The old priest, who was attached to Pélagie on account of her charity and kindness, could not keep from laughing himself, and he made haste, smiling through half of the ceremony.
Pélagie turned and faced the crowd. People thought her confusion would make her feel like sinking to the ground. “It is a merry marriage,” was all she said. And thus was my very romantic grandmother married, scandalising a great number of persons and amusing others.
The white pink and the night-cap became family relics. I have seen and held them in my hand, knowing their history.
II
WHEN THE ALLIES WERE AT THE GATES OF PARIS
TWENTY days after his marriage, although he had drawn one of the first numbers when the drawing for lots for the army took place, Doctor Seron received orders to leave for the imperial army as surgeon. He was obliged to find a surgeon to take his place, and this cost a very large sum.
At the end of the year Madame Pierre Seron became the mother of twin daughters. The young couple were perfectly happy. The poor, abandoned child had become a tender, glad father, who would return often to the house to rock his daughters and to amuse them by singing to them.
The children were not eight months old when the poor young surgeon received new orders to join the Imperial army in Germany. Pierre Seron did not look for a substitute this time. His wife’s dot was diminishing too fast, and he was obliged to think of future dots for his daughters. He left them with a breaking heart.
Pélagie’s grandmother went to live with her, because it was impossible to leave the young woman alone, especially as her father, stepmother, and sisters, to whom Doctor Seron had turned a cold shoulder, often making them ridiculous by his witty remarks, and whose lives he had made quite unpleasant, would seize the young surgeon’s departure as an occasion to revenge themselves; but Pélagie and her grandmother were upheld by Pierre’s numerous friends, and all the town took sides with the half-widowed young woman, and blamed and annoyed Monsieur Raincourt to such a degree that he finally left Chauny to go and settle in the department of Soissons, from whence his second wife had come.
Pélagie breathed freely, for her father had never ceased to annoy her. But, alas! misfortune came to overwhelm her. She lost her grandmother and was left alone as head of the family, and obliged, before she was eighteen, to look after her fortune, and the intervals between the times when she received news from her husband became more and more lengthened.