When I awoke the last worshippers were departing, the music had died into silence, the wax-lights were being extinguished, and the service was ended.
Again I went out into the streets; but all was changed.

Where there had been the silence of early morning there was now the confusion of a great city.

Where there had been closed shutters and deserted thoroughfares, there was the bustle of life, gayety, business, and pleasure.

The shops blazed with jewels and merchandise; the stonemasons were at work on the new buildings; the lemonade venders, with their gay reservoirs upon their backs, were plying a noisy trade; the bill-stickers were papering boardings and lamp-posts with variegated advertisements; the charlatan, in his gaudy chariot, was selling pencils and penknives to the accompaniment of a hand-organ; soldiers were marching to the clangor of military music; the merchant was in his counting-house, the stock-broker at the Bourse, and the lounger, whose name is Legion, was sitting in the open air outside his favorite cafe, drinking chocolate, and yawning over the _Charivari_.
I thought I must be dreaming.

I scarcely believed the evidence of my eyes.