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The Wandering Jew — Volume 09 by Eugène Sue
page 55 of 180 (30%)
renown (one of the cavaliers of the procession), was eminently successful
in her representation of LOVE. He could not have had a more charming
face, and more graceful form. Clad in a light blue spangled tunic, with a
blue and silver band across her chestnut hair, and little transparent
wings affixed to her white shoulders, she placed one forefinger upon the
other, and pointed with the prettiest impertinence at Goodman Cholera.
Around the principal group, other maskers, more or less grotesque in
appearance, waved each a banner, an which were inscriptions of a very
anacreontic character, considering the circumstances:

"Down with the Cholera!" "Short and sweet!" "Laugh away, laugh always!"
"We'll collar the Cholera!" "Love forever!" "Wine forever!" "Come if you
dare, old terror!"

There was really such audacious gayety in this masquerade, that the
greater number of the spectators, at the moment when it crossed the
square, in the direction of the eating-house, where dinner was waiting,
applauded it loudly and repeatedly. This sort of admiration, which
courage, however mad and blind, almost always inspires, appeared to
others (a small number, it must be confessed) a kind of defiance to the
wrath of heaven; and these received the procession with angry murmurs.
This extraordinary spectacle, and the different impressions it produced,
were too remote from all customary facts to admit of a just appreciation.
We hardly know if this daring bravado was deserving of praise or blame.

Besides, the appearance of those plagues, which from age to age decimate
the population of whole countries, has almost always been accompanied by
a sort of mental excitement, which none of those who have been spared by
the contagion can hope to escape. It is a strange fever of the mind,
which sometimes rouses the most stupid prejudices and the most ferocious
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