"Ah! I am strongly inclined to go and strike him across the face!"
The young man had already started to attack the bridegroom; but Cherami detained him, putting his arm about him.
"What are you going to do? make a fool of yourself? I won't allow it. Well-bred people don't fight with their fists. If you want to fight with the groom, very good; I consent, I will even be your second; but you have plenty of time, and you must agree that this would be an ill-chosen moment."
The poor, lovelorn youth was not listening; another carriage had stopped in front of the restaurant. In that one there were ladies, among them the bride, who was easily recognizable by her head-dress of orange blossoms. She was a young woman of small stature, slender and dainty. Her hair was brown like her eyes, which were large, fringed by long lashes, and surmounted by slight but perfectly arched eyebrows. Her mouth was small and intelligent; she rarely showed her teeth, because they were uneven. She was an attractive woman, nothing more; a man must have been deeply in love with her to declare that there was no lovelier creature on earth. But for a man who is deeply enamored, there is but the one woman on earth; consequently, she must be the fairest. The bride's most remarkable points were her hands and feet, which were extraordinarily small, and worthy to be a sculptor's model.
The groom stepped forward to offer his arm to his wife, to assist her to alight. She barely rested her hand upon it, and, light as a feather, she was already on the ground, where she seemed busily occupied in looking to see if her dress had been rumpled in the carriage.
"There she is! it is she! it is Fanny!" murmured the young man, leaning heavily on Cherami.
"She doesn't look to me at all as if she'd been crying," was the reply.
"Mon Dieu! can it be that she will not look in this direction?"
"What's the use? She would see that you are pale and distressed, with the look of a disinterred corpse; that's no way to appear before a woman, to make her regret you."
"She would see how I suffer; she would realize that I shall die of grief!"