The feast lasted a very short time. Madame de Beausire gave the signal by rising, and the other ladies had no choice but to follow her example. I heard one old aunt mutter as she rose: “This is ridiculous; I didn’t have time to finish my chicken wing.”
As the fatal moment drew near, Madame de Beausire’s eyes became more and more full of tears. At last, when the dancing drew to a close, Bélan approached his Armide and suggested that they should go; whereupon Madame de Beausire rushed between them, sobbing, and threw her arms about her daughter.
“You shall not separate us, monsieur!” she cried.
Bélan stood as if turned to stone before his mother-in-law. The kinsfolk surrounded them, and I heard the uncles and cousins say to one another:
“That little fellow is behaving in the most indecent way. It makes me ill to have him come into our family.”
The aunts and the old maids had led Madame de Beausire away, and she left the restaurant with her daughter, while Bélan remained. He saw us and came to bid us good-night, faltering:
“I have let my wife and her mother go before, because, you know, they have to put the bride to bed; and of course I cannot be there.”
“My dear Bélan, I am afraid that Madame de Beausire will make another scene to-night.”
“Oh, no! At all events, if she does, I will show my spirit.”
We drove away, and as we returned home, Eugénie and I agreed that a man is always very foolish to enter a family which thinks that it does him much honor by allying itself with him. If chance has willed that he should be born in a lower class, he should, by his intellect or his character, show himself superior to those who try to humiliate him.