ishing to check
this flagrant habit, the farmer one day seized the gander just as he was
about to spring upon the blue bosom of his favourite element, and tying
a large fish-hook to his leg, to which was attached part of a dead frog,
he suffered him to proceed upon his voyage of discovery. As had been
anticipated, this bait soon caught the eye of a ravenous pike, which
swallowing the deadly hook, not only arrested the progress of the
astonished gander, but forced him to perform half-a-dozen summersets on
the surface of the water! For some time, the struggle was most
amusing--the fish pulling, and the bird screaming with all its
might,--the one attempting to fly, and the other to swim, from the
invisible enemy--the gander one moment losing and the next regaining his
centre of gravity, and casting between whiles many a rueful look at his
snow-white fleet of geese and goslings, who cackled out their sympathy
for their afflicted commodore. At length Victory declared in favour of
the feathered angler, who, bearing away for the nearest shore, landed on
the smooth green grass one of the finest pike ever caught in the Castle
Loch."

This adventure is said to have cured the gander of his desperate
propensity for wandering.

CHAPTER XXII.

Village _fetes_--The first of May--The religious festivals--The
_Fete Dieu_--Appearance of the streets--The altars erected in
them--Procession from the church--Country fairs--The book-stalls at
them--Pictures of the Roman Catholic Church--Before the
_Vendange_--Proprietors' hopes and fears--Shooting in the
vineyards--The first day of the _Vendange_--Appearance of the
country--Influx of visitors at this season--The
consequences--Herminie--Her sad history--Le Morvan--Recommended to
the English traveller--Lord Brougham and Cannes--Contrast between
it and Le Morvan.

One of the happiest and most useful customs established by our
ancestors, was, without doubt, the village _fete_--the periodical
festival that takes place in every hamlet, and at which the inhabitants
of the adjoining _communes_ assemble on a specified day to foot it gaily
in the dance and drink each other's health glass to glass in brimming
bumpers. These joyous _fetes_, a kind of fraternal and social
invitation, which are given and accepted by the rural population when
spring and verdure made their appearance, are held all over France, and
rejoice every heart. In our day