us treasure, he returned to the parlor.

He found the company on the balcony. The sound of trumpets and drums
came from a distance, and presently a motley procession was seen coming
up the nearest street.

"You have just arrived in time to see the procession," cried Louise to
him. "It is going to defile past here, so we will be able to have a
good look at it."

A dusky swarm of boys and half-grown youths came winding round the
nearest street-corner, followed immediately by the head of a mock
procession. In the lead marched a fellow dressed in a brown cloak, the
hood of which was drawn over his head. His waist was encircled with a
girdle from which dangled a string of pebbles representing a rosary. To
complete the caricature of a Capuchin, his feet were bare, excepting a
pair of soles which were strapped to them with thongs of leather.
In his hands he bore a tall cross rudely contrived with a couple
of sticks. The image of the cross was represented by a broken
mineral-water bottle. Behind the cross-bearer followed the procession
in a double line, consisting of boys, young men, factory-hands, drunken
mechanics, and such other begrimed and besotted beings as progress
alone can count in its ranks. The members of the procession were
chanting a litany; at the same time they folded their hands, made
grimaces, turned their eyes upwards, or played unseemly pranks with
genuine rosary beads.

Next in the procession came a low car drawn by a watery-eyed mare which
a lad bedizened like a clown was leading by the bridle. In the car sat
a fat fellow whose face was painted red, and eyebrows dyed, and who
wore a long artificial beard. Over a prodigious paunch, also
artificial, he had drawn a long white gown, over which again he wore a
many-colored rag shaped like a cope. On his head he wore a high paper
cap, brimless; around the cap were three crowns of gilt paper to
represent the tiara of the pope. A sorry-looking donkey walked after
the car, to which it was attached by a rope. It was the _role_ of the
fellow in the car to address the donkey, make a sign of blessing over
it, and occasionally reach it straw drawn from his artificial paunch.
As often as he went through this man[oe]uvre, the crowd set up a
tremendous roar of laughter. The fat man in the car represented the
pope, and the donkey was intended to symbolize the credulity of the
faithful.

This mock pope was not a suggestion of Shund's or of any other
inventive progressi