Down in the roughly paved _rue Saint-Laurent_ the clatter of sabots on the stones announces that the townspeople are astir. Shutters are thrown open. Bursts of song herald the holiday. Crowds of goats, driven through the streets, are being milked at the house doors. Then, from the Cathedral of Notre Dame—whose foundations, it is said, were laid by Charlemagne—the bells proclaim with sweet solemnity the call to early mass. Out of the houses pour the people in gaily embroidered holiday dress, group joining group with merry exchange of salutations, until, trooping through the narrow streets, the colorful procession appears like a wandering rainbow threading the grey mazes of the old town. House after house they pass and shop after shop, each bearing above the portal a shield emblazened with the selfsame coat-of-arms—the heraldic device of the guild of the glovers. Their occupants, gayest of the gay, fast swell the throng, with masters and their families and apprentices—the young boys in the retinues stealing shy glances at the pretty daughters of their masters, the maidens covertly returning their admirers’ bashful looks. And now the multitude melts into the tender gloom of the ancient cathedral; their voices are hushed in the sweet fluting of the choir. Above the heads of the kneeling populace glows the shrine of Saint Anne, lit with innumerable candles and smothered in exotic, summer flowers. For this is the annual fête-day of the mother of the Virgin, the patron saint of _les gantiers_, revered by all good glovers throughout France. At Grenoble, however, the feast is observed with greater magnificence than anywhere else, for the glovers constitute by far the most numerous body, and the most prosperous, of its citizens, and theirs is the crowning festivity of the whole year. According to monkish legend, the good Saint Anne made a livelihood while on earth by knitting gloves. “The knitting saint,” in homely terms of affection the people liked to call her. They were wont to regard her as one like themselves—only holier far, for the great honor God saw fit to confer upon her—fulfilling her simple task from day to day, the needles always busy in her fingers. Their love for her was so strong, indeed, and so enduring, that early in the nineteenth century the glovers ordered a statue of their saint set up in a public square of Grenoble, where it may be seen to-day. It represents the mother of Mary, knitting, with a half-finished glove in her hand and a basket of gloves at her feet.