No sooner had the gardeners quitted the arena, than a solemn and imposing train appeared to occupy the sward.  Four females marched to the front, bearing an antique altar that was decorated with suitable devices.  They were clad in emblematical dresses, and wore garlands of flowers on their heads.  Boys carrying censers preceded an altar that was dedicated to Flora, and her ministering official came after it, mitred and carrying flowers.  Like all the priestesses that followed, she was laboriously attired in the robes that denoted her sacred duty.  The goddess herself was borne by four females on a throne canopied by flowers, and from whose several parts sweeping festoons of every hue and die descended to the earth.  Haymakers of both sexes, gay and pastoral in their air and attire, succeeded, and a car groaning with the sweet-scented grass of the Alps, accompanied by females bearing rakes, brought up the rear.

The altar and the throne being deposited on the sward, the priestess offered sacrifice, hymning the praise of the goddess with mountain lungs.  Then followed the dance of the haymakers, as in the preceding exhibition, and the train went off as before.

“Excellent well, and truer than it could be done by your real pagan!” cried the bailiff, who, in spite of his official longings, began to watch the mummery with a pleased eye.  “This beateth greatly our youthful follies in the Genoese and Lombard carnivals, in which, to say truth, there are sometimes seen rare niceties in the way of representing the old deities.”

“Is it the usage, friend Hofmeister,” demanded the baron, “to enjoy these admirable pleasantries often here in Vaud?”

“We partake of them, from time to time, as the abbaye desires, and much as thou seest.  The honorable Signor Grimaldi—­who will pardon me that he gets no better treatment than he receives, and who will not fail to ascribe what, to all who know him, might otherwise pass for inexcusable neglect, to his own desire for privacy—­he will tell us, should he be pleased to honor us with his real opinion, that the subject is none the worse for occasions to laugh and be gay.  Now, there is Geneva, a town given to subtleties as ingenious and complicated as the machinery of their own watches; it can never have a merry-making without a leaven of disputation and reason, two as damnable ingredients in the public humor as schism in religion, or two minds in a menage.  There is not a knave in the city who does not fancy himself a better man than Calvin, and some there are who believe if they are not cardinals, it is merely because the reformed church does not relish legs cased in red stockings.  By the word of a bailiff!  I would not be the ruler, look ye, of such a community, for the hope of becoming Avoyer of Berne itself.  Here it is different.  We play our antics in the shape of gods and goddesses like sober people, and, when all is over, we go train our vines, or count our herds, like faithful subjects of the great canton.  Do I state the matter fairly to our friends, Baron de Blonay?”