oding
sort of quiet, an unnatural tranquillity, settled upon everything and
continued until near upon the hour of ten. A long waggon drawn by four
oxen excited, by the freight it bore, a momentary curiosity, and brought
faces to doors and windows. The air was keen to-day, and we were at the
very season of mid-winter, but in the waggon which the four slow
oxen dragged through the streets of Janenne were a dozen lofty shrubs
reaching to a height of eight or nine feet at least, the which shrubs
were one mass of exotic-looking blossom. I discovered later on that
they were nothing more than a set of young pines with artificial paper
flowers attached to every twig, but the effect as they went down the
wintry street in their clothing of gold and rose and white with the
live green of the fir peeping through the wealth of bloom was quite an
astonishment in its way. These decorated shrubs were set at the church
porch, and seemed to fill the whole of that part of the street with
colour and light.

When the procession came at last there was one curious thing about it.
Such a crowd of people--for Janenne took part in it--that there was
scarcely anybody left to look at it. But then the processionists had the
pleasure of looking at each other. The band came first, in blue blouse
and clean white trousers. Then came the soldiery, a motley crew, with
Monsieur Dorn at their head, drawn sword in hand, and next to him
a personage who might have been translated clean from Astley's--a
gentleman in long hose, with a flower on each shoe, and a hat of red
velvet shaped like a bread tray, decorated with prodigious coloured
feathers, and a slashed doublet gay with many knots of bright ribbon.
Years and years ago Janenne had a Count and a _chateau_. The ruins of
the _chateau_ still kept gray guard over the village street; but there
is not even a ruin left of the old family. But in the day when Our Lady
of Lorette stayed the local pestilence the existing Count of Janenne was
pious enough to ride in the promised procession; and for a century or so
the magnate of the village and its neighbourhood was never absent from
the demonstration of thanksgiving. In a while, however, the Counts of
Janenne took to wildish ways, and, leaving the home of their ancestors,
went away to Paris and led extravagant lives there, gambling and
drinking, and squandering their substance in other and even more foolish
fashions, and at last there ceased to be estates of Janenne