My father shook me so violently that I screamed with fright. My grandfather and grandmother ran up to us and there was another “family drama.”
My father cried out insulting things to the bride and groom. But they did not get angry. They only laughed. My father ended by taking my mother by one hand and me by the other, and leading us back to the house, grandfather coming behind us.
My mother wept, grandfather did not say a word, my father kept repeating:
“You wish that my daughter should not be my daughter.”
A poor woman entered.
“Quick, come quickly, Monsieur Lambert,” she cried, “my husband Mathieu, the thatcher, you know him, has fallen off Monsieur Dutailly’s roof and is almost dead.”
My father and grandfather left suddenly together.
My mother undressed me, made up the packages and sewed them together, and put me to bed very early.
The next morning, while my father was still sleeping, because he had watched by Mathieu, the thatcher, all night, mamma tied me with my silk handkerchiefs in the cabriolet, together with my packages, the box with my handsome white hat, and without my going to the wedding festivities the next or the third day, without my being able to wear my two other pretty frocks, grandfather took me back to Chauny.
As I left, my mother told me to be sure to tell grandmother that in spite of my father’s anger she would never regret what she had done for me, and that she ought long ago to have confessed that I had never been baptised.