This time, it was Uncle Bénoni who acted as charioteer. Although Maillane is not more than about six miles from Avignon, at a time when no railways existed, and the roads were broken with heavy waggon wheels, and one had to cross the large bed of the Durance by ferry, the journey to Avignon was a matter of some importance.
Three of my aunts, with my mother, Uncle Bénoni, and myself, all scrambled into the cart, in which was placed a straw mattress, and thus, a goodly caravan load, we started at sunrise.
I said advisedly “three of my aunts.” Few people, I am sure, can boast of as many aunts as I had. There were a round dozen. First and foremost came the Great-aunt Mistrale, then Aunt Jeanneton, Aunt Madelon, Aunt Véronique, Aunt Poulinette, Aunt Bourdette, Aunt Françoise, Aunt Marie, Aunt Rion, Aunt Thérèse, Aunt Mélanie and Aunt Lisa. All of them, to-day, are dead and buried, but I love to say over the names of those good women, who, like beneficent fairies, each with her own special attraction, circled round the cradle of my childhood. Add to my aunts the same number of uncles, and then the cousins, their numerous progeny, and you can form some idea of my relations.
Uncle Bénoni was my mother’s brother and the youngest of the family—dark, thin, loosely made, with a turned-up nose and eyes black as jet. By trade he was a land-surveyor, but he had the reputation of an idler, and was even proud of it. He had a passion for three things, however—dancing, music and jesting.
There was not a better dancer in Maillane, nor one more amusing. At the feast of Saint-Eloi or of Sainte-Agathe, when he and Jésette, the wrestler, danced the contredanse on the green together, every one crowded there to see him as he imitated the pigeon’s flight. He played, more or less well, on every sort of instrument, violin, bassoon, horn, clarinette, but it was with the tambour-pipes that he excelled, In his youth Bénoni had not his equal at serenading the village beauties, or for sounding the revel on a May night. And whenever there was a pilgrimage to be made, either to Notre Dame de Lumière, or to Saint-Gent, to Vaucluse or Les Saintes-Maries, Bénoni was invariably the charioteer, and the life and soul of the party, ever willing, nay, delighted, to leave his own work, the daily round of the quiet home, and to be off for a jaunt.
Parties of fifteen to twenty young people in every cart would start off at dawn, foremost among them my uncle, seated on the shaft acting as driver, and keeping up a ceaseless flow of chaff, banter and laughter, during the whole journey.
There was one strange idea he had somehow got fixed in his head, and that was, when he married, to wed no one save a girl of noble birth.
“But such girls wish to marry men of noble birth,” he was warned.
“Well,” retorted Bénoni, “are not we noble too, in our family? Do you imagine that we Poulinets are a set of clowns like you folk. Our ancestor was a noble exile, he wore a cloak lined with red velvet, buckles on his shoes, and silk stockings!”
At last, by dint of patient inquiries, he really did hear of a family belonging to the old aristocracy, nearly ruined and with seven unmarried, dowerless daughters. The father, a dissipated fellow, was in the habit of selling a portion of his property every year to his creditors, and they ended by acquiring everything, even the château. So my gallant Uncle Bénoni put on his best attire, and one fine day presented himself as a suitor. The eldest of the girls, though daughter of a marquis and Commander of Malta, to escape the inevitable destiny of becoming an old maid, ended by accepting him.