The name of Shrove Tuesday survives in our Calendar, to remind us of the time when we also used to go to be shriven before Easter.
On Thursday at noon mass is over, the bells cease to ring, the organs in the churches are silent, and all carriages disappear from the streets, except the dusty Diligence which, like French law, "est athee," and cares nothing for fasts or festivals.

Now we come to understand the wonderful wooden machine like a water-wheel, which was put up yesterday on one tower of the Cathedral.

We had asked people in the great square, just below, what it was, but could get no answer except that it was _la Matraca_, the rattle, for to-morrow.

And now we found that, the church bells being incapacitated, this rattle does duty instead, striking the hours, and occasionally going off into furious fits of clattering, without apparent reason, for ten minutes at a time, till the two men who worked it, who were either convicts or soldiers in fatigue-dress, were tired out.

It was not this one rattle only that was disturbing the public peace that day and the next.