One does not recognize them all at once, so changed are
they by their unusual clothes;--women, ornate with color, and more
monumental than on week days; some old men, slightly straightened for
the occasion; and some very lowly people, whom only their cleanness
vaguely disguises.

The weak sunshine is dressing the red roofs and the blue roofs and the
sidewalks, and the tiny little stone setts all pressed together like
pebbles, where polished shoes are shining and squeaking. In that old
house at the corner, a house like a round lantern of shadow, gloomy old
Eudo is encrusted. It forms a comical blot, as though traced on an old
etching. A little further, Madame Piot's house bulges forth, glazed
like pottery. By the side of these uncommon dwellings one takes no
notice of the others, with their gray walls and shining curtains,
although it is of these that the town is made.

Halfway up the hill, which rises from the river bank, and opposite the
factory's plateau, appears the white geometry of the castle, and around
its pallors a tapestry of reddish foliage, and parks. Farther away,
pastures and growing crops which are part of the demesne; farther
still, among the stripes and squares of brown earth or verdant, the
cemetery, where every year so many stones spring up.

* * * * * *

We have to call at Brisbille's, my aunt and I, before Church. We are
forced to tolerate him thus, so as to get our twisted key put right. I
wait for Mame in the court, sitting on a tub by the shop, which is
lifeless to-day, and full of the scattered leavings of toil. Mame is
never ready in time. She has twice appeared on the threshold in her
fine black dress and velvet cape; then, having forgotten something, she
has gone back very quickly, like a mole. Finally, she must needs go up
to my room, to cast a last glance over it.

At last we are off, side by side. She takes my arm proudly. From time
to time she looks at me, and I at her, and her smile is an affectionate
grimace amid the sunshine.

When we have gone a little way, my aunt stops, "You go on," she says;
"I'll catch you up."

She has gone up to Apolline, the street-sweeper. The good woman, as
broad as she is long, was gaping on the edge of the causeway, her two
parallel arms feebly rowing in the air, an exile in the Sabbath
idleness, and awkwardly conscious of her absent broom.

Mame brings her along, and looking back as I walk, I hear he