es, which added materially
to the excellence of their homely table. The high-road that skirted the
Inn encountered, a little way above it, a bridge that spanned the river
and continued its way to Neuilly and the fair and the world beyond. At
one side of the Inn was a little space of common land, on which, at this
time of fair-making, a company of gypsies were encamped, with their
caravans and their ragged tents and their camp-fires. On the other side
of the Inn were some agreeably arranged arbors, in whose shadow tables
and chairs were disposed for the benefit of those who desired to taste
the air with their wine and viands. Taking it in an amiable spirit, the
Inn of the Three Graces seemed a very commendable place.

All day long on the day of which we speak, and all day long for many days
preceding it, there had been a steady flow of folk from the direction of
Paris making in the direction of Neuilly, and not a few of these, taken
by the appearance of the little wayside Inn, found it agreeable to
refresh themselves by slaking their thirst and staying their stomachs
inside or outside of its hospitable walls. The most of those that so
passed were sight-seers, and these the Inn saw again as they passed
homeward in the dusk or sometimes even in the darkness with the aid of
flambeaux and lanterns. But a certain number were, as might be said,
professional pedestrians, peddlers with their packs upon their shoulders,
anxious to dispose of ribbons and trinkets to gaping rustics, easily
bubbled burgesses, and to the more wary histrions and mountebanks, for
whom a different scale of charges ranged.

A little after noon on the day in question the wayside Inn of the Three
Graces was quiet enough. The last chance visitor had emptied his can and
crossed the bridge to Neuilly and its delights; the last peddler had
slung his pack and tramped in the same direction; the gypsies, who since
early morning had sprawled upon the common land, had shaken themselves
free from their idleness into an assumption of activity, and had marched
off almost in a body to take their share in the profits of the occasion
by a little judicious horse-coping and fortune-telling. One of their
number, indeed, they left behind in the great, gaudy, green-and-red
caravan that stood in front of all the other caravans in the middle of
the grassy space--one of their number who would much have preferred the
merriment and the sunlight of the fair to the confinement of th