Harlequins struck him with their wooden swords, and appeared to expect his immediate transformation into some jollier shape.

A little, long-tailed, horned fiend sidled up to him and suddenly blew at him through a tube, enveloping our poor friend in a whole harvest of winged seeds.

A biped, with an ass's snout, brayed close to his ear, ending his discordant uproar with a peal of human laughter.

Five strapping damsels--so, at least, their petticoats bespoke them, in spite of an awful freedom in the flourish of their legs--joined hands, and danced around him, inviting him by their gestures to perform a hornpipe in the midst.

Released from these gay persecutors, a clown in motley rapped him on the back with a blown bladder, in which a handful of dried peas rattled horribly.
Unquestionably, a care-stricken mortal has no business abroad, when the rest of mankind are at high carnival; they must either pelt him and absolutely martyr him with jests, and finally bury him beneath the aggregate heap; or else the potency of his darker mood, because the tissue of human life takes a sad dye more readily than a gay one, will quell their holiday humors, like the aspect of a death's-head at a banquet.