ut,
or gather in groups. When the grass had been worn away and the
trodden soil had become grey and hard, the old cemetery resembled a
badly-levelled public square. As if the more effectually to efface the
memory of all objectionable associations, the inhabitants slowly changed
the very appellation of the place, retaining but the name of the saint,
which was likewise applied to the blind alley dipping down at one corner
of the field. Thus there was the Aire Saint-Mittre and the Impasse
Saint-Mittre.

All this dates, however, from some considerable time back. For more
than thirty years now the Aire Saint-Mittre has presented a different
appearance. One day the townspeople, far too inert and indifferent to
derive any advantage from it, let it, for a trifling consideration,
to some suburban wheelwrights, who turned it into a wood-yard. At the
present day it is still littered with huge pieces of timber thirty or
forty feet long, lying here and there in piles, and looking like lofty
overturned columns. These piles of timber, disposed at intervals from
one end of the yard to the other, are a continual source of delight
to the local urchins. In some places the ground is covered with fallen
wood, forming a kind of uneven flooring over which it is impossible to
walk, unless one balance one's self with marvellous dexterity. Troops of
children amuse themselves with this exercise all day long. You will see
them jumping over the big beams, walking in Indian file along the narrow
ends, or else crawling astride them; various games which generally
terminate in blows and bellowings. Sometimes, too, a dozen of them will
sit, closely packed one against the other, on the thin end of a pole
raised a few feet from the ground, and will see-saw there for hours
together. The Aire Saint-Mittre thus serves as a recreation ground,
where for more than a quarter of a century all the little suburban
ragamuffins have been in the habit of wearing out the seats of their
breeches.

The strangeness of the place is increased by the circumstance that
wandering gipsies, by a sort of traditional custom always select the
vacant portions of it for their encampments. Whenever any caravan
arrives at Plassans it takes up its quarters on the Aire Saint-Mittre.
The place is consequently never empty. There is always some strange band
there, some troop of wild men and withered women, among whom groups of
healthy-looking children roll about on the grass. These people