"Only fancy—our missing you! We were both there!"
"Dear me! Really, were you?"
"Could you go this afternoon? I do want so to hear your criticism of my drawing—I'm working on the arch now."
"So sorry—can't—possibly. I promised what's his name to go over to
Tombelaine, don't you know!"
"Oh-h! We do so want to go to Tombelaine!"
"Ah-h—do you, really? One ought to start a little before the tide drops—they tell me!" and the clerical eye, through its correctly adjusted glass, looked into those four pleading eyes with no hint of softening. The dish that was the masterpiece of the house, meanwhile, had been despatched as if it were so much leather.
The omelette fared no better with the brides, as a rule, than with the English curates. Such a variety of brides as came up to the Mont! You could have your choice, at the midday meal, of almost any nationality, age, or color. The attempt among these bridal couples to maintain the distant air of a finished indifference only made their secret the more open. The British phlegm, on such a journey, did not always serve as a convenient mask; the flattering, timid glance, the ripple of the tender whispers, and the furtive touching of fingers beneath the table, made even these English couples a part of the great human marrying family; their superiority to their fellows would return, doubtless, when the honey had dried out of their moon. The best of our adventures into this tender country were with the French bridal tourists; they were certain to be delightfully human. As we had had occasion to remark before, they were off, like ourselves, on a little voyage of discovery; they had come to make acquaintance with the being to whom they were mated for life. Various degrees of progress could be read in the air and manner of the hearty young bourgeoises and their paler or even ruddier partners, as they crunched their bread or sipped their thin wine. Some had only entered as yet upon the path of inquiry; others had already passed the mile-stone of criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication. Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the promise of happiness.
Some of the peasant weddings were noisy, boisterous performances; but how gay were the brides, and how bloated with joy the hardy, knotty-handied grooms! These peasant wedding guests all bore a striking family likeness; they might easily all have been brothers and sisters, whether they had come from the fields near Pontorson, or Cancale, or Dol, or St. Malo. The older the women, the prettier and the more gossamer were the caps; but the younger maidens were always delightful to look upon, such was the ripe vigor of their frames, and the liquid softness of eyes that, like animals, were used to wide sunlit fields and to great skies full of light. The bride, in her brand-new stuff gown, with a bonnet that recalled the bridal wreath only just laid aside, was also certain to be of a general universal type with the broad hips, wide waist, muscular limbs, and the melting sweetness of lips and eyes that only abundant health and a rich animalism of nature bring to maidenhood.
Madame Poulard's air with this, her world, was as full of tact as with the tourists. Many of the older women would give her the Norman kiss, solemnly, as if the salute were a part of the ceremony attendant on the eating of a wedding breakfast at Mont St. Michel. There would be a three times' clapping of the wrinkled or the ruddy peasant cheeks against the sides of Madame Poulard's daintier, more delicately modelled face. Then all would take their seats noisily at table. It was Madame Poulard who then would bring us news of the party; at the end of a fortnight, Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done along the coast, that year. "Tiens, ce n'est pas gai, la noce! I must learn the reason!" Madame would then flutter over the bridal breakfasters as a delicate plumaged bird hovers over a mass of stuff out of which it hopes to make a respectable meal. She presently would return to murmur in a whisper, "it is a mariage de raison. They, the bride and groom, love elsewhere, but they are marrying to make a good partnership; they are both hair-dressers at Caen. They have bought a new and fine shop with their earnings." Or it would be, "Look, madame, at that jolie personne; see how sad she looks. She is in love with her cousin who sits opposite, but the groom is the old one. He has a large farm and a hundred cows." To look on such a trio would only be to make the acquaintance anew of Sidonie and Risler and of Froment Jeune. Such brides always had the wandering gaze of those in search of fresh horizons, or of those looking already for the chance of escape. For such "unhappies," ces malheureuses, Madame's manner had an added softness and tenderness; she passed the frosted bridal cake as if it were a propitiatory offering to the God of Hymen. However melancholy the bride, the cake and Madame's caressing smiles wrought ever the same spell; for an instant, at least, the newly-made wife was in love with matrimony and with the cake, accepting the latter with the pleased surprise of one who realizes that, at least, on one's wedding day, one is a person of importance; that even so far as Mont St. Michel the news of their marriage had turned the ovens into a baking of wedding-cakes. This was destined to be the first among the deceptions that greeted such brides; for there were hundreds of such cakes, alas! kept constantly on hand. They were the same—a glory of sugar-mouldings and devices covering a mountain of richness—that were sent up yearly at Christmas time to certain mansard studios in the Latin quarter, where the artist recipients, like the brides, eat of the cake as did Adam when partaking of the apple, believing all the woman told them!
There were other visitors who came up to the Mont, not as welcome as were these tourist parties.