became as purple as that of Silenus. The eyes shone like carbuncles. The general fermentation rose to the highest pitch.
Waltz From Der Freischuetz
And when the orchestra thundered out the waltz in "Der Freischütz,"—when this waltz, so German, and with a movement so slow, was attacked with wild arms by the musicians,—ah! it was no longer a waltz, but an insensate whirlwind, a gyration worthy of being led by some Mephistopheles, beating the measure with a firebrand! Then a galop, an infernal galop, which lasted an hour without any one being able to stop it, whirled off, in its windings, across the halls, the drawing-rooms, the antechambers, by the staircases, from the cellar to the garret of the opulent mansion, the young men and young girls, the fathers and mothers, people of every age, of every weight, of both sexes; Collaert, the fat banker, and Madame Collaert, and the counselors, and the magistrates, and the chief justice, and Niklausse, and Madame van Tricasse, and the Burgomaster van Tricasse, and the Commissary Passauf himself, who never could recall afterwards who had been his partner on that terrible evening.
But she did not forget! And ever since that day she has seen in her dreams the fiery commissary, enfolding her in an impassioned embrace! And "she"—was the amiable Tatanemance.
CHAPTER IX.
In Which Doctor Ox and Ygene, His Assistant, Say a Few Words
"Well, Ygene?”
"Well, master, all is ready. The laying of the pipes is finished."
"At last! Now, then, we are going to operate on a large scale, on the masses!"
CHAPTER X.
In Which It Will Be Seen That the Epidemic Invades the Entire Town, and What Effect It Produces
During the following months the evil, in place of subsiding, became more extended. From private houses the epidemic spread into the streets. The town of Quiquendone was no longer to be recognized.
A phenomenon yet stranger than those which had already happened, now appeared; not only the animal kingdom, but the vegetable kingdom itself, became subject to the mysterious influence.
According to the ordinary course of things, epidemics are special in their operation. Those which attack humanity spare the animals, and those which attack the animals spare the vegetables. A horse was never afflicted with small-pox, nor a man with the cattle-plague, nor do sheep suffer from the potato-rot. But here all the laws of nature seemed to be overturned. Not only were the character, temperament, and ideas of the townsfolk changed but the domestic animals—dogs and cats, horses and cows, asses and goats—suffered from this epidemic influence, as if their habitual equilibrium had been changed. The plants themselves were infected by a similar strange metamorphosis.
In the gardens and vegetable patches and orchards very curious symptoms manifested themselves. Climbing plants climbed more audaciously. Tufted plants became more tufted than ever. Shrubs became trees. Cereals, scarcely sown, showed their little green heads, and gained, in the same length of time, as much in inches as formerly, under the most favorable circumstances, they had gained in fractions. Asparagus attained the height of several feet; the artichokes swelled to the size of melons, the melons to the size of pumpkins, the pumpkins to the size of barrels, the gourds to the size of the belfry bell, which measured, in truth, nine feet in diameter. The cabbages were bushes, and the mushrooms were umbrellas.
The fruits did not lag behind the vegetables. It required two persons to eat a strawberry, and four to consume a pear. The grapes also attained the enormous proportions of those so well depicted by Poussin in his "Return of the Envoys to the Promised Land."
The Giant Tulip
It was the same with the flowers; immense violets spread the most penetrating perfumes through the air; exaggerated roses shone with the brightest colors; lilies formed, in a few days, impenetrable copses; geraniums, daisies, camellias, rhododendrons, invaded the garden walks, and stifled each other. And the tulips,—those dear liliaceous plants so dear to the Flemish heart,—what emotion they must have caused to their zealous cultivators! The worthy van Bistrom nearly fell over backwards, one day, on seeing in his garden an enormous "Tulipa gesneriana," a gigantic monster, whose cup afforded space for a nest of a whole family of robins!
The entire town flocked to see this floral phenomenon, and renamed it the "Tulipa quiquendonia."
But alas! if these plants, these fruits, these flowers, grew visibly to the naked eye, if all the vegetables insisted on assuming colossal proportions, if the brilliancy of their colors and perfume intoxicated the smell and the sight, they quickly withered. The air which they absorbed rapidly exhausted them, and they soon died, faded, and dried up.
Such was the fate of the famous tulip, which, after several days of gorgeous splendor, became emaciated, and fell lifeless.
The Domestic Animals
It was soon the same with the domestic animals, from the house dog to the stable pig, from the canary to the turkey of the back court. It must be said that in ordinary times these animals were not less phlegmatic than their masters. The dogs and cats vegetated rather than lived. They never betrayed a wag of pleasure nor a snarl of wrath. Their tails moved no more than if they had been made of bronze. Such a thing as a bite or scratch from any of them had not been known from time immemorial. As for mad dogs, they were looked upon as imaginary beasts, like the griffins and the rest in the menagerie of the apocalypse.
But what a change had taken place in a few months, the smallest incidents of which we are trying to reproduce! Dogs and cats began to show teeth and claws. Several executions had taken place after reiterated offenses. A horse was seen, for
