Note 113 — Chapter II · 1385–1389

With this account of St. Denis in mediæval France, let us compare the following account of it in modern France:—

“Most of these persons were still drunk, with the brandy they had swallowed out of chalices—eating mackerel on the patenas! Mounted on asses, which were housed with priests’ cloaks, they reined them with priests’ stoles; they held clutched with the same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer. They stopped at the doors of dram-shops; held out ciboriums: and the landlord, stoup in hand, had to fill them thrice. Next came mules high-laden with crosses, chandeliers, censers, holy-water vessels, hyssops; recalling to mind the priests of Cybele, whose panniers, filled with the instruments of their worship, served at once as storehouse, sacristy, and temple. In such equipage did these profaners advance towards the Convention. They enter there, in an immense train, ranged in two rows; all masked like mummers in fantastic sacerdotal vestments; bearing on hand-barrows their heaped plunder—ciboriums, suns, candelabras, plates of gold and silver.... Not untouched with liquor, they crave to dance the Carmagnole also on the spot: whereto an exhilarated Convention cannot but accede.... Several members, quitting their curule chairs, took the hand of girls flaunting in priests’ vestures, and danced the Carmagnole along with them. Such Old-Hallowtide have they in this year once named of Grace, 1793” (“French Revolution,” Carlyle, vol. iii. p. 193).