"What are you doing?" cried Brulette. "I told you that I had no heart to amuse myself, now that Joseph has left his mother and friends for such a time, and as for you, you'll be in danger of a fight if the other pipers should come this way and find you playing." "Bah!" said Huriel, "we'll see about that; don't be troubled for me,--you must dance, Brulette, or I shall think you are really in love with an ungrateful fellow who has left you." Whether it was that Brulette was too proud to let him think that, or that the dancing mania was too strong for her, it is certain that the bagpipe was no sooner fitted and filled and beginning to sound than she held out no longer and let me carry her off for the first reel. You would hardly believe, friends, what cries of satisfaction and delight filled the marketplace at the resounding noise of that bagpipe and the return of the muleteer, for every one thought him gone. The dancing had flagged and the company were about to disperse when he made his appearance once more on the piper's stone. Instantly such a hubbub arose! no longer four to eight couples were dancing, but sixteen to thirty-two, joining hands, skipping, shouting, laughing, so that the good God himself couldn't have got a word in edgewise. And presently every one in the market-place, old and young, children who couldn't yet use their legs, grandfathers tottering on theirs, old women jigging in the style of their youth, awkward folk who couldn't get the time or the tune,--they all set to spinning; and, indeed, it is a wonder the clock of the parish church didn't spin too. Fancy! the finest music ever heard in our parts and costing nothing! It seemed as if the devil had a finger in it, for the piper never asked to rest, and tired out everybody except himself. "I'm determined to be the last," he cried when they advised him to rest. "The whole parish shall give in before me; I intend to keep it up till sunrise, and you shall all cry me mercy!" So on we went, he piping and we twirling like mad. Mère Biaude, who kept the tavern, seeing there was profit in it, brought out tables and benches and something to eat and drink; as to the latter article, she couldn't furnish enough for so many stomachs hungry by dancing, so folks living near brought out for their friends and acquaintance the victuals they had laid in for the week. One brought cheese, another a bag of nuts, another the quarter of a kid, or a sucking pig, all of which were roasted and broiled at a fire hastily built in the market-place. It was like a wedding to which every one flocked. The children were not sent to bed, for no one had time to think of them, and they fell asleep, like a heap of lambs, on the piles of lumber which always lay about the market-place, to the wild racket of the dance and the bagpipe, which never stopped except it was to let the piper drink a jorum of the best wine.