For the last eight days quaint looking vehicles, in which lay the wandering families of fancy fair owners, lottery managers, keepers of shooting galleries, and other forms of amusement or exhibitors of curiosities, which the peasants call “monster-makers,” could be seen coming along the roads drawn slowly by gray or chestnut horses.

The dirty caravans with their floating curtains accompanied by a melancholy-looking dog, who trotted, with his head down, between the wheels, drew up one after the other, in the green fronting the Mayor’s office.  Then a tent was erected in front of each traveling abode, and inside this tent could be seen through the holes in the canvas glittering things, which excited the envy or the curiosity of the village brats.

As soon as the morning of the fete arrived, all the booths were opened, displaying their splendors of glass or porcelain; and the peasants on their way to mass, regarded already with looks of satisfaction, these modest shops, which, nevertheless, they saw again each succeeding year.

From the early part of the afternoon, there was a crowd on the green.  From every neighboring village, the farmers arrived, shaken along with their wives and children in the two-wheeled open cars, which made a rattling sound as they oscillated like cradles.  They unyoked at their friends’ houses, and the farm-yards were filled with strange looking traps, gray, high, lean, crooked, like long clawed creatures from the depths of the sea.  And each family, with the youngsters in front, and the grown up ones behind, came to the assembly with tranquil steps, smiling countenances, and open hands, big hands, red and bony, accustomed to work and apparently tired of their temporary rest.

A tumbler played on a trumpet.  The barrel-organ accompanying the wooden horses sent through the air its shrill jerky notes.  The lottery-wheel made a whirring sound like that of cloth being torn, and every moment the crack of the rifle could be heard.  And the slowly moving throng passed on quietly in front of the booths after the fashion of paste in a fluid condition, with the motions of a flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy animals rushing along at haphazard.

The girls, holding one another’s arms, in groups of six or eight, kept bawling out songs; the young men followed them making jokes, with their caps over their ears, and their blouses stiffened with starch, swollen out like blue balloons.

The whole country-side was there—­masters, laboring men, and women-servants.

Old Amable himself, wearing his old-fashioned green frock-coat, had wished to see the assembly, for he never failed to attend on such an occasion.

He looked at the lotteries, stopped in front of the shooting galleries to criticise the shots, and interested himself specially in a very simple game, which consisted in throwing a big wooden ball into the open mouth of a mannikin carved and painted on a board.