hares in the acting, people within the
wedding-party and people without, wayfarers and dwellers in houses, for
three or four hours of the day, as we shall see. The theme is always the
same, but the variations are infinite; and it is here that we can see
the instinct of mimicry, the abundance of droll ideas, the fluency, the
wit at repartee, and even the natural eloquence of our peasants.

The role of gardener's wife is intrusted commonly to a slender man,
beardless and fresh of face, who can give a great appearance of truth to
his personification and plays the burlesque despair naturally enough to
make people sad and glad at once, as they are in real life. These thin,
beardless men are not rare among us, and, strangely enough, they are
sometimes most remarkable for their muscular strength.

When the wife's misfortunes have been explained, the young men of the
company try to persuade her to leave her drunken husband and to amuse
herself with them. They offer her their arms and drag her away. Little
by little she gives way; her spirits rise, and she begins to run about,
first with one and then with another, and grows more scandalous in her
behavior: a fresh "morality"; the ill-conduct of the husband excites and
aggravates the evil in the wife.

Then the "infidel" wakes from his drunkenness. He looks about for his
companion, arms himself with a rope and a stick and rushes after her.
They make him run, they hide, they pass the wife from one to another,
they try to divert her attention and to deceive her jealous spouse. His
friends try to get him drunk. At length he catches his unfaithful wife,
and wishes to beat her. What is truest and most carefully portrayed in
this play is that the jealous husband never attacks the men who carry
off his wife. He is very polite and prudent with them, and wishes only
to take vengeance on the sinning woman, because she is supposed to be
too feeble to offer resistance.

At the moment, however, when he raises his stick and prepares his cord
to strike the delinquent, all the men in the party interpose and throw
themselves between husband and wife.

"Don't strike her! Never strike your wife," is the formula repeated to
satiety during these scenes. They disarm the husband, and force him to
pardon and to kiss his wife, and soon he pretends to love her better
than ever. He walks along, his arm linked in hers, singing and dancing
until, in a new access of drunkenness, he rolls upon the ground,