When Germain stood in front of these ghosts wrapped in the same shroud, he feared he should make a wrong choice; and, in truth, that had happened to many another, so carefully and conscientiously were the precautions made. His heart beat loud. Little Marie did her best to breathe hard and shake the cloth a little, but her malicious companions followed her example, and kept poking the cloth with their fingers, so that there were as many mysterious signals as there were girls beneath the canopy. The square headdresses upheld the cloth so evenly that it was impossible to discern the contour of a brow outlined by its folds.
After ten minutes’ hesitation, Germain shut his eyes, commended his soul to God, and stretched out the wand at random. It touched the forehead of little Marie, who cast the cloth from her, and shouted with triumph. Then it was his right to kiss her, and lifting her in his strong arms, he bore her to the middle of the room, where together they opened the dance, which lasted until two in the morning. The company separated to meet again at eight. As many people had come from the country round, and as there were not beds enough for everybody, each of the village maidens took to her bed two or three other girls, while the men spread themselves pell-mell on the hay in the barn-loft. You can imagine well that they had little sleep, for they did nothing but wrestle and joke, and tell foolish stories. Properly, there were three sleepless nights at weddings, and these we cannot regret.
At the time appointed for departure, when they had partaken of milk-soup, seasoned with a strong dose of pepper to stimulate the appetite—for the wedding-feast gave promise of great bounty—the guests assembled in the farmyard. Since our parish had been abolished, we had to go half a league from home to receive the marriage blessing. It was cool and pleasant weather, but the roads were in such wretched condition that everybody was on horseback, and each man took a companion on his crupper, whether she were young or old. Germain started on the gray, and the mare, well-groomed, freshly shod, and decked out with ribbons, pranced about and snorted fire from her nostrils. The husbandman went to the cottage for his bride in company with his brother-in-law, Jacques, who rode the old gray, and carried Mother Guillette on the crupper, while Germain returned to the farmyard in triumph, holding his dear little wife before him.
Then the merry cavalcade set out, escorted by the children, who ran ahead and fired off their pistols to make the horses jump. Mother Maurice was seated in a small cart, with Germain’s three children and the fiddlers. They led the march to the sound of their instruments. Petit-Pierre was so handsome that his old grandmother was pride itself. But the eager child did not stay long at her side. During a moment’s halt made on the journey, before passing through a difficult piece of road, he slipped away and ran to beg his father to carry him in front on the gray.
“No, no,” replied Germain, “that will call forth some disagreeable joke; we mustn’t do it.”
“It’s little that I care what the people of Saint Chartier say,” said little Marie. “Take him up, Germain, please do; I shall be prouder of him than I am of my wedding-gown.”
Germain yielded, and the pretty trio darted into the crowd borne by the triumphant gallop of the gray.
And so it was; the people of Saint Chartier, although they were very sarcastic, and somewhat disdainful of the neighboring parishes which had been annexed to theirs, never thought of laughing when they saw such a handsome husband, such a lovely wife, and a child that a king’s wife might court. Petit-Pierre was all dressed in light blue cloth, with a smart red waistcoat so short that it descended scarcely below his chin. The village tailor had fitted his armholes so tight that he could not bring his two little hands together. But, oh, how proud he was! He wore a round hat, with a black-and-gold cord, and a peacock’s plume which stuck out proudly from a tuft of guinea feathers. A bunch of flowers, bigger than his head, covered his shoulder, and ribbons fluttered to his feet The hemp-dresser, who was also the barber and hairdresser of the district, had cut his hair evenly, by covering his head with a bowl, and clipping off the protruding locks, an infallible method for guiding the shears. Thus arrayed, the poor child was less poetic, certainly, than with his curls streaming in the wind, and his Saint John Baptist’s sheepskin about him; but he knew nothing of this, and everybody admired him and said that he had quite the air of a little man. His beauty triumphed over everything, for what is there over which the exceeding beauty of childhood could not triumph?
His little sister, Solange, had, for the first time in her life, a peasant’s cap in place of the calico hood which little girls wear until they are two or three years old. And what a cap it was! Longer and larger than the poor little thing’s whole body. How beautiful she thought it! She dared not even turn her head; so she kept quite still and thought the people would take her for the bride.
As for little Sylvain, he was still in long clothes, and, fast asleep on his grandmother’s knees, he did not even know what a wedding was.
Germain looked at his children tenderly, and when they reached the town hall, he said to his bride:
“Marie, I have come here with a happier heart than I had the day when I brought you home from the forest of Chanteloube, thinking that you could never love me. I took you in my arms to put you on
