d hand.

"'Tis agreed."

"It's settled, then, for next Sunday?"

"It's settled for next Sunday"

"Well, good-morning, Victor."

"Good-morning, Madame Houlbreque."

PART III

This particular Sunday was the day of the village festival, the annual
festival in honor of the patron saint, which in Normandy is called the
assembly.

For the last eight days quaint-looking vehicles in which live the
families of strolling fair exhibitors, lottery managers, keepers of
shooting galleries and other forms of amusement or exhibitors of
curiosities whom the peasants call "wonder-makers" could be seen coming
along the roads drawn slowly by gray or sorrel horses.

The dirty wagons with their floating curtains, accompanied by a
melancholy-looking dog, who trotted, with his head down, between the
wheels, drew up one after the other on the green in front of the town
hall. Then a tent was erected in front of each ambulant abode, and inside
this tent could be seen, through the holes in the canvas, glittering
things which excited the envy or the curiosity of the village youngsters.

As soon as the morning of the fete arrived all the booths were opened,
displaying their splendors of glass or porcelain, and the peasants on
their way to mass looked with genuine satisfaction at these modest shops
which they saw again, nevertheless, each succeeding year.

Early in the afternoon there was a crowd on the green. From every
neighboring village the farmers arrived, shaken along with their wives
and children in the two-wheeled open chars-a-bancs, which rattled along,
swaying like cradles. They unharnessed at their friends' houses and the
farmyards were filled with strange-looking traps, gray, high, lean,
crooked, like long-clawed creatures from the depths of the sea. And each
family, with the youngsters in front and the grown-up ones behind, came
to the assembly with tranquil steps, smiling countenances and open hands,
big hands, red and bony, accustomed to work and apparently tired of their
temporary rest.

A clown was blowing a trumpet. The barrel-organ accompanying the
carrousel sent through the air its shrill jerky notes. The lottery-wheel
made a whirring sound like that of cloth tearing, and every moment the
crack of the rifle could be heard. And the slow-moving throng passed on
quietly in front of the booths resembling paste in a fluid condition,
with the motions of a flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy animal