All the villagers gazed at one another in amazement, for the trick proposed by the lovely Parisian seemed rather strong to them; and Virginie trod on her friend’s foot and whispered:
“Will you keep quiet? What are you thinking about? As if anyone ever did such things as that here!—My friends,” Virginie continued, addressing the villagers, “my cousin said that because she assumed that Père Mauflard wears drawers.”
“Oh, yes! but he don’t!” said a stout woman, laughingly. Whereupon all the peasants cried:
“Oho! Fanchon knows all about it! How do you know that, eh, Fanchon? Well, on my word! it seems that Fanchon—So you know that, do you, Fanchon?”
Fanchon laughed on, and the noise finally woke Père Mauflard, who rubbed his eyes and asked what the matter was.
But Denise’s aunt restored order by arranging the whole party in a circle. The seats of honor by the fireplace were offered to the two ladies. Cézarine, who had seated herself beside the tall lout, said that she was very comfortable and that the heat made her ill. Virginie sat between two old men. Denise took Coco in her lap; she alone had no share in the pleasures of the occasion, and her heart as well as her thoughts bore her far from the village.
An old woman began a tale of robbers; another told a ghost story; and as neither of them interested Cézarine, while the simple folk tremblingly huddled together, she played games with the tall youth, and chucked him under the chin, saying:
“How much he looks like Théodore!”
An old peasant took the floor and announced that he proposed to sing the lament composed on the extraordinary death of Etienne de Garlande, formerly lord of Livry, who espoused the cause of Amaury de Montfort against Louis le Gros; the lament had only seventy-two stanzas.
As each stanza, sung to a most doleful tune in the measure of Malbrouck, lasted nearly five minutes, Virginie rose at the second, took a candle, whispered to Mère Fourcy that she was going to bed, and vanished without diverting the peasants’ attention from the dirge.