ugh hers had been rather the laxity of inadvertence
than of intention, that episode, if known, was not the less likely to
operate fatally between herself and her husband.

37.

Such was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridge
were interrupted by an event of such magnitude that its influence
reached to the lowest social stratum there, stirring the depths of its
society simultaneously with the preparations for the skimmington. It
was one of those excitements which, when they move a country town, leave
permanent mark upon its chronicles, as a warm summer permanently marks
the ring in the tree-trunk corresponding to its date.

A Royal Personage was about to pass through the borough on his course
further west, to inaugurate an immense engineering work out that way. He
had consented to halt half-an-hour or so in the town, and to receive an
address from the corporation of Casterbridge, which, as a representative
centre of husbandry, wished thus to express its sense of the great
services he had rendered to agricultural science and economics, by his
zealous promotion of designs for placing the art of farming on a more
scientific footing.

Royalty had not been seen in Casterbridge since the days of the third
King George, and then only by candlelight for a few minutes, when that
monarch, on a night-journey, had stopped to change horses at the
King's Arms. The inhabitants therefore decided to make a thorough fete
carillonee of the unwonted occasion. Half-an-hour's pause was not long,
it is true; but much might be done in it by a judicious grouping of
incidents, above all, if the weather were fine.

The address was prepared on parchment by an artist who was handy at
ornamental lettering, and was laid on with the best gold-leaf and
colours that the sign-painter had in his shop. The Council had met on
the Tuesday before the appointed day, to arrange the details of the
procedure. While they were sitting, the door of the Council Chamber
standing open, they heard a heavy footstep coming up the stairs. It
advanced along the passage, and Henchard entered the room, in clothes of
frayed and threadbare shabbiness, the very clothes which he had used to
wear in the primal days when he had sat among them.

"I have a feeling," he said, advancing to the table and laying his hand
upon the green cloth, "that I should like to join ye in this reception
of our illustrious visitor. I suppose I could walk with the rest?