Before we partook of these sweets, the soi-disant priest chanted a litany in an unknown tongue, which neither he nor any one present understood. After this mummery was over, Madame Aumann fetched a smooth, silver, blunt pointed pin, about three inches long and the eighth of an inch thick, with an ornamental head. She then burned some sweet gum and frankincense in the flame of a little antique lamp, and held the pin in the flame till it had become quite black; then, after waiting till the pin had cooled, she inserted it dextrously between her half-closed eyelids, and rubbed it backward and forward, as if really "rending her eyes," as Jeremiah expresses it,[1] till she had produced the effect so much admired by Orientals. She handed the little instrument round, and nearly every one of her guests followed her example. It was astonishing how the appearance and expression of all the faces, especially of the fairest ones, were altered immediately. I scarcely recognized my brother, who certainly would not have submitted to this adornment if he had not believed that he could wash it off immediately; but to his dismay it was many days before the black tinge disappeared, and then only after persevering and frequent rubbing. Hélâny, one of the female servants, took the lamp and the frankincense which Madame A. had used, and held a white earthenware plate over the flame. She thus collected a quantity of soot. The soot thus prepared is mixed with antimony, and kept in little ornamental bottles, ready to be used in the manner described on page 113.
The Europeans, especially the semi-Europeans, strictly avoid those customs which they regard as peculiar to the Arabs, but at the feast of Ste. Barbe they seem to tolerate that which at other times they most condemn.
No one could give me the slightest reason for this fantasia, or tell me any thing of its history or origin, or what Ste. Barbe had to do with the germination of grain, the dish of sweets, and the twelve candles, which I suppose
- ↑ Jeremiah iv, 30.
