While we were dining the wassailers in the great kitchen and general room downstairs became more and more uproarious.  Dancing had commenced, and it was the bourree, the delightful bourree of Auvergne (the Upper Lot here runs not very far from the Cantal) that was being danced.  It is a measure that has no local colour unless it is accompanied by violent stamping.  The controleur looked very scandalized, and said it was abominable that the house should be given up to such tumult and disorder.  I observed, however, that as the joyousness of the party downstairs increased my companion’s face became animated by an expression that was not one of genuine anger, and as soon as he had drunk his coffee he remarked in a tone of indifference that, as the evening had to be spent somehow, it might be less disagreeable to see what was going on below than simply to hear it.  I soon followed him, and found that he was enjoying himself thoroughly, although discreetly, in a quiet corner.  The kitchen was filled with young fellows in blouses, some sitting at tables drinking and smoking, others standing; all were shouting, whistling or raising peals of laughter that might have brought the house about their ears had it been built by a modern contractor.  In the centre of the room the bare-armed kitchenmaid, who had left the platters, and a young peasant in a blouse were dancing, their backs turned to each other, moving their arms up and down like puppets in a barrel-organ, and banging the floor with their sabots, with the full conviction that the greater the noise the greater the fun.  And this was the opinion of all except the stout hostess, who looked on at the scene with a distressed countenance from behind a mighty pile of dirty plates.  The musicians were spectators who whistled in a band the air of the bourree, which is enough to make the most sedate Canon who ever sat in a stall dance, or at least to remember with charity the promptings of his adolescence.

When the kitchenmaid went back to her plates—­to the great relief of her mistress, who would have sternly condemned her tripping if thoughts of business had not beset her practical mind—­two young men stood up and danced another bourree.  With the exception of the scullion and household drudge there was no chance of getting a female partner.  In these villages and small towns the girls are kept out of harm’s way.  They go to bed at eight or nine, and are hard at work either in the fields or in the house, or washing by the stream, all through the hours of daylight.  The priests, wherever they have influence—­and in the South they have a great deal—­set their faces strongly against dancing by the two sexes, except under very exceptional circumstances.  They are right; they have peculiar facilities for knowing the variety of human nature with which they have to deal.  Humanity is fundamentally the same everywhere, but what is fundamental is modified by race and climate.  Temperament, fashioned by causes innate and local, exercises an immense influence upon practical morality.