Author: Mary Imlay Taylor. Copyright By A. It was the month of June, , and about noontide on the last day of the week. A juggler was swallowing a sword in the midst of an admiring circle. There was a dancing bear, and beyond him—a rival attraction—a monkey in scarlet breeches, with a blouse or camisole over them. It was a motley throng: broad, red-faced market-women, old crones with bearded lip and toothless gums, little gamins of the market with prematurely aged faces, countrymen who glanced askance at the monkey while they laughed, pretty peasant girls who had sold their eggs and their poultry, and come to spend their newly acquired riches in ribbons and trinkets, and to have their fortunes told by the old gypsy in the yellow pavilion.
Some strolling musicians were playing a popular air, two drunken men were fighting, and a busy tradesman was selling his wares near the entrance of a tent that was manifestly the centre of attraction. It was of white canvas [9] and decorated with numerous images of the devil,—a black figure with horns, hoofs, and tail, engaged in casting another person into the flames; the whole being more startling than artistic.
At the door of this tent was a man mounted on a barrel, and dressed fantastically in black, with a repetition of the devils and flames, in red and yellow, around the edge of his long gown, which flapped about a pair of thin legs, set squarely in the centre of two long, schooner-shaped feet.
This person, whose face was gross and dull rather than malicious, kept calling his invitation and bowing low as each new visitor dropped a half-crown into the box fastened on the front of the barrel beneath his feet.
He raised his voice almost to a scream, to be heard in the babel of tongues; he clapped his hands to attract notice; he swayed to and fro on his barrel. Too much, madame? The body came from the Tour de Constance! Madame went in, licking her lips like a wolf. The curtain of the tent swung to behind her. A peasant lad followed her, hesitating too over the half-crown, but then the spectacle was worth money.
