At five o’clock, the little church bell ringing the Angelus, woke the women up, who usually slept the whole morning long, their only rest after the fatigues of the night. The peasants were up already, and the women went busily from house to house, talking animatedly, carefully bringing short, starched, muslin dresses in bandboxes, or very long wax tapers, with a bow of silk fringed with gold in the middle, and with dents in the wax for the fingers.
The sun was already high in the blue sky, which still had a rosy tint towards the horizon, like a faint trace of dawn remaining. Families of fowls were walking about outside the houses, and here and there a black cock, with a glistening breast, raised his head, which was crowned by his red comb, flapped his wings, and uttered his shrill crow, which the other cocks repeated.
Vehicles of all sorts came from neighbouring parishes, and discharged tall, Norman women, in dark dresses, with neckerchiefs crossed over the bosom, which were fastened with silver brooches, a hundred years old. The men had put on their blouses over their new frock-coats, or over their old dress-coats of green cloth, the two tails of which hung down below their blouses. When the horses were in the stable, there was a double line of rustic conveyances along the road; carts, cabriolets, tilburies, charabancs, traps of every shape and age, resting on their shafts, or else with them in the air.
The carpenter’s house was as busy as a beehive. The ladies, in dressing-jackets and petticoats, with their hanging down, thin, short hair, which looked as if it were faded and worn by use, were busy dressing the child, who was standing motionless on a table, while Madame Tellier was directing the movements of her flying column. They washed her, did her hair, dressed her, and with the help of a number of pins, they arranged the folds of her dress, and took in the waist, which was too large, and made her look as elegant as possible. Then, when she was ready, she was told to sit down and not to move, and the crowd of excited women hurried off to get ready themselves.
The bell of the little church began to ring again, and its poor tinkle was lost in the air, like a feeble voice which is soon drowned in space. The candidates came out of the houses, and went towards the parochial building which contained the two schools and the town hall and stood quiet at one end of the village, while the “House of God” was situated at the other.
The parents, in their very best clothes, followed their children, with awkward looks, and those clumsy movements of bodies always bent at work. The little girls disappeared in a cloud of muslin, which looked like whipped cream, while the lads, who looked like embryo waiters, and whose heads shone with pomade, walked with their legs apart, so as not to get any dust or dirt on their black trousers.
It was something for the family to be proud of, when a large number of relations, who had come from a distance, surrounded the child, and, consequently, the carpenter’s triumph was complete. Madame Tellier’s regiment, with its mistress at its head, followed Constance; her father gave his arm to his sister, her mother walked by the side of Raphaële, Fernande, with Rosa and the two Pumps together, and thus they walked majestically through the village, like a general’s staff in full uniform, while the effect on the village was startling.
At the school, the girls arranged themselves under the Sister of Mercy, and the boys under the schoolmaster, a handsome man, who looked well, and they started off, singing a hymn as they went. The boys led the way, in two files, between the two rows of unyoked vehicles, and the girls followed in the same order; and as all the people in the village had given the town ladies the precedence out of politeness, they came immediately behind the girls, and lengthened the double line of the procession still more, three on the right and three on the left, while their dresses were as striking as the set piece in a firework display.
When they went into the church, the congregation grew quite excited. They pressed against each other, they turned round, they jostled one another in order to see, and some of the devout ones spoke almost aloud, as they were so astonished at the sight of those ladies whose dresses were more trimmed than the chasubles of the choirboys.
The Mayor offered them his pew, the first one on the right, close to the choir, and Madame Tellier sat there with her sister-in-law, Fernande and Raphaële, Rosa la Rosse, and the two Pumps occupied the second seat, in company with the carpenter.
The choir was full of kneeling children, the girls on one side, and the boys on the other, and the long wax tapers which they held looked like lances, pointing in all directions, and three men were standing in front of the lectern, singing as loud as they could. They prolonged the syllables of the sonorous Latin indefinitely, holding on to Amens with interminable a‑a’s, while the serpent kept up the monotonous, long drawn out notes, which that long-throated, copper instrument uttered. A child’s shrill voice took up the reply, and from time to time a priest sitting in a stall and wearing a square biretta, got up, muttered something, and sat down again, while the three singers continued, with their eyes fixed on the big book of plainsong lying open before them on the outstretched wings of an eagle, mounted on a pivot.
Then silence ensued. The whole congregation knelt with one
