Note 79 — VI.—Contes des Fées.
Reading edition
The narrator was here asked “if the place of the dance was at the king’s palace.” “No,” she gravely replied, “it was at the mairie.” In other tales it is on the “place,” i.e., the open square or market-place which there is in most French towns and villages in the south. It is generally in front either of the church or of the mairie.