Chapter 5 - Page 2

bursts of laughter they slapped his powdered hair
and pulled his long pigtail. Now and then they would
stop and force the prisoner to kneel and by signs give him
to understand that they were going to shoot him there.
Then prodding him with the butts of their rifles they
would make him get up again, and go through the same
performance further on.

A number of old mulattresses had formed a ring and
were skipping round in the midst of the mob. They were
dressed in the nattiest costumes of our youngest and
prettiest white women, and in dancing raised their skirts
so as to show their lean, shrivelled legs and yellow thighs.
Nothing queerer could be imagined than all these charming
fashions and finery of the frivolous century of Louis
XV., these Watteau shepherdess costumes, furbelows,
plumes and laces, upon these black, ugly-faced, flat-nosed,
woolly-headed, frightful people. Thus decked out they
were no longer even negroes and negresses; they were apes
and monkeys.

Add to all this a deafening uproar. Every mouth that
was not making a contortion was emitting yells.

I have not finished; you must accept the picture complete
to its minutest detail.

Twenty paces from me was an inn, a frightful hovel,
whose sign was a wreath of dried herbs hung upon a pickaxe.
Nothing but a roof window and three-legged tables.
A low ale-house, rickety tables. Negroes and mulattoes
were drinking there, intoxicating and besotting themselves,
and fraternising. One has to have seen these things to
depict them. In front of the tables of the drunkards a
fairly young negress was displaying herself. She was
dressed in a man's waistcoat, unbuttoned, and a woman's
skirt loosely attached. She wore no chemise and her
abdomen was bare. On her head was a magistrate's wig. On
one shoulder she carried a parasol, and on the other a rifle
with bayonet fixed.

A few whites, stark naked, ran about miserably in the
midst of this pandemonium. On a litter was being borne
the nude body of a stout man, in whose breast a dagger
was sticking as a cross is stuck in the ground.

On every hand were gnomes bronze-coloured, red, black,
kneeling, sitting, squatting, heaped together, opening
trunks, forcing locks, trying on bracelets, clasping
necklaces about their necks, donning coats or dresses, breaking,
ripping, tearing. Two blacks were trying to get into the
same coat; each had got an arm on, and they were belabouring
each other with their disengaged fists. It was the second
stage of a sacked town. Robbery and joy had succeeded
rage. In a few corners some were still engaged in killing,
but the great majority were pillaging. All were carrying
off their booty, some in their arms,