But we may be most amused by mixing with the crowd, or by listening to
the performance on the _Place royale_ of a company of foreign
musicians--shabby and dingy in aspect, enthusiastic and poor--who had
found their way here in time to entertain the trim holiday makers of
Caen. They were of that ragged and unkempt order of slovenly brotherhood
that the goddess of music claims for her own; let them call themselves
'wandering minstrels,' 'Arabs,' or what not (their collars were limp,
and they rejoiced in smoke), they had certainly an ear for harmony, and
a 'soul for music;' a talent in most of them, half cultivated and
scarcely understood. A woman in a German, or Swiss, costume levied rapid
contributions amongst the crowd, which seemed to prefer listening to
this performance than to any other 'distraction,' not excepting the
modern and exciting performance of velocipede races outside the town.

The streets are crowded all day with holiday people, and somewhat
obstructed by the fashion of the inhabitants taking their meals in the
street. We also, in the evening, dine at an open café (with a marble
table and a pebble floor) amidst a clamour and confusion of voices,
under the shadow of old eaves--with creepers and flowers twining round
nearly every window, where the pigeons lurk and dive at stray morsels.
The evening is calm and bright and the sky overhead a deep blue, but we
are chattering, laughing, eating, and smoking, clinking glasses and
shouting to waiters; we drown even the sound of the church clocks, and
if it were not for the little flower girls with their '_deux sous,
chaque_' and their winning smiles, and for the children playing on the
ground around us, we might soon forget our better natures in the din of
this culinary pandemonium.

But we are in good company; three tall mugs of cider are on the next
table to our own, a dark, stout figure, with shaven crown, is seated