From the Mayor’s office, where the deputy on duty had the good taste to spare them an oration, they adjourned to the Catholic Institute in the Rue de Vaugirard, an aristocratic church, all over gilding and flowers and a blaze of candles, but not a soul there, nobody but the wedding party on a single row of chairs, to hear the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Adriani, mumble an interminable homily out of an illuminated book. A fine thing it was, to hear the worldly prelate with large nose, thin lips, and hollow shoulders under his violet cape, talking of the ‘honourable traditions of the husband and the charms of the wife,’ with a sombre, cynical side-glance at the velvet cushions of the unhappy couple. Then came the departure; cold good-byes were exchanged under the arches of the little cloister, and a sigh of relief with ‘Well, that’s over,’ escaped the Duchess, said in the despairing, disenchanted accent of a woman who has measured the abyss, and leaps in with her eyes open only to keep her word.
‘Ah, well,’ Védrine went on, ‘I have seen gloomy and lamentable sights enough in the course of my lite, but never anything so heart-breaking as Paul Astier’s wedding.’
‘He’s a fine rascal, though, is our young friend,’ said Freydet, between his closed teeth.
‘Yes, a precious product of the “struggle for existence.”’
The sculptor repeated the phrase with emphasis. A ‘struggler for existence’ was his name for the novel tribe of young savages who cite the necessity of ‘nature’s war’ as an hypocritical excuse for every kind of meanness. Freydet went on:
‘Well, anyhow, he’s rich now, which is what he wanted. His nose has not led him astray this time.’
‘Wait and see. The Duchess is not easy to get on with, and he looked devilish wicked at the Mayor’s. If the old lady bores him too much, we may still see him some day at the Assize Court, son and grandson of divinities as he is.’
‘The witness Védrine!’ called the usher at the top of his voice.
At the same moment a huge roar of laughter ran over the thronging crowd and came through the door as it swung open. ‘They don’t seem bored in there,’ said the municipal officer posted in the passage. The witnesses’ room, which had been gradually emptying during the chat of the two schoolfellows, now contained only Freydet and the caretaker, who, scared at having to appear in court, was twisting the strings of her cap like a lunatic. The worthy candidate, on the contrary, thought he had an unparalleled opportunity of burning incense at the shrine of the Académie Française and its Permanent Secretary. Left alone, when the good woman’s turn came, he paced up and down the room, planted himself in front of the window, and let off well-rounded periods accompanied by magnificent gestures of his black gloves. But he was misunderstood in the house opposite; and a fat hand at the end of a bare arm pulled aside a pink curtain and waved to him. Freydet, flushing crimson with shame, moved quickly away from the window, and took refuge in the passage.
‘The Public Prosecutor is speaking now,’ said the doorkeeper in a whisper, as a voice in a tone of assumed indignation rang through the heated air of the court—‘You played,’ it said, ‘on the innocent passion of an old man.’