Everything was fresh and clean from the late rains, and the air was laden with the mingled perfume of flowers; with butter and cheese. Country carts of extravagant design and painted green were unloading, and the farmer's boys were fitting together the booths for the sale of their varied commodities. Here and there were active dark complexioned Hebraic looking men and women, hard faced and sinister, who presided over stalls for the sale of cloth, shoes and the trinkets of small value calculated to tempt the peasantry. A cinematograph booth, resplendent with gilding, mirrors, and red and white paint, towered over the canvas covered booths, and a "merry go round," somewhat shabby by contrast, stood near it, its motive power, a small fat horse, contentedly eating his breakfast out of a brass hooped pail. The shops were opening one by one, displaying agricultural tools, and useful articles desired by the peasants. One heard bargaining going on, sometimes in the Flemish tongue, proving how near we were to Flanders, and sometimes in Walloon. Both tongues are used here, and the costumes partake of their characteristics, the women in neat if coarse stuffs, and the men in stiff blue blouses, usually in wooden shoes, too. This was remarkable, for the wooden shoe was fast vanishing from the towns. We noted too, that women were abandoning the snowy white lace trimmed caps once forming such a quaint feature of market day gatherings. Now various hideous forms of black and purple bonnets, decked out with beads and upstanding feathers disfigured them, but with what pride they were worn! This market place at Arras was a sight worth a long journey to witness, if but to see the display of animals, chickens, and flowers on a bright sunny morning in the square beneath the tower of the Town Hall. The fowls squawked and flapped their wings; dogs barked; horses neighed; and hoarse voiced vendors called out their bargains. Here and there the fowl were killed on the spot for the buyer, and carried off by rosy cheeked unsentimental housewives, carried off, too, often hidden in bunches of bright flowers. Did I write unsentimental?--An error. Nowhere were the common people more given to sentiment. Does not one remember the large room that la belle madame at the 'Couronne d'or provided for the traveling painter, who occupied it for two weeks, and during the season too, and when he discovered on the morning of departure that it was not included in the bill, on pointing out the omission to madame, did she not, and with the most charming smile imaginable say, with a wave of her shapely brown hands--"One could not charge for a room used as M'sieur's studio. The honor is sufficient to the 'Couronne d'or." And how to repay such kindness?