Horsemen alight, horsewomen descend; down, also, come they that were in the calèche. Look, Bonaventure! They form by twos—forward—in they go. “Hats off, gentlemen! Don’t forget the rule!—Now—silence! softly, softly; speak low—or speak not at all; sh-sh! Silence! The pair are kneeling. Hush-sh! Frown down that little buzz about the door! Sh-sh!”
Bonaventure has rushed in with the crowd. He cannot see the kneeling pair; but there is the curé standing over them and performing the holy rite. The priest stops—he has seen Bonaventure! He stammers, and then he goes on. Here beside Bonaventure is a girl so absorbed in the scene that she thinks she is speaking to her brother, when presently she says to the haggard young stranger, letting herself down from her tiptoes and drawing a long breath:
“La sarimonie est fait.”
It is true; the ceremony is ended. She rises on tiptoe again to see the new couple sign the papers.
Slowly! The bridegroom first, his mark. Step back. Now the little bride—steady! Zoséphine, sa marque. She turns; see her, everybody; see her! brown and pretty as a doe! They are kissing her. Hail, Madame ’Thanase!
“Make way, make way!” The man and wife come forth.—Ah! ’Thanase Beausoleil, so tall and strong, so happy and hale, you do not look to-day like the poor decoyed, drugged victim that woke up one morning out in the Gulf of Mexico to find yourself, without fore-intent or knowledge, one of a ship’s crew bound for Brazil and thence to the Mediterranean!—“Make way, make way!” They mount the calèches, Sosthène after Madame Sosthène; ’Thanase after Madame ’Thanase. “To horse, ladies and gentlemen!” Never mind now about the youth who has been taken ill in the chapel, and whom the curé has borne almost bodily in his arms to his own house. “Mount! Mount! Move aside for the wedding singers!”—The wedding singers take their places, one on this side the bridal calèche, the other on that, and away it starts, creaking and groaning.
“Mais, arretez!—Stop, stop! Before going, passez le ’nisette!—pass the anisette!” May the New-Orleans compounder be forgiven the iniquitous mixture! “Boir les dames avant!—Let the ladies drink first!” Aham! straight from the bottle.
Now, go. The calèche moves. Other calèches bearing parental and grandparental couples follow. And now the young men and maidens gallop after; the cavalcade stretches out like the afternoon shadows, and with shout and song and waving of hats and kerchiefs, away they go! while from window and door and village street follows the wedding cry:
“Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, la calége!—God speed the wedding pair!”
Coming at first from the villagers, it is continued at length, faint and far, by the attending cavaliers. As mile by mile they drop aside, singly or in pairs, toward their homes, they rise in their stirrups, and lifting high their ribbon-decked hats, they shout and curvette and curvette and shout until the eye loses them, and the ear can barely catch the faint farewell: