he manner of a
feudal homage, by the lieutenant-general, the bearer, passing it on to
the servants of the Bailliage, proceeded himself to imitate as exactly
and as skilfully as possible all the performances of his predecessor the
learned dog, amid the shouting and applause of the multitude.

This over, a great silence fell upon the whole assembly, and it then
became the duty of the performer, assuming an attitude of profound and
deferential obeisance, to salute the lieutenant-general after a fashion
more easily describable by Rabelais or by M. Armand Silvestre than by
me, and which seems to have been derived from some of the singular rites
attributed by Von Hammer to the Templars, as a part of the ceremonial
observed by them in their secret conclaves.

When all this had been duly gone through with, the 'jongleurs' of Chauny
received the Royal permission to resume their perambulations of the
realm for another year, and the day wound up with junketings and
jollifications all over the town.

The 'jongleurs' and the learned dogs and the green monkeys have passed
away, with the lieutenant-general of the king. But I found a certain
homely shrewdness and vivacity in the people with whom I talked as they
went in and out of the '_Pot d'Etain_,' the chief hostelry of the place,
and the fact that this chief hostelry still keeps its good old-time name
of the 'Tin Pot,' and has not changed itself into a 'Grand Hotel de
Chauny,' seemed to me to argue a survival here of common sense and sound
local feeling. The host of the 'Tin Pot,' a solid, well-to-do personage,
learned in crops and horses, gave me a capital trap, shaded with an
awning such as is worn on the delightful little basket-waggons at Nice
and Monte-Carlo, and a wide-awake driver for my trip to Coucy and Anizy,
on the way to Laon. His daughter, a decidedly good-looking young lady,
not wholly unconscious of her natural advantages, who kept the guests of
the cafe in capital order, seemed to have no high opinion of the powers
that be in France. She took up an English sovereign which I laid down on
the counter when settling a bill, and looked at it with much interest.
'That weighs more than a napoleon,' she said; 'and who is the young
lady? She is pretty, and it is a good head.'

I explained that the lady was young because the coin was old, and that
the head was the head of the Queen of Great Britain, who had reigned
over that realm for more than fifty years.

'More than f