Of course a crowd assembles, and of course cries go up. Cries rise everywhere: from the market-place, from the crowd, from the enemy of stains, from the man with the accordion, from the group around the bear; all cries, the strangest cries, all languages also—English, French, many a patois, “bargee,” the unknown tongue of the almost black people with the bear—and all accents. Then several nuns issue forth from church and pause for a moment. The Curé appears. A “Savoyard” with statues—as white as his statues, for his clothes are white and his face is covered with chalk-dust—approaches. And all these different people, in all their different costumes, with different accents and different gestures, mingle together, elbow one another, and all around them are the stalls of bright stuffs, the vast baskets of vegetables and fresh fruits. In the background—grey and quaint—stands the church. However, time is flying and luncheon hour is near. The purchases have to be borne home, washed, prepared, and so the inhabitants of Moret raise their baskets, exchange adieux. Off starts the _patronne_ of our hotel; off go the postman, the _garde champêtre_, the barber and the fair Americans—still eating grapes—to their “finishing” school. The village girls disperse, and here and there the market-people are already dislodging their baskets, counting up sous. Once again we hear of the hot-tempered Madame Morin, the triumphant Madame Petilleau. Other familiar sounds reach us as we near the end of the street: “This, then, is the Miraculous Tablet... and only yesterday in Orleans...” and for the last time, “Cinq sous, Madame,” “Non, Madame, trois sous,” and the hour being told by the church. In the far distance, the bear is evidently dancing, for we faintly hear the tambourine. But his audience must now be small: before us, up the Grande Rue, moves a slow procession of men and women with baskets, sometimes two baskets to each person. Still, the first market-woman does not appear to have provided them with their spoil. She alone has done no business, and sits, wizened and bent in half, over her shabby cauliflowers, her poor potatoes. Occasionally she sniffs. But her sniff develops into a snort, when the cross-eyed, unshaven fellow with the accordion slouches up and, pausing for a moment, winks ... a fearful wink... leers, addresses her impudently and grotesquely with his eternal refrain: “Tu sais bien que je t’ai-ai-me.” IV BOURGEOISIE 1. M. DURAND AT MARIE-LE-BOIS A French friend, M. Durand, thus writes to me: “To-morrow morning at 11.47 my wife, myself, the three children and our deaf old servant Amélie, all leave for Marie-le-Bois; and to-morrow night, whilst you, _mon cher ami_, are eating the rosbif and drinking the pale ale of _la vieille Angleterre_, the Durand family will be dining off radishes, sardines, chicken, and cool salad, in the garden of the Villa des Roses.