“Very true,” cried Lupin.  “Well, it is for you, papa,” he added, addressing Rigou, “to manoeuvre the matter so that we can get him to the fair; once there, we ought to be able to entrap him.”

The fair of Soulanges, which takes place on the 15th of August, is one of the features of the town, and carries the palm over all other fairs in a circuit of sixty miles, even those of the capital of the department.  Ville-aux-Fayes has no fair, for its fete-day, the Saint-Sylvestre, happens in winter.

From the 12th to the 15th of August all sorts of merchants abounded at Soulanges, and set up their booths in two parallel lines, two rows of the well-known gray linen huts, which gave a lively appearance to the usually deserted streets.  The two weeks of the fair brought in a sort of harvest to the little town, for the festival has the authority and prestige of tradition.  The peasants, as old Fourchon said, flocked in from the districts to which labor bound them for the rest of the year.  The wonderful show on the counters of the improvised shops, the collection of all sorts of merchandise, the coveted objects of the wants or the vanities of these sons of the soil, who have no other shows or exhibitions to enjoy exercise a periodical seduction over the minds of all, especially the women and children.  So, after the first of August the authorities posted advertisements signed by Soudry, throughout the whole arrondissement, offering protection to merchants, jugglers, mountebanks, prodigies of all kinds, and stating how long the fair would last, and what would be its principal attractions.

On these posters, about which it will be remembered Madame Tonsard inquired of Vermichel, there was always, on the last line, the following announcement: 

“Tivoli will be illuminated with colored-glass lamps.”

The town had adopted as the place for public a dance-ground created by Socquard out of a stony garden (stony, like the rest of the hill on which Soulanges is built, where the gardens are of made land), and called by him a Tivoli.  This character of the soil explains the peculiar flavor of the Soulanges wine,—­a white wine, dry and spirituous, very like Madeira or the Vouvray wine, or Johannisberger, —­three vintages which resemble one another.

The powerful effect produced by the Socquard ball upon the imaginations of the whole country-side made the inhabitants thereof very proud of their Tivoli.  Such as had ventured as far as Paris declared that the Parisian Tivoli was superior to that of Soulanges only in size.  Gaubertin boldly declared that, for his part, he preferred the Socquard ball to the Parisian ball.

“Well, we’ll think it all over,” continued Rigou.  “That Parisian fellow, the editor of a newspaper, will soon get tired of his present amusement and be glad of a change; perhaps we could through the servants give him the idea of coming to the fair, and he’d bring the others; I’ll consider it.  Sibilet might—­although, to be sure, his influence is devilishly decreased of late—­but he might get the general to think he could curry popularity by coming.”