irls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their laughter, and
the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the
neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and
ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts. We were
within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were females of our own
species playing croquet, just as if Precy had been a place in real life,
instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. For, to be frank, the
peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after
having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging and
hoeing and making dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made
quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of
being fallible males.

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not even in Scotland have I
found worse fare. It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of whom
was out of their teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us,
and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a
tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. We found pieces of loo-warm
pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the
_ragout_. The butcher entertained us with pictures of Parisian life,
with which he professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the
while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling precariously, and
sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst of these diversions, bang
went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a
proclamation. It was a man with marionnettes announcing a performance
for that evening.

He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of the
girls' croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which are so common
in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by the time we
strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience.

It was the most absurd contention. The show-people had set out a certain
number of benches, and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of
sous for the accommodation. They were always quite full--a bumper
house--as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman
appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her
tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the
outside with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried
an angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he had