might have appeared in all its original color and freshness. We first saw it one sunny morning when the gravelled clearing was swarming with picturesque rustics, arrived in town with their varied wares for market day. Once under the protecting awning of a cafe terrace, one became a leisurely witness of a most turbulent and fascinating panorama. Across the way, under a broiling sun, a damp and rotund peasant was shouting hoarsely before a formidable mound of cabbages. Stuck under his hat were two huge cabbage leaves to shelter his fat neck. Next to him, a little man with a ferocious moustache was violently demonstrating the virtues of a collapsible, reversible, non-breakable umbrella, flinging it in the air, punching it, tearing at it, and all the while carry
ing on a vociferous monologue, much to the restrained amusement of his audience. The man with the patent garters of stretchable tin was not far away. His leg, covered with a dubious gray cotton underwear, was perched on a soap box to
serve as a demonstrator. The garters didn’t go so well, so a few minutes later he appeared in a new spot with a tray of patent necktie attachments and a celluloid collar. Under a canvas-covered stand, a meek little man with a sweet, uncultivated voice and an utter lack of self-consciousness, was singing a silly waltz song, while a strange youth, with a face that somewhat resembled a pickerel, was playing it softly on the violin. The housewives and children forsook the drygoods stands for a moment and clustered about. Some of them even invested fifty centimes for the song.
Rising up over the tops of a thousand canvas shelters were the old half timbered houses, preserving through their very appearance of well painted newness an effect which one readily imagines existed in the sixteenth century. True, there could not have been blatant colored signboards, screeching forth recommendations of
A TYPICAL NARROW STREET
AUXERRE