crew of pavers, plump and bending over their toil, on the curb of a street, reminded him of companies of discus throwers exercising in the palaestra, and since his return from the banks of the Scheldt, he could imagine no bas-relief with a more perfect rhythm than that of the movement of a brigade of the Nations. On Sundays and Mondays Paridael danced, until break of day, in the dives of the quarters made dramatic by riots between soldiers and people, or in the musicos of the Quartier des Bateliers, where runners and sea- faring folk gathered.
And what dances they were! What loures, what bourees, what dizzy shindys accompanied by a triangle, a clarinet and an accordeon! The vulgar debauchery of these sprightly fellows; their figured contortions, their swift, sudden leaps into the air, the dull twistings of their bodies, the firing and galvanic knitting of their muscles!
A hole in the bellows of the accordion brought about a lamentable flight of melody, and at each pressure upon the punctured note, the sound escaped in a moribund wail.
During the pause between two dances, while the couples walked about and paid into the hands of the "tenancier" their money for these dances, the watering pot of one of the waiters laid the dust by drawing wet festoons upon the floor.
Then the clarinets started up again, the dancers returned to the floor, and boots and slippers again began to stamp.
Middle-aged street-walkers, their cheeks fiery with paint, condescended to skip about with calker's apprentices shining with white resin and pitch, their breeches stuffed into their stockings, who jostled eag-
