* * * * * We are writing of August 26th. It was a fruitful year, and the harvest had almost all been garnered. But the heat daily increased, and we obtained no relief until after sunset. I had gone in the sweat of my brow to the next village, which belonged to our parish, on an errand of duty: to aid a sick tailor who desired spiritual consolation--no easy task. The old sinner, in his terror and despair, had been reading certain tracts and taken specially to heart the doctrine of the endless punishments of hell, probably because he was aware that he had made a sinful use of his tailor's hell[2] here below. I did my best to calm him, and, as I had the reputation among my parishioners of being an enlightened and not fanatical preacher, succeeded in partially soothing him and inspiring his soul with some degree of trust in God's mercy. As I returned through our own village in the gathering dusk of twilight, I saw a little group of children standing in front of the tavern, staring at two dusty, shabby carriages. The first was an ordinary, four-seated calash, with a torn leather covering, and a broken spring under the box, temporarily mended with ropes. The second vehicle was a large, windowless box on a rough platform, such as is commonly used for a furniture-van. Of the people traveling in this extraordinary equipage I saw only two persons, who were sitting on the little bench beside the tavern-door, a bold-eyed, pale-faced young fellow, not more than twenty, who, with his straw hat trimmed with a dirty blue ribbon, pushed far back on his head, and his hands thrust into his pockets, was saying to his companion, amid frequent yawns, all sorts of things I could not understand. He had a bottle of beer beside him, from which he occasionally filled a glass, held it up to the light, and then emptied it at one draught. The girl by his side was probably sixteen or eighteen years old. Her appearance was disagreeable to me at the first glance, though no one could have helped owning that her prettiness was more than the mere beauty of youth. But the bold way in which she turned up her little nose, the scornful looks she cast at the villagers, and especially the soulless laugh with which she greeted her companion's jests, were thoroughly repulsive to me. Her dress was as shabby as the vehicle in which she had arrived. But she had fastened a huge red bow into her black hair, and fancied herself sufficiently adorned in comparison to the barefooted children. Her little dirty hand held a few flowers, which she continually bit with her sharp white teeth, and then spat the leaves out of her mouth again. The landlady, who came forward when she saw me stop before the house, told me that they were actors. There was a married couple, too, but they were in their room. The manager had gone up to the castle to speak to the baron.