ill be presently
necessary to speak of the different personages who were represented on
this joyous occasion, we shall only say here, that group after group of
the actors came into the square, each party marching to the sound of music
from its particular point of rendezvous to the common centre. The stage
now began to fill with the privileged, among whom were many of the high
aristocracy of the ruling canton, most of its officials, who were too
dignified to be more than complacent spectators of revels like these, many
nobles of mark from Prance and Italy, a few travellers from England, for
in that age England was deemed a distant country and sent forth but a few
of her _elite_ to represent her on such occasions, most of those from the
adjoining territories who could afford the time and cost, and who by rank
or character were entitled to the distinction, and the wives and families
of the local officers who happened to be engaged as actors in the
representation. By the time the different parts of the principal
procession were assembled in the square, all the seats of the estrade were
crowded, with the exception of those reserved for the bailiff and his
immediate friends.

Chapter XIV.

So once were ranged the sons of ancient Rome,
A noble show! While Roscius trod the stage.

Cowper.

The day was not yet far advanced, when all the component parts of the
grand procession had arrived in the square. Shortly after, a flourish of
clarions gave notice of the approach of the authorities. First came the
bailiff, filled with the dignity of station, and watching, with a vigilant
but covert eye, every indication of feeling that might prove of interest
to his employers, even while he most affected sympathy with the occasion
and self-abandonment to the follies of the hour; for Peter Hofmeister owed
his long-established favor with the buergerschaft more to a
never-slumbering regard to its exclusive interests and its undivided
supremacy, than to any particular skill in the art of rendering men
comfortable and happy. Next to the worthy bailiff, for apart from an
indomitable resolution to maintain the authority of his masters, for good
or for evil, the Herr Hofmeister merited the appellation of a worthy man,
came Roger de Blonay and his guest the Baron de Willading, marching, _pari
passu_, at the side of the representative of Berne himself. There might
have been some question how far the bailiff was satisfied with this