the correspondence that, it seems, Furetière might have been Diderot’s source.): "The carnival begins the day after Epiphany, or the 7th of January, and lasts until Lent. Dances, feasts, and marriages are mainly held during carnival." However, the Carnaval de Paris has also endured a hiatus; it was interrupted between 1952 and 1997. Even today, many Parisians do not know that the carnival exists. They are also ignorant of the fact that central to the carnival celebration is the appearance of certain traditional characters, stereotypes with distinctive costumes who appear every year, and that there are a number of traditional carnival jokes. These truly "old jokes" have survived from as long ago as the seventeenth century. During the hiatus the words "Carnaval de Paris" were seldom spoken. Parisians were always able to celebrate "Mardi Gras", of course; they simply had to travel to Nice or Rio de Janeiro. The Carnaval de Paris has inspired great artists. The picture reproduced above was painted by Édouard Manet. It represents the famous masked ball at the Paris opera, which is held during the Carnival. The picture on the right is by Claude Monet, and it shows the Boulevard des Capucines where the processions take place. Street activities At street level, two types of event are traditionally part of the Carnival de Paris: the walk of masks, and the processions. The walk of masks involves people in disguise in huge numbers, and the curious come to see them, at a given location at a given time. Here's what Dulaure says of this phenomenon in 1787 : "Rue Saint-Antoine is famous for the prodigious contest of masks held every year on the last day of the carnival, which attracts a large number of the curious." Other traditional events of the carnival are the parades and processions: The fat days occurred during "the last days of carnival", according to Dulaure. The "fat days" started during the eighteenth century, when they began on Thursday and ended five days later, on Mardi Gras. In the nineteenth century, they were restricted to Sunday, Monday, and Mardi Gras (Tuesday) only. They end when the Promenade du Boeuf Gras (Procession of the Fat Ox) begins. Twenty-one days after Mardi Gras is the Thursday of Mid-Lent (Mi-Carême). Mid-Lent is also called the Feast of Laundresses, for it is the feast day of their parade, and of their queens, and of the Queen