Of all that beautiful, glittering world as flighty as fancy itself, so
melancholy and sonorous, so bitter and yet so gay, full of inward pathos
and glaring sarcasms, where misery was warm and grace was sad, the last
vestige of a lost age, a distant race, which, we are told, came from the
other end of the earth and brought us in the tinkling of its bells the
echo and vague memory of idolised joys; some covered wagon moving slowly
along the road, with rolled tents on its roof and muddy dogs beneath it,
a man in a yellow jacket, selling _muscade_ in tin cups, the poor
marionnettes in the Champs-Elysees, and the mandolin players who visit
the cafes in the outskirts of the city, are all that is left.
Since then, it is true, we have had a number of farces of a higher class
of humour. But is the new as good as the old? Do you prefer Tom Thumb or
the Museum of Versailles?
On a wooden stand that formed a balcony around a square tent of grey
canvas, a man in a blouse was beating a drum; behind him was a big
painted sign representing a sheep and a cow, and some ladies, gentlemen,
and soldiers. The animals were the two young phenomena from Guerande,
with one arm and four shoulders.
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