"Oho! Fanchon knows all about it! How do you know that, eh, Fanchon? Well, on my word! it seems that Fanchon--So you know that, do you, Fanchon?" Fanchon laughed on, and the noise finally woke Père Mauflard, who rubbed his eyes and asked what the matter was. But Denise's aunt restored order by arranging the whole party in a circle. The seats of honor by the fireplace were offered to the two ladies. Cézarine, who had seated herself beside the tall lout, said that she was very comfortable and that the heat made her ill. Virginie sat between two old men. Denise took Coco in her lap; she alone had no share in the pleasures of the occasion, and her heart as well as her thoughts bore her far from the village. An old woman began a tale of robbers; another told a ghost story; and as neither of them interested Cézarine, while the simple folk tremblingly huddled together, she played games with the tall youth, and chucked him under the chin, saying: "How much he looks like Théodore!" An old peasant took the floor and announced that he proposed to sing the lament composed on the extraordinary death of Etienne de Garlande, formerly lord of Livry, who espoused the cause of Amaury de Montfort against Louis le Gros; the lament had only seventy-two stanzas. As each stanza, sung to a most doleful tune in the measure of _Malbrouck_, lasted nearly five minutes, Virginie rose at the second, took a candle, whispered to Mère Fourcy that she was going to bed, and vanished without diverting the peasants' attention from the dirge. But Cézarine, who was not at all anxious to listen to the seventy-two stanzas, interrupted the peasant in the middle of the fourth, saying: "My dear friend, your thory ith very pretty, but it will end by putting everybody to thleep like neighbor Mauflard, who hath been thnoring for an hour. If you thay tho, I'll give you a then from a tragedy. Do you know what tragedy ith, my friendth?" "No, madame," said the villagers. "And comedy--have you ever been to one?" "No, madame." "Oh! I know what it is," said one of the young blades; "I've been in Paris. It's a place where you see men and women behind a curtain that goes up; and then there's lamps, and they say silly things and wave their arms about, and you can't understand nothing at all; but it's almighty fine." "That'th the very thing, my dear boy; you know all about it. Tho you'll be able to explain to the company what they can't grathp right away. I'm going to give you a thene from _Andromaque_. Come with me, my fine fellow, you're going to be Pyrrhuth."