The groom was delighted when we arrived; he felt more at ease with us.
“You will see my wife presently,” he said to us; “just now she is with her mother, who is finishing her toilet, weeping.”
“What! is your mother-in-law weeping still?”
“Yes, my friend, that woman is a regular fountain.”
“But what is she weeping for?”
“Grief at separating from her daughter. And yet she does not propose to separate from her, for she declares that she will sleep in the same room with us.”
“In the same room? Ha! ha! that is rather strong.”
“I swear to you that that is what she says. Indeed, I believe that she hoped that I would not sleep with my wife; but on my word, despite all my respect for Madame de Beausire, I refused to give in on that point, and I think that Armide was glad of it. But here come the ladies.”
The bride entered, escorted on one side by an old aunt with a nose like a snail’s shell, and on the other by her mother, who, with her tall, spare figure, her red eyes, and her leaden complexion, really looked like a ghost.
From the sighs heaved by those ladies, one would have thought that they were leading a second Iphigenia to the sacrifice. The relations came forward and delivered congratulations of the same style as their costumes. In the midst of it all, the bridegroom was the person to whom the least attention was paid. When he addressed his wife, she made no answer; when he turned to his mother-in-law, she took out her handkerchief and turned her back on him; and if he accosted any of the relations, they pretended to pay no attention to him.