re, resumed their
customary calm, if they quietly regained their homes, preserving
only a sort of passing stupefaction, they had none the less
undergone a remarkable exaltation, and overcome and weary as if
they had committed some excess of dissipation, they fell heavily
upon their beds.

The next day each Quiquendonian had a kind of recollection of
what had occurred the evening before. One missed his hat, lost in
the hubbub; another a coat-flap, torn in the brawl; one her
delicately fashioned shoe, another her best mantle. Memory
returned to these worthy people, and with it a certain shame for
their unjustifiable agitation. It seemed to them an orgy in which
they were the unconscious heroes and heroines. They did not speak
of it; they did not wish to think of it. But the most astounded
personage in the town was Van Tricasse the burgomaster.

The next morning, on waking, he could not find his wig. Lotche
looked everywhere for it, but in vain. The wig had remained on
the field of battle. As for having it publicly claimed by Jean
Mistrol, the town-crier,--no, it would not do. It were better to
lose the wig than to advertise himself thus, as he had the honour
to be the first magistrate of Quiquendone.

The worthy Van Tricasse was reflecting upon this, extended
beneath his sheets, with bruised body, heavy head, furred tongue,
and burning breast. He felt no desire to get up; on the contrary;
and his brain worked more during this morning than it had
probably worked before for forty years. The worthy magistrate
recalled to his mind all the incidents of the incomprehensible
performance. He connected them with the events which had taken
place shortly before at Doctor Ox's reception. He tried to
discover the causes of the singular excitability which, on two
occasions, had betrayed itself in the best citizens of the town.

"What _can_ be going on?" he asked himself. "What giddy spirit
has taken possession of my peaceable town of Quiquendone? Are we
about to go mad, and must we make the town one vast asylum? For
yesterday we were all there, notables, counsellors, judges,
advocates, physicians, schoolmasters; and ail, if my memory
serves me,--all of us were assailed by this excess of furious
folly! But what was there in that infernal music? It is
inexplicable! Yet I certainly ate or drank nothing which could
put me into such a state. No; yesterday I had for dinner a slice
of overdone veal, several spoonfuls of spinach with su