heir queen for the coming year.

The gipsy of tradition is supposed to be a miserly, wealthy,
sacrilegious fellow who goes about stealing children and dogs and
anything else he can lay his hands upon. He may have his faults, but
to see him kneeling before the shrine of his "_patronne reine Sara,_"
ragged and travel-worn and yet burning costly candles and saying his
_Aves_ as piously and incessantly as a praying-machine of the East,
one can hardly question but that they have as much devoutness as most
others.

The hotels of "Les Saintes" offer practically nothing in the way of
accommodation, and what there is, which costs usually thirty sous a
night, has, during the fete, an inflated value of thirty or even
fifty francs, and, if you are an automobilist, driving the most
decrepit out-of-date old crock that ever was, they will want to
charge you a hundred. You will, of course, refuse to pay it, for you
can eat up the roadway at almost any speed you like,--there is no one
to say you nay on these lonesome roads,--and so, after paying fifty
centimes a pailful for some rather muddy water to refresh the water
circulation of your automobile, you pull out for some other place--at
least we did. One must either do this, or become a real nomad and
sleep in the open, with the stars for candles, and a bunch of
beach-grass for a pillow. If you were a _Romany cheil_ you would
sleep in, or under, your own _roulotte_, on a mattress, which, in the
daytime, is neatly folded away in the rear of your wagon, or hung in
full view, temptingly spread with a lace coverlet. This in the hope
that some passing pilgrim will take a fancy to the lace spread and
want to buy it; when will come a trading and bargaining which will
put horse-selling quite in the shade, for it is here that the woman
of the establishment comes in, and the gipsy woman on a trade is a
Tartar.

Finally, on the last day, came the "_Grande Entree des Tauraux,_"
which, it would seem, was the chief event which drew the Camargue
population thither. They came in couples, a man and a woman on the
back of a single Camargue pony, whole families in a Provencal cart,
on foot, on bicycles, and in automobiles.

[Illustration: Peasants of the Crau]

Six Spanish-crossed bulls, were brought up in a great closed van and
loosed in an improvised bull-ring, of which the church wall formed
one side, and the roof a sort of a tribune. What the cure thought of
all this is not clear, but as the al