Father Goulden and I walked along in the silence, he with his head bent down and smiling, though without speaking a word. When we reached home I lighted the candle, and while he was undressing asked: "Well! Father Goulden, did they preach well?" "Yes," he replied smiling, "yes, for young men who have seen nothing, it was not bad." Then he laughed aloud and said, "But if old Colin had been in the Jacobin's place, he would have puzzled the young man terribly." I was greatly surprised at that, and as I still waited to hear what more he had to say, he slowly pulled his black silk cap over his ears and added thoughtfully, "but it's all the same; all the same. These people go too fast, much too fast. They will never make me believe that Louis XVIII. knows about all this. No, he has seen too much in his life not to know men better than that. But, good-night, Joseph, good-night. Let us hope that an order will soon arrive from Paris sending these young men back to their seminary." I went to bed and dreamed of Catherine, the Jacobin, and of the procession we were going to see. IV Next morning the bells began to ring as soon as it was light. I rose and opened my shutters and saw the red sun rising from behind the Magazine, and over the forest of Bonne-Fontaine. It might have been five o'clock, and you could feel beforehand how hot it was going to be, and the air was laden with the odor of the oak and beech and holly leaves which were strewn in the streets. The peasants began to arrive in companies, talking in the still morning. You could recognize the villagers from Wechem, from Metting, from the Graufthal and Dasenheim, by their three-cornered hats turned down in front and their square coats, and the women with their long black dresses and big bonnets quilted like a mattress hanging on their necks; and those from Dagsberg, Hildehouse, Harberg, and Houpe with their large round felt hats, and the women without bonnets and with short skirts, small, brown, dry, and quick as powder, with the children behind with their shoes in their hands, but when they reached Luterspech they sat down in a row and put them on to be ready for the procession. Some priests from the different villages, also came by twos and threes, laughing and talking among themselves in the best of humor.