Our ancestors, who knew and more thoroughly understood these matters than we do, who loved a laugh, the dance, and the merry outpourings of the heart, endeavoured by every means in their power to multiply them, and, after having seized upon the name of every saint in paradise, they managed to appropriate, and always for the same motive, all the various occupations known in the cultivation of the fields as a good excuse for holding more of these saturnalia. The season for sowing was one, the hay-harvest another, the wheat-harvest, the period of felling the oaks in the forest were excellent opportunities for establishing a new _fête_, and consequently buying a new coat, singing a carol, drinking to France, and skipping _des Rigodons_. For, be it said, one really does amuse oneself in my beautiful country; yes, one amuses oneself, perhaps, much more than one works; there are more Casinos built than acres grubbed up, and is not this partly the reason why the land is so badly tilled and produces only one half of what it should. But what signifies it, after all, if this half is sufficient for us. England, they say, is more opulent and better cultivated; be it so,--she is richer, she manufactures more; but is she happier? Independently of these _fêtes_, the number of which is infinite, but which occur only, in each locality, once a year, there exist also those merry meetings, which, like the Sunday, are understood by the peasantry as a general holiday. Amongst these, the most animated and attractive, and more usually marked by happy incidents, is that of the first of May. At the earliest dawn of day, the tones of the bagpipe may be distinguished in the distance, coming up the principal street of the village. He who has heard this rustic sound in the happy days of his childhood, under the shade of the elms, will always love the unmusical and melancholy wailing of the bagpipe. The strain has scarcely died away when all the village is alive, every one is up and dressed in his best--the children, with enormous nosegays in each little hand, go and present them to their delighted parents, and wish them "_un doux mois de Mai_."