I can perfectly recall the effort I made to please my father’s friends at Blérancourt, and how, after having gone in quest of compliments about me, he brought back a great number to my grandfather and mother.
“How charming she is, how good she was, and how she talks!” he said.
My mother had unsewed Arthémise’s packages and she ironed my frocks herself. I took part in the ironing and the hanging up, and I asked innumerable questions about the wedding.
On the morrow, the great day, all the guests gathered at the bride’s house near the church. The weather was superb. They went on foot, two by two, in a long file, the bride leading with my grandfather, of whom they said: “What a handsome man he is who is acting as father.”
I leaned out from the rank and dragged my mother’s hand so as to see better, and, perhaps, to be better seen, for there was a row of people along the length of the cortége.
The gentleman who gave his arm to my mother was very handsome and he laughed to see her continually dragged out of file by me.
All Blérancourt was there to see the fine wedding pass by, and several times I heard, not without pleasure, little boys and girls and even grown persons say:
“Look, look, it’s Monsieur Lambert’s little Juliette. How prettily she is dressed.”
Some one added:
“Monsieur Lambert is not here. He never goes to churches.”