III.
To mention the varieties of business represented by these stalls would be to enumerate every trade in the town, and a few more. Bakers and pastrycooks are there in abundance; the stalls at which a bewildering choice of sweetmeats is displayed are marvels of neatness, and their name is legion. As many as five or six smartly-dressed young women with white oversleeves will be busy at one counter supplying the customers, who are endeavouring to increase the purchasing value of their coppers by speculating at the roulette table kept by the proprietor, for at such time the Frenchman introduces the gambling element into every transaction where it can be applied. At the miscellaneous stalls, where all sorts of fancy goods are on sale, the "wheel of fortune" is practically the only method of exchange. Many of the places are run on the principle of "all one price," and thrifty housewives may be seen deliberating on the respective merits of knives and forks, cruet-stands, butter-dishes, and scores of minor household utensils, each to be had at the price of half a franc (fivepence). It is clear that the women-folk regard the occasion as an opportunity for getting unusual value for their money. Peasants may purchase an entire suit of clothes at some of the stalls, and if they are wishful of a crucifix or an image of the sacred heart, here they are in abundance, with rosaries, bambinoes, and all the brightly-coloured symbols of Catholic worship.
But the real interest of the fair, and, of course, its most picturesque part, lies in the great Boulevard Alexandré Martin, which stretches eastward from the railway station. Here are congregated most of the places of entertainment. These, no less than the temporary shops of the tradesmen, present a striking contrast to anything one may see at an English fair. The Frenchman's instinctive feeling for art is everywhere noticeable, and the exterior decoration of the shows exhibits a lightness and daintiness of touch quite unknown in the same connection in England. The gilded horror of the ghost-show exterior, so familiar a feature of our own fairs, has no counterpart in France, but the booths wherein are exhibited "freaks of Nature" are curiously similar in both countries, the crude pictures on the canvas fronts being preposterous exaggerations of the objects to be seen within.