ned the
triumphal arches, sent off telegrams, express messengers to mayors, to
sub-prefects, to Arles--to arrange for a deputation of girls in national
costume; to Barbantane, where the best dancers are; to Faraman, famous
for its wild bulls and Camargue horses. And as the name of Jansoulet,
joined to that of the Bey of Tunis, flared at the end of all these
messages, on all sides they hastened to obey; the telegraph wires were
never still, messengers wore out horses on the roads. And this little
Sardanapalus of the stage called Cardailhac repeated ever, "There's
something to work on here," happy to scatter gold at random like
handfuls of seed, to have a stage of forty leagues to stir about--the
whole of Provence, of which this rabid Parisian was a native and whose
picturesque resources he knew to the core.

Dispossessed of her office, the old mother never appeared. She occupied
herself with the farm, and her invalid. She was terrified by this crowd
of visitors, these insolent servants whom it was difficult to know from
the masters, these women with their impudent and elegant airs, these
clean-shaven men who looked like bad priests--all these mad-caps who
chased each other at night in the corridors with pillows, with wet
sponges, with curtain tassels they had torn down, for weapons. Even
after dinner she no longer had her son; he was obliged to stay with his
guests, whose number grew each day as the _fetes_ approached; not even
the resource of talking to M. Paul about her grandchildren was left, for
Jansoulet, a little embarrassed by the seriousness of his friend,
had sent him to spend a few days with his brothers. And the careful
housekeeper, to whom they came every minute asking the keys for linen,
for a room, for extra silver, thought of her piles of beautiful dishes,
of the sacking of her cupboards and larders, remembered the state
in which the old Bey's visit had left the castle, devastated as by a
cyclone, and said in her _patois_ as she feverishly wet the linen on her
distaff: "May lightning strike them, this Bey and all the Beys!"

At last the day came, the great day which is still spoken of in all the
country-side. Towards three o'clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous
luncheon at which the old mother presided, this time in a new cap, over
a company composed of Parisian celebrities, prefects, deputies, all in
full uniform, mayors with their sashes, priests newshaven, Jansoulet in
full dress stepped out on to