“Ho, ho!” cried the hemp-dresser, after cautiously extending an arm to feel the roast. “That isn’t a quail nor a partridge; it isn’t a hare nor a rabbit; it’s something like a goose or a turkey. Upon my word, you’re clever hunters, and that game didn’t make you run very far. Move on, you rogues; we know all your lies, and you had best go home and cook your supper. You are not going to eat ours.”
The Gravedigger: “O Heavens, where can we go to cook our game? It is very little for so many as we, and, besides, we have neither place nor fire. At this time every door is closed, and every soul asleep. You are the only people who are celebrating a wedding at home, and you must he hard-hearted indeed to let us freeze outside. Once again, good people, open the door; we shall not cost you anything. You can see that we bring our own meat; only a little room at your hearth, a little blaze to cook with, and we shall go on our way rejoicing.”
The Hemp-dresser: “Do you suppose that we have too much room here, and that wood is bought for nothing?”
The Gravedigger: “We have here a small bundle of hay to make the fire. We shall be satisfied with that; only grant us leave to place the spit across your fireplace.”
The Hemp-dresser: “That will never do. We are disgusted, and don’t pity you at all. It is my opinion that you are drunk, that you need nothing, and that you only wish to come in and steal away our fire and our daughters.”
The Gravedigger: “Since you won’t listen to reason, we shall make our way in by force.”
The Hemp-dresser: “Try, if you want; we are shut in well enough to have no fear of you, and since you are impudent fellows, we shall not answer you again.”
Thereupon the hemp-dresser shut the garret window with a bang, and came down into the room below by a stepladder. Then he took the bride by the hand, the young people of both sexes followed, and they all began to sing and chatter merrily, while the matrons sang in piercing voices, and shrieked with laughter in derision and bravado at those without who were attempting an attack.
The besiegers, on their side, made a great hubbub. They discharged their pistols at the doors, made the dogs growl, whacked the walls, shook the blinds, and uttered frightful shrieks. In short, there was such a pandemonium that nobody could hear, and such a cloud of dust that nobody could see.
And yet this attack was all a sham. The time had not come for breaking through the etiquette. If, in prowling about, anybody were to find an unguarded aperture, or any opening whatsoever, he might try to slip in unobserved, and then, if the carrier of the spit succeeded in placing his roast before the fire, and thus prove the capture of the hearth, the comedy was over and the bridegroom had conquered.
The entrances of the house, however, were not numerous enough for any to be neglected in the customary precautions, and nobody might use violence before the moment fixed for the struggle.
When they were weary of dancing and screams, the hemp-dresser began to think of capitulation. He went up to his window, opened it with precaution, and greeted the baffled assailants with a burst of laughter.
“Well, my boys,” said he, “you look very sheep-faced. You thought there was nothing easier than to come in, and you see that our defense is good. But we are beginning to have pity on you, if you will submit and accept our conditions.”
The Gravedigger: “Speak, good people. Tell us what we must do to approach your hearth.”
The Hemp-dresser: “You must sing, my friends; but sing a song we don’t know—one that we can’t answer by a better.”
“That’s not hard to do,” answered the gravedigger, and he thundered in a powerful voice:
“ ‘Six months ago, ’twas in the spring …’ ”
“ ‘I wandered through the sprouting grass,’ ”
answered the hemp-dresser in a slightly hoarse but terrible voice. “You must be jesting, my poor friends, singing us such timeworn songs. You see very well that we can stop you at the first word.”
“ ‘She was a prince’s daughter …’ ”
“ ‘Right gladly would she wed,’ ”
answered the hemp-dresser. “Come, move on to the next; we know that a little too well.”
The Gravedigger: “How do you like this one?—
“ ‘As I was journeying home from Nantes.’ ”
The Hemp-dresser:
“ ‘Weary, oh, weary, was I, was I.’ ”
“That dates from my grandmother’s time. Let’s have another.”
The Gravedigger:
“ ‘One day I went a-walking …’ ”
The Hemp-dresser:
“ ‘Along a lovely wood!’ ”
“That one is too stupid! Our little children wouldn’t take the trouble to answer you. What! Are these all you know?”
The Gravedigger: “Oh, we shall sing you so many that you will never be able to hear them all.”
In this way a full hour passed. As the two antagonists were champions of the country round in the matter of songs, and as their store seemed inexhaustible, the contest might last all night with ease, all the more because the hemp-dresser, with a touch of malice, allowed several ballads of ten, twenty, or thirty couplets to be sung through, feigning by his silence to admit his defeat. Then the bridegroom’s camp rejoiced and sang aloud in chorus, and thought that this time the foe was worsted; but at the first line of the last couplet, they heard the hoarse croaking of the old hemp-dresser bellow forth the second rhyme. Then he cried:
“You need not tire yourselves by singing such a long one, my children—we know that one to our fingertips.”
Once or twice, however, the hemp-dresser made a wry face, contracted his brow, and turned toward the expectant housewives with a baffled air. The gravedigger was singing something so old that his adversary had forgotten it, or perhaps had never even heard it; but instantly the
