red sacrifice, hymning the praise of the goddess with mountain lungs.
Then followed the dance of the haymakers, as in the preceding exhibition,
and the train went off as before.

"Excellent well, and truer than it could be done by your real pagan!"
cried the bailiff, who, in spite of his official longings, began to watch
the mummery with a pleased eye. "This beateth greatly our youthful follies
in the Genoese and Lombard carnivals, in which, to say truth, there are
sometimes seen rare niceties in the way of representing the old deities."

"Is it the usage, friend Hofmeister," demanded the baron, "to enjoy these
admirable pleasantries often here in Vaud?"

"We partake of them, from time to time, as the abbaye desires, and much as
thou seest. The honorable Signor Grimaldi--who will pardon me that he gets
no better treatment than he receives, and who will not fail to ascribe
what, to all who know him, might otherwise pass for inexcusable neglect,
to his own desire for privacy--he will tell us, should he be pleased to
honor us with his real opinion, that the subject is none the worse for
occasions to laugh and be gay. Now, there is Geneva, a town given to
subtleties as ingenious and complicated as the machinery of their own
watches; it can never have a merry-making without a leaven of disputation
and reason, two as damnable ingredients in the public humor as schism in
religion, or two minds in a _menage_. There is not a knave in the city
who does not fancy himself a better man than Calvin, and some there are
who believe if they are not cardinals, it is merely because the reformed
church does not relish legs cased in red stockings. By the word of a
bailiff! I would not be the ruler, look ye, of such a community, for the
hope of becoming Avoyer of Berne itself. Here it is different. We play our
antics in the shape of gods and goddesses like sober people, and, when all
is over, we go train our vines, or count our herds, like faithful subjects
of the great canton. Do I state the matter fairly to our friends, Baron de
Blonay?"

Roger de Blonay bit his lip, for he and his had been of Vaud a thousand
years, and he little relished the allusion to the quiet manner in which
his countrymen submitted to a compelled and foreign dictation. He bowed a
cold acquiescence to the bailiff's statement, however, as if no farther
answer were needed.

"We have other ceremonies that invite our attention," said Melchior de
Willading, who had suf