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Updated: June 23, 2025
"'O unhappy one! beware of men; while they walk along the same path with you, you will see a vast plain strewn with garlands where a happy throng of dancers trip the gladsome farandole standing in a circle, each a link in an endless chain.
"'O unhappy one! beware of men; while they walk along the same path with you, you will see a vast plain strewn with garlands where a happy throng of dancers trip the gladsome farandole standing in a circle, each a link in an endless chain.
Nothing could have been more vexatious than these blocks, which man and beast alike seemed to take pleasure in prolonging, whenever the Giaours seemed annoyed by them. What, think you, did our middies do? This farandole, which was quite a kilometre long, went round and round the bazaars all day, up and down and in and out, stopping all the traffic, as if a real caravan was passing' through.
The voices, the brazen notes ascended into the light, swelling the folds of the banners, giving the signal to the dancers of the farandole, who began to sway back and forth, to go through their first antics where they stood, while, on the other side of the river, a murmur ran through the crowd like a breeze, caused doubtless by the fear that the bey had arrived unexpectedly from another direction.
The Comtesse led the cotillon with a cousin of hers; he does do it well, and does nothing else in Paris, the Baronne told me. At last we got on towards the end, and they began the farandole. You know it, Mamma? A lady and a gentleman take hands, then she beckons some one, and he has to come; and then he calls another lady, and so on.
Before we fairly had passed it, and while the farandole was dying out slowly, there crashed down upon us a thunderous outburst of song: as though an exceptionally large-lunged seraph were afloat immediately above us in the open regions of the air. Yet the song was of a gayer sort than seraphs, presumably, are wont to sing; and its method, distinctly, was that of the modern operatic stage.
From some, perhaps flattered, reports of the happiness of the natives at the departure of the sojourners, I have pictured them dancing a sort of farandole, and stretching with linked hands from the farthest summer cottage up the river to the last on the wooded point.
At Auch, in the department of Gers, d'Artigoyte, another deputy, obliged some of the people under arrest to eat out of a manger. Borie used to amuse himself, and the inhabitants of Nismes, by dancing what he called a farandole round the Guillotine in his legislative costume.
The view from the windows on the Quai was charming as long as the great cold lasted, particularly at night, when the river was alive with people, lights and coloured lanterns, and music. Every now and then there would be a ronde or a farandole, the farandole forcing its way through the crowd, every one carrying a lantern and looking like a brilliant snake winding in and out.
Oh! about three o'clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous breakfast presided over by the old mother with a new Cambrai cap on her head, a breakfast at which, side by side with Parisian celebrities, prefects were present and deputies, all in full dress, with swords at their sides, mayors in their scarfs of office, honest curés cleanly shaven, when Jansoulet, in black coat and white cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop and saw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches and ensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes rising tier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, grouped in a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little white faces peeped sweetly forth from lace neckerchiefs; below, the farandole from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready for the word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over one ear, the red taillote about the loins; still lower, in the succession of terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneath their bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious and resolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lower still, on an immense rond-point, black bulls in shackles, and Camargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, their leggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after them more flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch at the entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side of the Rhone, over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge of boats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in a straight line, was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down from all the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noise and dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms, piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to pass through; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capricious breeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to the point of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone, high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux of that royal fête.
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