slightest idea. She knew she had to reach the
coast and to cross the sea: that was all.

The Marseillais marchand d'habits had told
her, the rascal! that he never bought jewellery
on fête-days. Once or twice before in the
course of that weary morning's travel, she had
heard about the festivals. At the pawnbroker's
they had bidden her to be quick, for they were
about to close. The poor, it seems, must pawn,
even on the morning of a holiday, so the
commissaire-priseur opened his doors for an
hour or two before the business of pleasure
began.

Lily saw that there were a great many more
people about, this morning, than on ordinary
days; that many of the shops, and nearly all those
of a superior class, were closed; that the humbler
sort of people mostly wore clean blouses, and the
grisettes clean caps; that the students of the
School of St. Cyr were abroad in their holiday
clothes; that the soldiers of the garrison looked
unusually spruce and burnished up; and that
the very sergents de ville had waxed their
moustaches, and given their sword-hilts an
extra polish. There were a good many flowers
about; from many of the windows hung banners
and streamers; and in front of every public
building rose great black triangular stages, like
monstrous but truncated ladders, supporting
on their many rungs pipkins full of oil and
tallow, in which were huge cotton wicks. These
were the lampions for the illuminations at night.

Then Lily all at once remembered that this
was the twenty-seventh of July, and that
Madame de Kergolay had told her that on the
twenty-seventh, the twenty-eighth, and the
twenty-ninth of that month, in every year, the
official gala-days known as the Fêtes of July
were held. "They are to celebrate the
democratic revolution of July, 1830," the old lady
would say, disdainfully; "the revolution so
adroitly discounted in their own favour, by
M. le Duc d'Orleans and the banker Lafitte.
It is an official celebration, strictly a government
affair, my child, and the maskings and
mummeries and tight-rope dancing are all paid
for out of the public treasury. The people
have nothing to do with it—absolutely nothing.
The only holiday which lives in their memories
and in their hearts is the Fête de St. Louis."

Thus Madame de Kergolay; and Lily had, of
course, implicitly believed her. But she could
not help thinking now, as she watched the
gaily dressed and laughing throngs hurrying past,
that, if the Fête of St. Louis were in their hearts,
the lights of the Fêtes of July shone uncommonly
bright in their faces. Every one looked happy:
everybody must be happy, thought the poor little
outcast runaway, her sad heart sinking within
her, at the sight of the smiles and the joyous
faces. She little knew that among that laughing
concourse there were numbers upon numbers
ten thousand times more miserable than she.

It was good that she should not know it. It
would not have consoled her. She had not yet
arrived at that age when "there is something
not absolutely disagreeable to us in the misfortunes
of our dearest friends." The wretcheder
she was herself—being, as you know, young and
silly, and not at all a woman of the world—the
readier she was to sympathise with sorrow. She
was but a little fool, at the best; but she never
grew out of that folly.

So it was a grand holiday, a very grand holiday.
The government liked to encourage holidays;
it made the people feel light and pleasant,
and saved them from getting the headache over
those stupid newspapers. On the third, and
grandest day of the fêtes, the newspapers were
not published at all:—another thing which the
government liked dearly. A good government,
a paternal government, a light-hearted government;
it rejoiced to see the hard-worked editors
and reporters strolling in the Elysian Fields,
dining at the Café Anglais, or dancing at the
Chaumière—even if they danced that naughty
cancan—instead of muddling their brains in the
composition of prosy leading articles, or wearing
their fingers to the bone in taking crabbed short-
hand notes of the long-winded debates of the
Chambers. "Enjoy yourselves, my children,"
cried this good government. "In these last days
of July let us sing a Te Deum for fine weather,
an abundant crop of strawberries, and the
possession of so beneficent a sovereign as that
dear old gentleman with the umbrella at the
Tuileries yonder. See; he wears a tricolored
cockade, the emblem of Liberty, in his hat. Is
that not good of him? Let us celebrate the
feast of the Patriots of July. What glorious
fellows they were. Shout! How nobly they
fought. Fire the cannon! How heroically they
died. Drub the double drums! How very
soundly they sleep, in the vaults under the
column in the Place de la Bastille. Let us
drink all their healths, and inscribe all their
names, even to the humblest blouse-wearer, in
golden letters on the marble plinth. As for the
patriots of to-day, they are a pack of sulky
disagreeable grumblers, mere spoil-sports and
trouble-fêtes, and, lest they should mar the bright
sunshine of our holiday, we have put them away
in the casemates of Belle Isle, and Mont St.
Michel, and Doullens, and turned a big key on
them. Soldiers! bring your muskets to the
'ready,' and, bombardiers, keep your matches
lighted. This is a fête-day. Everybody is to
enjoy himself under pain of immediate arrest.
Eat, drink, and be merry, my children. Go to the
play for nothing. See the illuminations, and the
fireworks, and the water-jousts, for nothing;
meanwhile, we, who are your parents and best
friends, will govern you, and look after all your
little affairs, at home and abroad. Tiens! that
birchen rod of ours is getting a little limp.
Excuse us if we use one of iron."

So spoke the Government of July, thinking it
was to last for ever; but it, and its dynasty,
and its festivals, and all its pretty little winning
ways, are dead and gone, and well-nigh effaced
from the memory of man.

For aught Lily knew, the gay doings might
be in honour of the birthday of King Louis
Philippe, or the birthday of Monsieur Lafitte the