they walk down the shady lanes of trees, or nursemaids
interchanging gossip on the seats; French children with their
smiling bonnes in snow-white caps, and themselves - if little boys
- in straw head-gear like bee-hives, work-baskets and church
hassocks. Three years ago, there were three weazen old men, one
bearing a frayed red ribbon in his threadbare button-hole, always
to be found walking together among these children, before dinner-
time. If they walked for an appetite, they doubtless lived en
pension - were contracted for - otherwise their poverty would have
made it a rash action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull old
men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted short-waisted coats and
meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hovering in
their company. They spoke little to each other, and looked as if
they might have been politically discontented if they had had
vitality enough. Once, we overheard red-ribbon feebly complain to
the other two that somebody, or something, was 'a Robber;' and then
they all three set their mouths so that they would have ground
their teeth if they had had any. The ensuing winter gathered red-
ribbon unto the great company of faded ribbons, and next year the
remaining two were there - getting themselves entangled with hoops
and dolls - familiar mysteries to the children - probably in the
eyes of most of them, harmless creatures who had never been like
children, and whom children could never be like. Another winter
came, and another old man went, and so, this present year, the last
of the triumvirate, left off walking - it was no good, now - and
sat by himself on a little solitary bench, with the hoops and the
dolls as lively as ever all about him.

In the Place d'Armes of this town, a little decayed market is held,
which seems to slip through the old gateway, like water, and go