suddenly lost his grip of the "human drum," Picard wriggled out
from under, and the drummer bumped his own posterior on the pave.

Calmly, quite undisturbed, the foolish Baker continued to "rat-tat-tat"
with a stick on the curb, then