king's son. He began to toddle about, and made acquaintances
with the neighbours' children.

After a few years had passed, Jasmin, being a spirited fellow,
was allowed to accompany his father at night in the concerts of
rough music. He placed a long paper cap on his head, like a
French clown, and with a horn in his hand he made as much noise,
and played as many antics, as any fool in the crowd. Though the
tailor could not read, he usually composed the verses for the
Charivari; and the doggerel of the father, mysteriously
fructified, afterwards became the seed of poetry in the son.

The performance of the Charivari was common at that time in the
South of France. When an old man proposed to marry a maiden less
than half his age, or when an elderly widow proposed to marry a
man much younger than herself, or when anything of a
heterogeneous kind occurred in any proposed union, a terrible
row began. The populace assembled in the evening of the day on
which the banns had been first proclaimed, and saluted the happy
pair in their respective houses with a Charivari. Bells, horns,
pokers and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, or any thing that
would make a noise, was brought into requisition, and the noise
thus made, accompanied with howling recitations of the Charivari,
made the night positively hideous.

The riot went on for several evenings; and when the wedding-day
arrived, the Charivarists, with the same noise and violence,
entered the church with the marriage guests; and at night they
besieged the house of the happy pair, throwing into their
windows stones, brickbats, and every kind of missile.