Here’s the main line, already graceful, but the harmony keeps a little shadow under it.

The step has settled now. It’s steady, but the accents don’t quite sit flat; they lean into the measure.

This return feels more exposed. The support keeps repeating softly, so the small turns in the melody matter more.

The voices enter with names, Myrtille and Lydé, turning the dance into a social game without breaking its poise.

“Observez la mesure” is the useful phrase here: observe the measure. The chorus is saying what the music has been enforcing all along.

Now the words sharpen, with injury and a less-slow cadence, but the music still keeps everything inside the same polished tread.

Myrtille and Lydé come back, and the return feels less like a new scene than the same courtly pattern continuing under different light.

The chorus reaches the contradiction plainly: they adore, they hate, they curse their loves. Fauré lets the words turn hot while the surface stays cool.

The farewells begin by naming the women again, but the delivery still belongs to the procession, not to a private outburst.

At the close, the support thins instead of collapsing. The old poise remains, just with less and less holding it up.