They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped.
While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way.
Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off.
No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance.
It was so emphatically a fallen sport-a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry-a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart.
Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become.
The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time.
This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.
"O my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight."
"I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be frightened! Not one of them would harm you."