Nothing which the most resourceful clown does on purpose is as funny as the accident into which, sooner or later, mad masquerade betrays the reveler.

It is forbidden for French soldiers in uniform to join in the fun. The inevitable occurs. A dutiful officer is on hand and with military honor and dullness refuses to wink the eye. He asserts himself and the majesty of the regulations. As by As by magic, a motley crowd appears. His tight military collar is no proof against a flood of confetti. One spirited maid presses a kiss on his cheek. Another pushes his kepi over his eyes.

Like a bear surrounded by mosquitoes, the officer, stunned by such shocking anarchy, slinks away, while the "Blue Devils," whom his ineffectual protest never reached, continue their sinful, happy way.

WHY NICE'S CARNIVAL TAKES PRECEDENCE

The home town of Masséna, Garibaldi, and Catarina Segurana is a hulking place, a combination of ugliness and beauty, of industry and idleness, a city whose native. life moves along independent of the tourist horde, numbering a quarter million visitors a year, just as the Paillon flows unnoticed under the Casino, the Place Masséna, and the perennially beautiful Gardens.

Its very size is what gives the Nice festival precedence over the carnivals of Cannes, Mentone, and Grasse. Carnival here has a popularity and vivacity of its own, largely because 175,000 Niceans of French and Italian descent simply can't resist the temptation to pay court to King Carnival, dance to his piping, flutter about his bright lights in gay masquerade, and forget such drab realities as affect life in Nice as surely as they do in Maple Valley or Kalamazoo.

"Foreigners" come and go. "Winterers" count as little as they do in India. Flower battles are won or lost. Regattas fleck the blue bay with dancing spots of white and night fêtes burst into polychrome brilliance above dark waters. Dog shows attract prize pups from a wide area. Yet Nice pursues its wonted way in the crowded old town, in the industrial districts of St. Roch and Riquier, or in the business centers.

But let King Carnival issue his revolutionary manifesto, doff his tricorne, and shoulder his Gargantuan way through the motley streets, and everyone, from wrinkled granny to staring infant, rushes to the show.

Just as "Old Ugly Face," the heroic Catarina Segurana, beat Janizaries over the head with her washing bat and raised the siege of Nice, so her modern sisters desert their frail boxes beside the Paillon, in which they swash and paddle their laundry, to do battle on the confetti-paved Avenue of Victory, that victory which comes when pleasure triumphs over toil. PLASTER CONFETTI A BANE AND A MENACE

In their glad revolt against routine and boredom, these warm-blooded revelers keep their heads. Wine flows freely, but drunkenness is not common. Thugs, pickpockets, and camp-followers are strangely absent. Seldom does anything happen to which serious exception can be taken.

Carnival and paper confetti, even if some urchins garner their ammunition from the ankle-deep streets, make a happy combination. Carnival and plaster confetti smack of the days of molten lead poured from the roof of Notre Dame or the walls of Carcassonne.

Those who know wear wire masks and dress in cloaks with a ruffled hood to protect the ears; but the splendid white horse ridden by the marshal, in his red hunting jacket, has to stand the pelting without benefit of armor. Plaster confetti is the size of BB shot, but somewhat lighter, and friable enough to become chalky dust beneath one's feet.

There are those so humane and softhearted that they fight a plaster confetti battle with bare hands. That is amateurish and futile.

The proper thing is not a canvas bag from which impotent handfuls of ammunition are feverishly fumbled. The manly way is to buy a box of the stuff, say, three feet long and half as broad and deep, and a tin scoop, such as went with the old cracker barrel in the days when hygiene and vitamins were in their infancy. With such equipment a sturdy and determined battler, lining out his plaster pellets as from a Roman catapult, can draw blood from an unprotected face.