he street and dress you," said Hohenfels.

Although I had never been dressed in the street, I yielded. It was a
grand public holiday, and the sounds of festivity, which had floated
into my chamber with the entrance of Hohenfels, were in full cadence
outside. Everybody was pouring out to the city-gate, or returning from
thence, where, in honor of some visit from the king of the Belgians
and count and countess of Flanders, a festival was going on in
imitation or rehearsal of the grand annual _kermesse_. These
festivals, retained in Belgium with a delightful fidelity to the
customs of antique Brabant, would fit the brush of Teniers better
than the pen of a mere bewildered tourist. Still, I will try, copying
principally from the reports of Charles (who contrives to peep at
everything, with an interest whose amount is in ratio with the square
of his distance from his master), to give a few features of the scene,
which he spread in detail before the attentive Josephine during many
an evening after.

[Illustration: COALS vs. COATS]

The principal fair-ground--though the occasion crammed the whole city
with revelers--was just outside the gate. It was a veritable town in
miniature, with a pattern of checker-board streets--Columbine street,
Polichinelle street, Avenue des Parades, Place des Parades, Street of
the Chanson, and the like. There were more than five hundred booths,
all numbered--shops and restaurants. There were the Salon Curtius,
the Menagerie Bidel, the Bal Mabille, the Cafe Bataclan, the American
Tavern. From one of the little costumers' shops, Charles--with
a higher evincement of antiquarian taste than I should have
expected--managed to bear away a pattern of wall-paper, which I
afterward conferred on Mary Ashburleigh with great applause: it was
Parisian of 1824, the epoch of Charles Dix, and was entirely covered
with giraffes in honor of that puissant and elegant monarch. The above
establishments were near the entrance, to the right.

At the left were more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of
ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a
gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian
war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the
Theatre Casti, was exposed the "renowned buffoon Peppino," breveted by
His Majesty the "king of Egypt;" then came the Chiarini Theatre; then
the Theatre Adrien Delille, an enchantingly pretty structure, where
recept