the terrace surrounded by his guests. He
saw before him in that splendid frame of magnificent natural scenery, in
the midst of flags and arches and coats of arms, a vast swarm of people,
a flare of brilliant costumes in rows on the slopes, at corners of the
walks; here, grouped in beds, like flowers on a lawn, the prettiest
girls of Arles, whose little dark heads showed delicately from beneath
their lace fichus; farther down were the dancers from Barbantane--eight
tambourine players in a line, ready to begin, their hands joined,
ribbons flying, hats cocked, and the red scarves round their hips;
beyond them, on the succeeding terraces were the choral societies in
rows, dressed in black with red caps, their standard-bearer in front,
grave, important, his teeth clinched, holding high his carved staff;
farther down still, on a vast circular space now arranged as an
amphitheatre, were the black bulls, and the herdsmen from Camargue
seated on their long-haired white horses, their high boots over their
knees, at their wrists an uplifted spear; then more flags, helmets,
bayonets, and decorations right down to the triumphal arch at the gates;
as far as the eye could see, on the other side of the Rhone (across
which the two railways had made a pontoon bridge that they might
come straight from the station to Saint-Romans), whole villages were
assembling from every side, crowding to the Giffas road in a cloud of
dust and a confusion of cries, sitting at the hedge-sides, clinging to
the elms, squeezed in carts--a living wall for the procession. Above all
a great white sun which scintillated in every direction--on the copper
of a tambourine, on the point of a trident, on the fringe of a banner;
and in the midst the great proud Rhone carrying to the sea the moving
picture of this royal feast. Before these marvels, where shone all the
gold of his coffers, the Nabob had a sudden feeling of admiration and of
pride.

"This is beautiful," he said, paling; and behind him his mother
murmured, "It is too beautiful for man. It is as if God were coming."
She was pale, too, but with an unutterable fear.

The sentiment of the old Catholic peasant was indeed that which was
vaguely felt by all those people massed upon the roads as though for the
passing of a gigantic Corpus Christi procession, and whom this visit
of an Eastern prince to a child of their own country reminded of the
legends of the Magi, or the advent of Gaspard the Moor, bringing t