Joseph drew in his horns, and taking Brulette's hand in his, he said to her, with his eyes full of tears, "I am to blame, Brulette; yes, I'm irritable from fatigue and the desire to get here; but I feel nothing but devotion for you, and you ought not to take it in bad part. I know very well that your manners are dignified and that you exact the respect of everybody. It is due to your beauty, which, I see, is greater, not less, than ever. But you surely will allow that you love pleasure, and that people often kiss each other when dancing. It is the custom, and I shall think it a very good one when I profit by it; which will be now, for I have learned how to dance like others, and for the first time in my life I am going to dance with you. I hear the bagpipes returning. Come, you shall see that all my ill-humor will clear off under the happiness of being your sweetheart." "José," replied Brulette, not more than half pleased at this speech, "you are very much mistaken if you think I still have sweethearts; I may have been coquettish,--that's my way, and I am not bound to give account of my actions; but I have also the right and the will to change my ways. I no longer dance with everybody, and to-night I shall not dance again." "I should have thought," said Joseph, piqued, "that I was not 'everybody,' as you say, to an old friend with whom I made my first communion, and under whose roof I lived." The music and the wedding guests returning with a great racket, cut short their words, and Huriel, also entering, full of eagerness and taking no notice of Joseph, caught Brulette on his arm and carried her like a feather to his father, who was waiting outside, and who kissed her joyously, to the great annoyance of Joseph, who clenched his fists as he watched her paying the old man the filial attentions of a daughter. Creeping up to the Head-Woodsman I whispered that Joseph was there, in a bad temper, and I proposed that he should draw Huriel aside while I persuaded Brulette to go to bed. Joseph, who was not invited to the wedding, would thus be obliged to go off and sleep at Nohant or at some other house in Chassin. The Head-Woodsman thought the suggestion good, and pretending not to see Joseph, who kept in the background, he talked apart with Huriel, while Brulette went away to see in what part of the house she could stow herself for the night. But my aunt, who had counted on lodging us, did not expect that Brulette would take it into her head to go to bed before three or four in the morning. The young men never go to bed at all on the first night of a wedding, and do their best to keep up the dance for three days and three nights running. If one of them gets tired, he goes into the hayloft and takes a nap. As to the girls and women, they all retire into one room; but generally it is only the old women and the ugly ones who abandon the dance.