A dilapidated open wagon, flaming
torches lighting up painted faces; such laugh and sing. Among them you
see what appears to be women; they are in fact the remains of women, with
human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they
are or what their names. All that floats and staggers under the flaming
torch in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is
said, a god watches.
But if the first impression is astonishment, the second is horror, and
the third pity. There is displayed there so much force, or rather such an
abuse of force, that it often happens that the noblest characters and the
strongest constitutions are ruined. It appears hardy and dangerous to
these; they would make prodigies of themselves; they bind themselves to
debauchery as did Mazeppa to his horse; they gallop, they make Centaurs
of themselves, and they see neither the bloody trail that the shreds of
their flesh leave, nor the eyes of the wolves that gleam in hungry
pursuit, nor the desert, nor the vultures.
Launched into that life by the circumstances that I have recounted, I
must now describe what I saw there.
The first time I had a close view of one of those famous gatherings
called theatrical masked balls I heard the debauchery of the Regency
spoken of, and the time when a queen of France was disguised as a flower
merchant. I found there flower merchants disguised as camp-followers.
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