“What the deuce has become of ma tante?” exclaimed Mueller, looking round.

But neither ma tante nor Mademoiselle Marie were anywhere to be seen.  I suggested that they must have gone on in the omnibus or taken a charrette, and so have passed us unperceived.

“And, after all,” I added, “we didn’t want to enter upon an indissoluble union with them for the rest of the day. Ma tante’s deafness is not entertaining, and la petite Marie has nothing to say.”

“La petite Marie is uncommonly pretty, though,” said Mueller.  “I mean to dance a quadrille with her by-and-by, I promise you.”

“A la bonne heure!  We shall be sure to chance upon them again before long.”

We had come by this time to a group of pretty villa-residences with high garden walls and little shady side-lanes leading down to the river.  Then came a church and more houses; then an open Place; and suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of the fair.

It was just like any other of the hundred and one fetes that take place every summer in the environs of Paris.  There was a merry-go-round and a greasy pole; there was a juggler who swallowed knives and ribbons; there were fortune-tellers without number; there were dining-booths, and drinking-booths, and dancing-booths; there were acrobats, organ-boys with monkeys, and Savoyards with white mice; there were stalls for the sale of cakes, fruit, sweetmeats, toys, combs, cheap jewelry, glass, crockery, boots and shoes, holy-water vessels, rosaries, medals, and little colored prints of saints and martyrs; there were brass bands, and string bands, and ballad-singers everywhere; and there was an atmosphere compounded of dust, tobacco-smoke, onions, musk, and every objectionable perfume under heaven.

“Dine at the Restaurant de l’Empire, Messieurs,” shouted a shabby touter in a blouse, thrusting a greasy card into our faces.  “Three dishes, a dessert, a half-bottle, and a band of music, for one franc-fifty.  The cheapest dinner in the fair!”

“The cheapest dinner in the fair is at the Belle Gabrielle!” cried another.  “We’ll give you for the same money soup, fish, two dishes, a dessert, a half-bottle, and take your photograph into the bargain!”

“Bravo! mon vieux—­you first poison them with your dinner, and then provide photographs for the widows and children,” retorts touter number one.  “That’s justice, anyhow.”

Whereupon touter number two shrieks out a torrent of abuse, and we push on, leaving them to settle their differences after their own fashion.

At the next booth we are accosted by a burly fellow daubed to the eyes with red and blue paint, and dressed as an Indian chief.

“Entrez, entrez, Messieurs et Mesdames” he cries, flourishing a war-spear some nine feet in length.  “Come and see the wonderful Peruvian maiden of Tanjore, with webbed fingers and toes, her mouth in the back of her head, and her eyes in the soles of her feet!  Only four sous each, and an opportunity that will never occur again!”