melody of the Ranz des Vaches rose in the square, and soon drew the
absorbed and delighted attention of all within hearing which, to say the
truth, was little less than all who were within the limits of the town,
for, the crowd chiming in with the more regular artists, a, sort of
musical enthusiasm seized upon all present who came of Vaud and her
valleys. The dogmatical, but well-meaning bailiff; though usually jealous
of his Bernese origin, and alive on system to the necessity of preserving
the superiority of the great canton by all the common observances of
dignity and reserve, yielded to the general movement, and shouted with the
rest, under favor of a pair of lungs that nature had admirably fitted to
sustain the chorus of a mountain song. This condescension in the deputy of
Berne was often spoken of afterwards with admiration, the simple-minded
and credulous ascribing the exaltation of Peterchen to a generous warmth
in their happiness and interests, while the more wary and observant were
apt to impute the musical excess to a previous excess of another
character, in which the wines of the neighboring cotes were fairly
entitled to come in for a full share of the merit. Those who were, nearest
the bailiff were secretly much diverted-with his awkward attempts at
graciousness, which one fair and witty Vaudoise likened to the antics of
one of the celebrated animals that are still fostered in the city which
ruled so much of Switzerland, and from whom, indeed, the town and canton
are both vulgarly supposed to have derived their common name; for, while
the authority of Berne weighed so imperiously and heavily on its
subsidiary countries, as is usual in such cases, the people of the latter
were much addicted to taking an impotent revenge, by whispering the
pleasantest sarcasms they could invent against their masters.
Notwithstanding this and many more criticisms on his performance, the
bailiff enacted his part in the representation to his own entire
satisfaction; and he resumed his seat with a consciousness of having at
least merited the applause of the people, for having entered with so much
spirit into their games, and with the hope that this act of grace might be
the means of causing them to forget some fifty, or a hundred, of his other
acts, which certainly had not possessed the same melodious and
companionable features.

After this achievement the bailiff was reasonably quiet, until Bacchus and
his train again entered th