cture, the Grand Hotel, various
villas and other resorts of the aristocracy. Any little street off it
will lead you into the seething centre of Perpignan life--the Place de
la Loge, which is a great block of old buildings surrounded on its four
sides by narrow streets of shops, cafes, private houses, all with
balconies and jalousies, all cramped, crumbling, Spanish, picturesque.
The oldest of this conglomerate block is a corner building, the Loge de
Mer, a thirteenth century palace, the cloth exchange in the glorious
days when Perpignan was a seaport and its merchant princes traded with
Sultans and Doges and such-like magnificoes of the Mediterranean. But
nowadays its glory has departed. Below the great gothic windows spreads
the awning of a cafe, which takes up all the ground floor. Hugging it
tight is the Mairie, and hugging that, the Hotel de Ville. Hither does
every soul in the place, at some hour or other of the day, inevitably
gravitate. Lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, merchants, lovers,
soldiers, market-women, loafers, horses, dogs, wagons, all crowd in a
noisy medley the narrow cobble-paved streets around the Loge. Of course
there are other streets, tortuous, odorous and cool, intersecting the
old town, and there are various open spaces, one of which is the broad
market square on one side flanked by the Theatre Municipal.

From the theatre Aristide Pujol issued one morning after rehearsal,
and, leaving his colleagues, including the ever-thirsty Roulard, to
refresh themselves at a humble cafe hard by, went forth in search of
distraction. He idled about the Place de la Loge, passed the time of day
with a cafe waiter until the latter, with a disconcerting "_Voila!
Voila!_" darted off to attend to a customer, and then strolled through
the Porte Notre Dame onto the Quai Sadi-Carnot. There a familiar sound
met his ears--the roll of a drum followed by an incantation in a
quavering, high-pitched voice. It was the Town Crier, with whom, as with
a brother artist, he had picked acquaintance the day before.

They met by the parapet of the Quai, just as Pere Bracasse had come to
the end of his incantation. The old man, grizzled, tanned and seamed,
leant weakly against the parapet.

"How goes it, Pere Bracasse?"

"Alas, mon bon Monsieur, it goes from bad to worse," sighed the old man.
"I am at the end of my strength. My voice has gone and the accursed
rheumatism in my shoulder gives me atrocious pain whenever I