“Thou seest, baron,” returned the well-warmed bailiff, with a look of triumph, “a little explanation can never injure a good thing, though it were even the law itself.  Ah! yon is Ceres and her company, and a goodly train they appear!  These are the harvest-men and harvest-women, who represent the abundance of our country of Vaud, Signor Grimaldi, which, truth to say, is a fat land, and worthy of the allegory.  These knaves, with the stools strapped to their nether parts, and carrying tubs, are cowherds, and all the others are more or less concerned with the dairy.  Ceres was a personage of importance among the ancients, beyond dispute, as may be seen by the manner in which, she is backed by the landed interest.  There is no solid respectability, Herr von Willading, that is not fairly bottomed on broad lands.  Ye perceive that the goddess sits on a throne whose ornaments are all taken from the earth; a sheaf of wheat tops the canopy; rich ears of generous grain are her jewels, and her sceptre is the sickle.  These are but allegories, Signor Grimaldi, but they are allusions that give birth to wholesome thoughts in the prudent.  There is no science that may not catch a hint from our games; politics, religion, or law—­’tis all the same for the well-disposed and cunning.”

“An ingenious scholar might even find an argument for the buergerschaft in an allegory that is less clear;” returned the amused Genoese.  “But you have overlooked, Signor Bailiff, the instrument that Ceres carries in the other hand, and which is full to overflowing with the fruits of the earth;—­that which so much resembles a bullock’s horn, I mean.”

“That is, out of question, some of the utensils of the ancients; perhaps a milking vessel in use among the gods and goddesses, for your deities of old were no bad housewives, and made a merit of their economy; and Ceres here, as is seen, is not ashamed of a useful occupation.  By my faith, but this affair has been gotten up with a very creditable attention to the moral!  But our dairy-people are about to give us some of their airs.”

Peterchen now put a stop to his classic lore, while the followers of Ceres arranged themselves in order, and began to sing.  The contagious and wild melody of the Ranz des Vaches rose in the square, and soon drew the absorbed and delighted attention of all within hearing which, to say the truth, was little less than all who were within the limits of the town, for, the crowd chiming in with the more regular artists, a, sort of musical enthusiasm seized upon all present who came of Vaud and her valleys.  The dogmatical, but well-meaning bailiff; though usually jealous of his Bernese origin, and alive on system to the necessity of preserving the superiority of the great canton by all the common observances of dignity and reserve, yielded to the general movement, and shouted with the rest, under favor of a pair of lungs that nature had admirably fitted to sustain the chorus of a mountain