The company hastened to greet the lovely bride, each according to his own mode, and one and all seemed lost in admiration of her beauty.
At last the reverend gentleman stepped forward, and, rubbing his hands with a business-like countenance, asked the name of the "happy bridegroom."
Julia looked round with one of her sweetest smiles, while Kalman hastened across all the corns in the company in his haste to join the beautiful bride; but Julia's hand had already been placed in that of nephew Sandor, whom she presented to the clergyman as her future husband!
Kalman tottered towards the wall, and so completely lost his presence of mind, that he tripped successively over three chairs into the lap of a fat dowager lady; and then, starting up, rushed to the nearest door, but finding it was a cupboard had to return across the room; and when at last he found the door and got down stairs, the first person he happened to meet being a little kitchen-maid, he addressed her as "My lady aunt!" and begged her to get him a glass of water, for he was very cold!
There was only one other person in a greater perplexity than himself, and this was the bridegroom. When Julia led him towards the clergyman, he stared as if he had heard sentence of death passed upon him. The affair had been already made up between the elders, who considered it superfluous to mention the subject to Sandor beforehand, and Julia was too secure in the power of her charms to doubt of their success in this undertaking.
Sandor allowed himself to be led before the table arranged for the ceremony, and when the clergyman asked him, "Do you love this honourable lady whose hand you hold?" he only stared at the worthy man, till his father cried out, "Well, do you love her? Of course you love her—how should you not love her?" on which Sandor recovering his senses, went through the rest of the marriage formula pretty well, though it cannot be denied that his teeth chattered not a little.
After this all went on well. The fêtes which succeeded the ceremony removed every constraint; and I must not omit, for the satisfaction of our readers, that the happy bridegroom even danced after supper, and thereby managed to trip up and tumble over several of the guests.
Early next morning three young men were walking in the gardens outside the town. One was Karely, and the other two his comrades, who were to act as seconds in his encounter with Kalman.
The latter had quitted Julia's house with a greater desire of fighting than ever, and declared in several coffeehouses that he was determined to shed either his own blood or that of another, and that he would not be content with sending a ball through Karely's brain alone. In vain his friends hinted that it was imprudent to publish his sanguinary intentions beforehand, as he might be taken up. He cared not; they might imprison him or take his life, but they should not touch his honour!