Everybody felt cheerful and more like himself when this was over, but still there was something unpleasant,--a sort of constraint among us, and even in the midst of our carouses there was altogether too much solitary drinking,--in my opinion an evil and unhealthy practice. How long this sort of thing would have lasted, I cannot undertake to say, but chance intervened, and once more brought us all together. Love can unite _two_ hearts, but the only thing that can make a large number of men act as one, is the fear of a common enemy; and in our case, this enemy was our master. Duke Charles of Nevers took it into his head this year to forbid our games and dances, and as a natural consequence, every one who was not crippled with gout, and who could put foot to the ground, was seized with a perfect passion for dancing. No one exactly understood why, but the bone of contention between the Duke and the town had always been the Count’s Meadows, which lie outside the gates, at the foot of Picon Hill, watered by the Beuvron, which winds through them like a silver serpent. For more years than any one can remember, there had been a dispute about these meadows: pull devil, pull baker, and it was a question which had got the best of it. Of course the contest was conducted with the utmost politeness on both sides;--“My friends of the good town of Clamecy,” and “Your Lordship’s most obedient”;--but neither party would yield an inch, for all that. When we had resort to the courts, we always got the worst of it; the judgment rendered being invariably that our meadows did not belong to us; but this did not bother us in the least, as we had reason to know that justice can make black seem white--at a price. Possession, however, is nine points of the law, so we just held on to our playground, which had special advantages, because it was the only bit of land which was not the private property of some one in the town, and therefore might be said to belong to us all; or perhaps to the Duke, which came to much the same thing. Being common property, we did not mind spoiling it, and anything that was not convenient to do on our own premises, we did on the Count’s Meadows. We washed clothes, carded wool, and beat carpets; there was a large rubbish heap there, and many goats led out to pasture. On fine days we played games, or danced to a hurdy-gurdy; we shot at a target, and practised the drum and trumpet, and at night there were any number of loving couples along the banks of the Beuvron, which took it all as a matter of course, though he saw enough to frighten most rivers.