Not less fantastic, nor less poetical in conception, are some of the measures adopted for the cure of personal ills. "Indeed," says M. Fertiault, "it is difficult to conceive the amount of imaginative labour these rustic intelligencies impose upon themselves, in their efforts to heal those who are dear to them. They vie with one another in rummaging among old customs, to find the best cure. Antoinette will take her sick Pierre to the church, and, somehow or other, holding him by the hands and under the arms, will lead him nine times round the altar so that health may come again; well she knows, too, what healing virtue there is, for children's fevers, in the sweet odour of hawthorn in spring; for did not the murderers of Christ weave for him a crown of thorns."[195] It is around such places as Verdun, where the mind is not too much distracted by archæological interests, that one's thoughts can escape from the town, into the fertile surrounding lands, and picture scenes that M. Fertiault has described for us so vividly, such as the autumn fête of the grand teillage when they work far into the night, beside the great bonfires, the boys and girls sitting around the piles of hemp. The work goes ahead speedily; and much chaffing and many a merry jest inspire deft fingers to outdo one another in peeling the hemp. The little mountains grow smaller, disappear. The workers gather up what is left of the peeled stalks, and pile them upon the fire which blazes again into a feu de joie. All dance round it gleefully; some even jump through the tongues of flame, believing that courage will make them incombustible. Then each takes his girl, and together they go home through the autumn night, the maid and the boy she had seen in her dreams six months ago, when, with her long hair falling about her face, she had leaned from the window, to say "Good-morning" to March. And as they go, they sing: "Le mariage fait heureux Les Amoureux." "And if ever one day you love me less than you love me to-night?" "Eh ben! ma foi? "Eh ben! Pierre ... je mourrais." 'Tis time to say "Good-night" at the cottage gate.