Deliverande, Luc, Langrune, Lion, conveying
travellers to the railway; carts came, light and
heavy; and by-and-by an immense country
waggon, piled high with sacks of grain, and
drawn by four huge grey horses. The driver
walked at the head of the leader, crying
sonorously to open the way: "L'Empereur!
L'Empereur! L'Empereur!" and the people fell back,
laughing as at a good joke. The cumbrous
machine thundered out of sight, and all was
quiet again but the rustle of feet and hum of
voices on the pavement.

At last, with a rattle of drums and triumphant
music, the procession came: first, a dim
transparency of Napoleon the Third, backed by a
dim Eagle, and guarded by the torches flaring
more smokily; then a diminished rank of
lanterns, one blazing up to final extinction, and
falling to be stamped out by the feet of the
crowd. At a quick march from the Rue des
Carmes, round the corner by the church of St.
Jean, towards the Place St. Pierre the soldiers
advanced, with grimed faces, reeking hot, and
the mob trampling in a solid mass behind,
before, beside them. Here and there the glare of
a torch lighted up a visage in the mingled throng
that looked possessed; but the swift pace left
men little breath to shout, and the cries of
"L'Empereur!" were faint, and few, and far
between. We fancied we could distinguish the
one voice that feebly raised them all.

But when the procession passed a second
time, when the torches were burnt to the stump,
and the lanterns were burnt out, when the
band struck up Partant pour la Syrie, and the
fête was almost in the dark, then there was a
chorus to wake all the echoes in Caen, living
and dead—not the voice of a blithe, wholesome
enthusiasm, but of an excitement wrought up
to frenzy, to fever-heat, "full of sound and fury
signifying nothing."

"It is not like that in England, mam'zelle?"
said Elise, the cook.

We said, "No, it was not like that in
England."

The Fête des Flambeaux was over, and
midnight brought thunder, lightning, and rain.
And with thunder, lightning, and rain, rose the
Sainte Napoleon, and the great day of the
Blessed Mary's Assumption. The Holy Virgin,
the chosen protectress of France, had her thousands
and tens of thousands of devotees at the
early services, but there was no press of loyal
people to celebrate the Fête of the Emperor
when Te Deum was sung at noon in the great
church of St. Etienne. We went betimes, to
secure good places for seeing the show, but we
made a haste that nobody else made. And
with what vivacity the rain poured all the way!
We might have taken our leisure to arrive an
hour later, and we should still have been early
enough for all that came to pass. By advice of
an amiable little peasant we went up into the
triforium, and a lame old scholar in velvet
skull-cap, who had taken an advantageous post
which commanded the sanctuary and the nave
to the west door, where the military were to
enter, offered it to us with a gay and gracious
courtesy, saying that he had occasion to
witness the ceremony every year of his life, and
that perhaps we might never have a second
opportunity. And so he drew back his stool, and
stood behind us, content with casual glimpses
of the time present, and as the glorious music
rolled through the vast arches, was rapt away
in dim reveries of the time past, to judge from
the expression of his then spiritual face and
bright far-gazing eyes.

And there is food enough for reverie in this
grand old church of William the Conqueror for
those who cherish historic memories. Men
built well in his days, and here we look still on
the very lines they conceived, the very stones
they piled in the vast nave, the lofty vaults, the
noble transepts. The large simplicity of the
plan strikes us with a grave admiration. The
spaces, the masses, are perfectly distributed and
combined. There are neglect and dust; there
are the traces of violent ravage, of war, of
revolution; but there is no mean attempt at restoration
to vex us, and no profusion of ornament to
distract. Outside, Vandalism has been active
and methodical in constructing even more than
in destroying; but within, this finest and most
ancient of the Norman basilicas has suffered
chiefly from being let alone.

Long ago, in the wars of religion in the
sixteenth century, the ashes of the founder were
scattered to the four winds; but an inscription
in black marble marks the place of his sepulture
in front of the high altar, signifying that, there,
had been buried, in 1087, the invincible William
the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King
of England.

To-day the Conqueror's memorial stone was
hidden by a gaudy carpet and velvet chairs, set
in due gradation of rank for the officials who
were to attend this public celebration of the
Emperor's fête by command of authority. A
distant sound of martial music announced their
approach, and presently, out of the rain, through
the great doors, marched in a double file of
sappers, and took up their places at either side
of the altar—tall men, bronzed, bearded like
pards, and wearing on their breasts three or
four medals each, trophies of valour and victory.
Then came the flag, guarded, and blare blare,
tramp tramp, clang clang, the band and the
regiment, and overflowed the nave, and the
aisles, and the transepts. The last ranks formed
in two lines from the entrance to the gate of
the choir, and between them, marshalled by the
gigantic Swiss, in festal costume of scarlet and
gold and white panache, advanced the general,
the mayor, the president of the imperial court,
the prefect, followed by a crowd of dignities in
red robes, in orange robes, in silver lace, in blue
scarves, in all sorts of official finery, and
possessed the stalls and chairs of the choir up to
the steps of the sanctuary.

And last, most splendid of all, entered the
clergy, and mass began—a short military mass
to the sound of fifes, cornets, drums, trumpets,
clarions, and all kinds of music. Censers