On reaching the grove of acacias, where the fair was going on, I lost sight of the two sisters.  I went alone among the sights:  there were lotteries going on, mountebank shows, places for eating and drinking, and for shooting with the cross-bow.  I have always been struck by the spirit of these out-of-door festivities.  In drawing-room entertainments, people are cold, grave, often listless, and most of those who go there are brought together by habit or the obligations of society; in the country assemblies, on the contrary, you only find those who are attracted by the hope of enjoyment.  There, it is a forced conscription; here, they are volunteers for gayety!  Then, how easily they are pleased!  How far this crowd of people is yet from knowing that to be pleased with nothing, and to look down on everything, is the height of fashion and good taste!  Doubtless their amusements are often coarse; elegance and refinement are wanting in them; but at least they have heartiness.  Oh, that the hearty enjoyments of these merry-makings could be retained in union with less vulgar feeling!  Formerly religion stamped its holy character on the celebration of country festivals, and purified the pleasures without depriving them of their simplicity.

The hour arrives at which the doors of the porcelain manufactory and the museum of pottery are open to the public.  I meet Frances and Madeleine again in the first room.  Frightened at finding themselves in the midst of such regal magnificence, they hardly dare walk; they speak in a low tone, as if they were in a church.

“We are in the king’s house,” said the eldest sister, forgetting that there is no longer a king in France.

I encourage them to go on; I walk first, and they make up their minds to follow me.

What wonders are brought together in this collection!  Here we see clay moulded into every shape, tinted with every color, and combined with every sort of substance!

Earth and wood are the first substances worked upon by man, and seem more particularly meant for his use.  They, like the domestic animals, are the essential accessories of his life; therefore there must be a more intimate connection between them and us.  Stone and metals require long preparations; they resist our first efforts, and belong less to the individual than to communities.  Earth and wood are, on the contrary, the principal instruments of the isolated being who must feed and shelter himself.

This, doubtless, makes me feel so much interested in the collection I am examining.  These cups, so roughly modelled by the savage, admit me to a knowledge of some of his habits; these elegant yet incorrectly formed vases of the Indian tell me of a declining intelligence,—­in which still glimmers the twilight of what was once bright sunshine; these jars, loaded with arabesques, show the fancy of the Arab rudely and ignorantly copied by the Spaniard!  We find here the stamp of every race, every country, and every age.