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A QUARREL.—THE FIRST VEXATION
A few days after Bélan’s wedding, we received a visit from Monsieur and Madame Giraud. I divined what brought them, and in truth they were hardly seated before Giraud exclaimed:
“You must have been greatly surprised not to see us at Bélan’s wedding?”
“In fact,” added Madame Giraud, “it made an impression on everybody. It was so terribly vulgar! So extraordinary! Just think of it! It was at our house that they met, and it was Giraud who took the first steps, who sounded Madame de Beausire, and who enumerated to her the young man’s property and good qualities; and yet we were not invited to the breakfast, or even to the ball! It’s an outrage!”
“More than that, it was indecent!” cried Giraud; “and if my wife hadn’t restrained me, I would have demanded satisfaction.”
“No, no; people would have thought that we cared about a wedding party; but thank God! we have more of them than we want. By the way, they say that that one was very dismal and tiresome!”
“Why, it was not very lively,” said Eugénie.
“Ah! yours was the lovely one, my dear Madame Blémont, and managed with such taste and such profusion! I confess that I had thirteen ices; salvers kept passing me, and I forgot myself.”
“Yes, that was a charming wedding,” said Giraud; “but they tell me that at Bélan’s there weren’t enough people to form two quadrilles of twelve, and that they were almost all outlandish creatures of the last century. And that old Beausire woman did nothing but cry. And then that night—do you know what happened?”
“No, we don’t know.”