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At the vestibule door a porter, somewhat befuddled by Saturnalian merry-making, was waiting sleepily.
Snatching a tambourine from a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head, the multitude howled with rapture. Ill-starred Bras-Coupé.
Lust falls from her chariot, and Sobriety fells her with a stone. Then all her saturnalian army is scattered. Love casts away his quiver. All sorts of things happen, but eventually the poem winds up with a prayer to Christ, in which we learn that the soul shall fall again and again in the battle, and that this shall continue until the coming of Christ." "'Tis very curious, very curious indeed.
I think we may recognise in all this the hand of a wise old Pompilius from the Sabine hills, at work to keep the life of his Romans, peasant-bandits as they were, clean in the main and sound. Yes, there were gross elements: among the many recurring festivals, some were gross and saturnalian enough.
Nay, these diamond eyes haunted him; they were everywhere in these saturnalian reveries, following every recurring image as an inevitable concomitant which he had no power to drive away, entering into the orbits of the personages, gleaming out of the heads of negroes, that of his father, that of his mother, even that of his mistress, imparting to the looks and glances of the latter a brilliancy which enhanced beauty, while it sharpened them into poignancy.
Dicing in public, except at the chartered Saturnalian festival, was illegal a fact which did not, of course, prevent it from being practised -but it was permitted in private gatherings like this, provided that ostensibly no money was staked. The dice are rattled in a tower-like box and are thrown upon a special board or tray.
Sterling, with her children and effects, all in one big carriage with two horses, made the journey to Dieppe; in perfect safety, though in continual tremor: here they were joined by Captain Sterling, who had stayed behind at Paris to see the actual advent of Napoleon, and to report what the aspect of affairs was, "Downcast looks of citizens, with fierce saturnalian acclaim of soldiery:" after which they proceeded together to London without farther apprehension; there to witness, in due time, the tar-barrels of Waterloo, and other phenomena that followed.
Then came that strange carnival when there were no maskers in the city, but white-robed boys went from house to house to collect the vanities for the burning when the flames of the fires, hitherto saturnalian, were the flames of a holocaust, wherein each one cast the sins and temptations, even the pretty things which, though dear to himself, withdrew him from God.
Many wants are suffered, which might once have been supplied; and much time is lost in regretting the time which had been lost before. At the end of every seven years comes the saturnalian season, when the freemen of great Britain may please themselves with the choice of their representatives. This happy day has now arrived, somewhat sooner than it could be claimed.
She was seated close by the open window, as carriages, chaises, flies, carts, vans, and horsemen succeeded each other thick and fast, watching the scene with a soured, scornful look. For human joy, as for human grief, she had little sympathy. Life had no Saturnalian holidays left for her. Some memory in her past had poisoned the well-springs of her social being.
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