On this July morning the old town gleams like a strange jewel, set in the spacious, lush meadow lands, stretching league on league, to the mountains. Vast gardens of hemp wave to its very walls. Vineyards veil the nearer hills, and the mulberry dots the plains of the southeast. The Isère, restless, ever seeking new outlet, interlaces with a network of sparkling tributaries the great expanse of Grésivaudan. All the richness of the region, all the amazing variety and beauty with which nature has surrounded this ancient city, seems concentrated, in the early hush and radiance, in an act of worship.
Now the sun has penetrated the shadows below the city walls, and is stealing through the sinuous, crowded streets, peculiar to towns which long have been cramped within the precincts of strong fortifications. The tiled eaves lean so close one upon another, as in some places actually to shut out the sky. If we might fly up like a bird and look down over the Grenoble of 1650, we would be gazing upon a confusion of multi-colored roofs, set at every conceivable angle of picturesqueness, and upon a bewildering congregation of chimneys and chimney-pots. Also, we would note that the town lay on both banks of the Isère, connected by a tower bridge, and protected on the north by the fortress of the Bastille.
Down in the roughly paved _rue Saint-Laurent_ the clatter of sabots on the stones announces that the townspeople are astir. Shutters are thrown open. Bursts of song herald the holiday. Crowds of goats, driven through the streets, are being milked at the house doors. Then, from the Cathedral of Notre Dame—whose foundations, it is said, were laid by Charlemagne—the bells proclaim with sweet solemnity the call to early mass. Out of the houses pour the people in gaily embroidered holiday dress, group joining group with merry exchange of salutations, until, trooping through the narrow streets, the colorful procession appears like a wandering rainbow threading the grey mazes of the old town.
House after house they pass and shop after shop, each bearing above the portal a shield emblazened with the selfsame coat-of-arms—the heraldic device of the guild of the glovers. Their occupants, gayest of the gay, fast swell the throng, with masters and their families and apprentices—the young boys in the retinues stealing shy glances at the pretty daughters of their masters, the maidens covertly returning their admirers’ bashful looks.