powdered peruke,
surmounted by a pyramidical cotton night-cap, appeared his neck and arm,
dyed of a bright green color; his lean hand, which shook almost always
with a feverish trembling (not feigned, but natural), rested upon a
crutch-handled cane; finally, as was becoming in a pantaloon, he wore red
stockings, with buckles at the knees, and high slippers of black beaver.
This grotesque representative of the cholera was Sleepinbuff.

Notwithstanding a slow and dangerous fever, caused by the excessive use
of brandy, and by constant debauchery, that was silently undermining his
constitution, Jacques Rennepont had been induced by Morok to join the
masquerade. The brute-tamer himself, dressed as the King of Diamonds,
represented PLAY. His forehead was adorned with a diadem of gilded paper,
his face was pale and impassible, and as his long, yellow beard fell down
the front of his parti-colored robe, Morok looked exactly the character
he personated. From time to time, with an air of grave mockery, he shook
close to the eyes of Goodman Cholera a large bag full of sounding
counters, and on this bag were painted all sorts of playing cards. A
certain stiffness in the right arm showed that the lion-tamer had not yet
quite recovered from the effects of the wound which the panther had
inflicted before being stabbed by Djalma.

PLEASURE, who also represented Laughter, classically shook her rattle,
with its sonorous gilded bells, close to the ears of Goodman Cholera. She
was a quick, lively young girl, and her fine black hair was crowned with
a scarlet cap of liberty. For Sleepinbuff's sake, she had taken the place
of the poor Bacchanal queen, who would not have failed to attend on such
an occasion--she, who had been so valiant and gay, when she bore her part
in a less philosophical, but not less amusing masquerade. Another pretty
creature, Modeste Bornichoux, who served as a model to a painter of
renown (one of the cavaliers of the procession), was eminently successful
in her representation of LOVE. He could not have had a more charming
face, and more graceful form. Clad in a light blue spangled tunic, with a
blue and silver band across her chestnut hair, and little transparent
wings affixed to her white shoulders, she placed one forefinger upon the
other, and pointed with the prettiest impertinence at Goodman Cholera.
Around the principal group, other maskers, more or less grotesque in
appearance, waved each a banner, an which wer