Spain.

* * * * *

St. Jean is reached almost too soon, for the drive has been
exhilarating. We enter by a long, narrow street, which is found to be
alive with people. A small procession is in motion, enlivened by a band.
Every one seems in holiday dress. Our driver has before shown his easy
conviction that streets were intended first for breacks, secondly for
citizens; and now he urges his horses down this narrow way without a
pause in their gallop. The whip signals, the bells on the harness jingle
furiously, the wheels clatter along the cobbles; and, almost before we
have time to order a slackening, procession and by-standers, like a
flock of sheep, go in disorder to the wall, and our breack sweeps by
into the central square.

[Illustration]

It is the festival, we find, of the village's patron saint, St. John the
Baptist. The twenty-fifth of June renews his yearly compact of
protection. In the afternoon, there will be the full procession, led by
the priests, and with a canopied effigy of the saint or of the Virgin
borne in solemnity behind them. Services in the cathedral will follow,
and probably an evening of illumination. We enter the cathedral. Its
floor has been newly strewn with sweet hay, and near the altar, is the
sacred image itself, adorned for the procession, dressed in linen and
velvet and gilt lace, and with a chaplet of beads in its wooden hand.
The canopy-frame, ready prepared, is close by, with its projecting
handle-bars, its four upright poles and its roof of white satin
embroidered with gold.