a pleasant though peculiar blending of colours—
white caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables—
and at last the Knight destined for the adventure
seemed to have come in earnest, and all the
Vaubanois sprang up awake. And now, by long
low-lying avenues of trees, jolting in white-
hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey back, and in
tumbril and waggon and cart and cabriolet, and
a-foot with barrow and burden—and along the
dykes and ditches and canals, in little peak-
prowed country boats—came peasant men and
women in flocks and crowds, bringing articles
for sale. And here you had boots and shoes and
sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, and here (in the
cool shade of the Town Hall) you had milk and
cream and butter and cheese, and here you had
fruits and onions and carrots and all things
needful for your soup, and here you had poultry
and flowers and protesting pigs, and here new
shovels axes spades and bill-hooks for your
farming work, and here huge mounds of bread, and
here your unground grain in sacks, and here
your children's dolls, and here the cake-seller
announcing his wares by beat and roll of drum.
And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and here
into the Great Place, resplendent in an open
carriage with four gorgeously-attired servitors up
behind, playing horns drums and cymbals, rolled
"the Daughter of a Physician" in massive golden
chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat,
shaded from the admiring sun by two immense
umbrellas of artificial roses, to dispense (from
motives of philanthropy) that small and pleasant
dose which had cured so many thousands!
Toothache earache headache heartache stomach-
ache debility nervousness fits faintings fever
ague, all equally cured by the small and
pleasant dose of the great Physician's great
daughter! The process was this:—she, the
Daughter of a Physician, proprietress of the
superb equipage you now admired, with its
confirmatory blasts of trumpet drum and
cymbal, told you so:—On the first day after
taking the small and pleasant dose, you would
feel no particular influence beyond a most
harmonious sensation of indescribable and
irresistible joy, on the second day, you would be so
astonishingly better that you would think yourself
changed into somebody else; on the third
day, you would be entirely free from your
disorder, whatever its nature and however long you
had had it, and would seek out the Physician's
daughter, to throw yourself at her feet, kiss the
hem of her garment, and buy as many more of
the small and pleasant doses as by the sale of
all your few effects you could obtain; but she
would be inaccessible—gone for herbs to the
Pyramids of Egypt—and you would be (though
cured) reduced to despair! Thus would the
Physician's daughter drive her trade (and briskly
too), and thus would the buying and selling and
mingling of tongues and colours continue until
the changing sunlight, leaving the Physician's
Daughter in the shadow of high roofs, admonished
her to jolt out westward, with a departing
effect of gleam and glitter on the splendid
equipage and brazen blast. And now the
enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of the
Great Place once more, and down went the
booths the sittings and standings, and vanished
the merchandise, and with it the barrows
donkeys donkey-carts and tumbrils and all other
things on wheels and feet, except the slow
scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre
horses, clearing up the rubbish, assisted by the
sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on
non-market days. While there was yet an hour
or two to wane before the autumn sunset, the
loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge and
postern and double-ditch, would see the last
white-hooded cart lessening in the avenue of
lengthening shadows of trees, or the last country
boat, paddled by the last market-woman on her
way home, showing black upon the reddening
long low narrow dyke between him and the
mill; and as the paddle-parted scum and weed
closed over the boat's track, he might be
comfortably sure that its sluggish rest would be
troubled no more until next market-day.

As it was not one of the Great Place's days
for getting out of bed when Mr. The Englishman
looked down at the young soldiers practising
the goose-step there, his mind was left at
liberty to take a military turn.

"These fellows are billeted everywhere about,"
said he, "and to see them lighting the people's
fires, boiling the people's pots, minding the
people's babies, rocking the people's cradles,
washing the people's greens, and making themselves
generally useful, in every sort of unmilitary
way, is most ridiculous!—Never saw such
a set of fellows; never did in my life!"

All perfectly true again. Was there not Private
Valentine, in that very house, acting as sole
housemaid, valet, cook, steward, and nurse, in the
family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine De
la Cour—cleaning the floors, making the beds,
doing the marketing, dressing the captain, dressing
the dinners, dressing the salads, and dressing
the baby, all with equal readiness? Or, to
put him aside, he being in loyal attendance on
his Chief, was there not Private Hyppolite,
billeted at the Perfumer's two hundred yards off,
who, when not on duty, volunteered to keep
shop while the fair Perfumeress stepped out to
speak to a neighbour or so, and laughingly sold
soap with his war sword girded on him? Was
there not Emile, billeted at the Clockmaker's,
perpetually turning to of an evening with his
coat off, winding up the stock? Was there not
Eugène, billeted at the Tinman's, cultivating,
pipe in mouth, a garden four feet square for
the tinman, in the little court behind the shop,
and extorting the fruits of the earth from the
same, on his knees, with the sweat of his brow?
Not to multiply examples, was there not Baptiste,
billeted on the poor Water-Carrier, at that
very instant sitting on the pavement in the
sunlight, with his martial legs asunder, and one of
the Water-Carrier's spare pails between them,
which (to the delight and glory of the heart of the
Water-Carrier coming across the Place from the
fountain, yoked and burdened) he was painting
bright green outside and bright red within?