“Doctor, you’ll drink out of my glass, won’t you?” cried little Suzel. And her lips, parted with a soft smile, showed her little snow-white teeth. “Yes, my dear,” stammered the good man, whose eyes sparkled with happiness; “yes, with pleasure.” Some one clapped him on the shoulder. “Have you breakfasted yet, Doctor?” “Not yet, my friend.” “Hi, Maître Tobie! A bacon omelette for the Doctor!” At last, at the end of a few minutes everybody had returned to their places: the young girls, their arms resting on the table, and their hands entwined in those of their sweethearts; the old papas in front of their mugs of beer, the stout mothers against the hornbeam hedge. Coucou Peter once more gave the signal for the dance, and the waltzing recommenced with greater spirit than ever. The illustrious philosopher would have liked to have begun to preach then and there, but he saw that youth given up to pleasure was not in a condition to listen to his words with all desirable attention. In the interval between the galops Coucou Peter returned to the table to empty his glass, and cried— “Doctor Frantz, your legs must be stiff! Take one of these pretty little pullets, and off with you both! Look at little Grédel yonder—how neatly she’s made, how appetising! What a waist! what eyes! what pretty little feet! Grédel, come here! Doesn’t your heart prompt you?” The young peasant approached smiling, and looking charming in her black cap and velvet bodice dotted all over with glittering spangles. “What do you want, Coucou Peter?” she asked archly. “What do I want?” said the fiddler, taking her by the chin, which was round, rosy, and smooth as a peach: “what do I want? Ah! if I were only still twenty! If we were only twenty, papa Mathéus!” He placed his hand on his stomach, and sighed as if his heart were bursting. Grédel drooped her eyes, and murmured, in a timid voice— “You’re laughing at me, Coucou Peter—I know you are—you’re laughing at me!” “Laughing! laughing!—say rather crying, my pretty Grédel. Ah! if I were still only twenty, as I said before, then indeed I would laugh, Grédel!” For a moment he remained silent, with a melancholy air: then he turned towards Mathéus, who was blushing up to his eyes, and cried— “That reminds me, Doctor Frantz—where the deuce are you off to so early in the morning? You must have started at daybreak to be over here before noon.” “I am going to preach my doctrine,” replied Mathéus, in an ingenuous and natural tone. “Your doctrine!” cried Coucou Peter, opening his big eyes; “your doctrine!” For a few seconds he remained wondering; but presently, bursting into a roar of laughter, he cried— “Ha! ha! ha! that’s a good joke—a good joke! Ha! ha! ha! Doctor Frantz, I should never have thought you were so funny!” “What do you find to laugh at? Have not I told you a hundred times at Graufthal that I should start sooner or later? It all seems to me perfectly natural.” “But you’re not going about like that?”