To softest tapping of lowest strings and drums, a shadow of the second figure passes here and there, with a flash of harp.  Soon, in returning merriment, it is coursing in unison strings (against an opposite motion in the wood).

At the height of revel, as the strings are holding a trembling chord, a sprightly Gallic tune of the street pipes in the reed, with intermittent flash of the harp, and, to be sure, an unfamiliar tang of harmonies and strange perversions of the tune.[A] In the midst is the original flickering figure.  As the whole chorus is singing the tune at the loudest, the brass breaks into another traditional air of the Revolutionary Song of 1789.[B] While the trip is still ringing in the strings, a lusty chorus breaks into the song[C] “La Carmagnole,” against a blast of the horns in a guise of the first motive.

[Footnote A:  “A la villette,” a popular song of the Boulevard.  Mr. Philip Hale, who may have been specially inspired, associates the song with the word “crapule,” “tough,” as he connects the following revolutionary songs, in contrapuntal use, with the word “magister,” “teacher,”—­the idea of the pedagogue in music.  It may be less remote to find in these popular airs merely symbols or graphic touches of the swarming groups among which the Devil plies his trade.]

[Footnote B:  The famous “Ca ira.”]

[Footnote C:  In the wealth of interesting detail furnished by Mr. Hale is the following:  “The Carmagnole was first danced in Paris about the liberty-tree, and there was then no bloody suggestion....  The word ‘Carmagnole’ is found in English and Scottish literature as a nickname for a soldier in the French Revolutionary army, and the term was applied by Burns to the Devil as the author of ruin, ’that curst carmagnole, auld Satan.’”]

Grim guises of the main figures (in inverted profile) are skulking about to uncanny harmonies.  A revel of new pranks dies down to chords of muted horns, amid flashing runs of the harp, with a long roll of drums.  Here Grave in solemn pace, violas and bassoon strike an ecclesiastical incantation, answered by the organ.  Presently a Gregorian plain chant begins solemnly in the strings aided by the organ while a guise of the second profane motive intrudes.  Suddenly in quick pace against a fugal tread of lower voices, a light skipping figure dances in the high wood.  And now loud trumpets are saucily blowing the chant to the quick step, echoed by the wood.  And we catch the wicked song of the street (in the English horn) against a legend of hell in lower voices.[A]

[Footnote A:  The religious phrases are naturally related to the “priest or sceptic.”  In the rapid, skipping rhythm, Mr. Hale finds the tarentella suggested by the “friend of the tarantula.”]

In still livelier pace the reeds sound the street song against a trip of strings, luring the other voices into a furious chorus.  All at once, the harp and violins strike the midnight hour to a chord of horns, while a single impish figure dances here or there.  To trembling strings and flashing harp the high reed pipes again the song of the Boulevard, echoed by low bassoons.