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THE CARNIVAL.
February 20th What a noise out of doors! What is the meaning of these shouts and cries?
Ah! I recollect: this is the last day of the Carnival, and the maskers are passing.
Christianity has not been able to abolish the noisy bacchanalian festivals of the pagan times, but it has changed the names.

That which it has given to these "days of liberty" announces the ending of the feasts, and the month of fasting which should follow; carn-ival means, literally, "farewell to flesh!" It is a forty days' farewell to the "blessed pullets and fat hams," so celebrated by Pantagruel's minstrel.
Man prepares for privation by satiety, and finishes his sin thoroughly before he begins to repent.
Why, in all ages and among every people, do we meet with some one of these mad festivals?
Must we believe that it requires such an effort for men to be reasonable, that the weaker ones have need of rest at intervals?
The monks of La Trappe, who are condemned to silence by their rule, are allowed to speak once in a month, and on this day they all talk at once from the rising to the setting of the sun.
Perhaps it is the same in the world.

As we are obliged all the year to be decent, orderly, and reasonable, we make up for such a long restraint during the Carnival.

It is a door opened to the incongruous fancies and wishes that have hitherto been crowded back into a corner of our brain.
For a moment the slaves become the masters, as in the days of the Saturnalia, and all is given up to the "fools of the family." The shouts in the square redouble; the troops of masks increase--on foot, in carriages, and on horseback.