his day that they
hold one grand festival each year. To accommodate temporal affairs, a
fair is also held on the same day, so that the country people of the
neighborhood may purchase not only the necessaries, but the simple
luxuries they need or long for.

Besides the only principal festival and fair in Segni to San Bruno,
already described, they had three minor celebrations of minor saints,
substitutes, as Rocjean declared, for Pomona, Bacchus, and Ceres:
certainly, the saints' days fell very curiously about the same time
their predecessors were worshipped.

It is, however, of five festivals and fairs held in five neighboring
towns, that the present chapter treats; so let the drums beat while our
three artists proceed to enjoy on paper the days they celebrated.

One evening, the vetturino, Francesco, came to the trio and told them
that on the next day but one, Sunday, there would be a fair and _festa_
at Frosinone, a town about twenty-three miles from Segni, and that if
they wished to go, he had three seats to hire in his _vettura_. Having
heard that the costumes to be seen there were highly picturesque, and
anxious to study the habits of the people in holiday guise, our artists
determined to go. At daybreak on the appointed morning, having
breakfasted and filled their flasks with wine, they started with a guide
to walk down to Casa Bianca, a small _osteria_, distant, as the guide
assured them, about two miles; three miles, as Francesco swore to; four
miles, as Gaetano, the landlord declared; and six miles as Caper and
Rocjean were ready to affirm to. Down the mountain road they scrambled,
only losing their patience when they found they had to wade a small
marsh, where their tempers and polished boots were sorely tried. Once
over, they reached Casa Bianca, and found the vettura there, having
arrived an hour before from Rome, thirty odd (and peculiar) miles
distant; and now with the same horses they had to make twenty-three
miles more before ten A. M., according to agreement. Rocjean and Caper
sat outside the carriage, while Dexter sat inside, and conversed with
two other passengers, cheerful and good-natured people, who did all in
their power to make everybody around them contented and jolly.

The road went through the fertile Sacco valley; right and left rich
pasture grounds, or wheat and corn fields; the mountains on either side
rising in grandeur in the early sunlight, their tops wreathed with veils
of rising mi