I soon found myself there, just where the Grande Rue meets the Rue de la
Pompe, and went through the arch and looked towards the Bois.
It was a dull, leaden day in autumn; few people were about, but a gay repas de noces was being held at a little restaurant on my right-hand side. It was to celebrate the wedding of Achille Grigoux, the green-grocer, with Félicité Lenormand, who had been the Seraskiers' house-maid. I suddenly remembered all this, and that Mimsey and Gogo were of the party—the latter, indeed, being premier garçon d'honneur, on whom would soon devolve the duty of stealing the bride's garter, and cutting it up into little bits to adorn the button-holes of the male guests before the ball began.
In an archway on my left some forlorn, worn-out old rips, broken-kneed and broken-winded, were patiently waiting, ready saddled and bridled, to be hired—Chloris, Murat, Rigolette, and others: I knew and had ridden them all nearly half a century ago. Poor old shadows of the long-dead past, so life-like and real and pathetic—it "split me the heart" to see them!
A handsome young blue-coated, silver-buttoned courier of the name of Lami came trotting along from St. Cloud on a roan horse, with a great jingling of his horse's bells and clacking of his short-handled whip. He stopped at the restaurant and called for a glass of white wine, and rising in his stirrups, shouted gayly for Monsieur et Madame Grigoux. They appeared at the first-floor window, looking very happy, and he drank their health, and they his. I could see Gogo and Mimsey in the crowd behind them, and mildly wondered again, as I had so often wondered before, how I came to see it all from the outside—from another point of view than Gogo's.
Then the courier bowed gallantly, and said, "Bonne chance!" and went trotting down the Grande Rue on his way to the Tuileries, and the wedding guests began to sing: they sang a song beginning—
"Il était un petit navire, Qui n'avait jamais navigué…."
I had quite forgotten it, and listened till the end, and thought it very pretty; and was interested in a dull, mechanical way at discovering that it must be the original of Thackeray's famous ballad of "Little Billee," which I did not hear till many years after. When they came to the last verse—
"Si cette histoire vous embête, Nous allons la recommencer,"
I went on my way. This was my last walk in dreamland, perhaps, and dream-hours are uncertain, and I would make the most of them, and look about me.
I walked towards Ranelagh, a kind of casino, where they used to give balls and theatrical performances on Sunday and Thursday nights (and where afterwards Rossini spent the latter years of his life; then it was pulled down, I am told, to make room for many smart little villas).