The collection is made with considerable éclat and has all the elements of picturesqueness that one usually associates with the wedding processions that one sees on the comic-opera stage. A sort of nuptial bouquet—a great bunch of field flowers—is handed round from one guest to another, and for a sniff of their fragrance and a participation in the collation which is to come, they make an offering, dropping much or little into a golden (not gold) goblet which is passed around by the bride herself.
In the Sologne there is (or was, for the writer has never seen it) another singular custom of the marriage service—not really a part of the churchly office, but a sort of practical indorsement of the actuality of it all.
The bride and groom are both pricked with a needle until the blood runs, to demonstrate that neither the man nor the woman is insensible or dreaming as to the purport of the ceremony about to take place.
As every French marriage is at the Mairie, as well as being held in church, this double ceremony (and the blood-letting as well) must make a very hard and fast agreement. Perhaps it might be tried elsewhere with advantage.
Montrichard, on the Cher, is on the borderland between the Blaisois and Touraine. Its donjon announces itself from afar as a magnificent feudal ruin. The town is moreover most curious and original, the great rectangular donjon rising high into the sky above a series of cliff-dwellers' chalk-cut homes, in truly weird fashion.
There is nothing so very remarkable about cliff-dwellers in the Loire country, and their aspect, manners, and customs do not differ greatly from those of their neighbours, who live below them.
![[Donjon of Montrichard]](#3662465787148151151_illus129.jpg.id-5536752511374338818.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Curiously enough these rock-cut dwellings appear dry and healthful, and are not in the least insalubrious, though where a cave has been devoted only to the storage of wine in vats, barrels, and bottles the case is somewhat different.
Montrichard itself, outside of these scores of homes burrowed out of the cliff, is most picturesque, with stone-pignoned gables and dormer-windows and window-frames cut or worked in wood or stone into a thousand amusing shapes.